One third of Canadians suffer from CHRONIC PAIN and we better start listening to them. The rest of the world is not any better either.
Millions of people are suffering from chronic pain and their voices falls on deaf ears.
The issue with chronic pain is that many pain patients look perfectly normal to others but they suffer so much, in silence, and others are blind to their pain.
CHRONIC PAIN is not just a SYMPTOM, it is an ILLNESS with a thousand heads.
Chronic pain affects every single aspect of one’s life: from the inability to sleep well to the ability to work, from having quality time with family to managing the finances. Nothing is spared from the damages of chronic pain in a patient’s life since the patients cannot explain how they really feel. Even if they find a way to express their anguish, their complaint becomes a broken record to others after a while. People may hear their voices but they will not listen nor understand their anguish. Their suffering becomes background noise and, sadly, it is ignored.
A reason for this could be a coping mechanism by other members of the family to simply normalize their ongoing complaints and accept them as a fact of life in order to move on. In the workforce, it could be a way for management to just limit this illness to the score of pain from 1 to 10 and deny the possibility of high level chronic pain in a normal looking patient with normal test results. It may be a political strategy for governments to simply look the other way when it comes to the huge expenses of taking care of 1/3 of society’s treatment needs. Whatever the reason may be for ignoring the voices of chronic pain sufferers the fact is: the numbers of pain patients around the world is increasing. In our society, there will be more senior citizens with different pain conditions in a few decades. The numbers are too high and THEY CANNOT BE IGNORED ANY MORE.
The old way of leaving actions for tomorrow and ignoring the silent suffering of millions cannot continued. THIS IS NOT RIGHT things have to change!!!
We can’t expect the pain patients to stand up to this life long battle alone and be angry at them for losing it. We talk a lot about the role of patients in managing their chronic pain. Self management has a big role in this but the patients cannot do it alone. This can only be accomplished with teamwork and society as a whole should be members of this team.
The first step is BETTER UNDERSTANDING. We have to START LISTENINIG. We hear but do not listen. This needs to change and understanding has to begin.
