| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Wrow99 |
Posted - 05/29/2006 : 21:12:09
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/health/30pain.html?8dpc
It's on the front page of their website today.
(You may need to sign up on the NY Times website to access the article.) |
| 14 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| alix |
Posted - 06/03/2006 : 17:12:58
I am also pretty annoyed at the constant bashing of pharmaceutical companies. My father worked as a research scientist for Roche (Valium, Tamiflu etc...) and the antibiotics he helped to develop certainly saved 1000s of lives. |
| leonard |
Posted - 06/03/2006 : 16:29:43
I have really tired of the doctor and drug company bashing. I have 2 physicians in my
immediate family and can honestly state that they are most intelligent , hardworking , and caring people I have ever known. To sanctimoniously dismiss the majority of physicians good work is shortsighted and ignorant...... When my brother was dying of cancer his primary doctor slept over in my brother's room at the hospital just to be there for him. And if not for the "evil" drugs , he would have died an excrutiating death.
Even Dr. Sarno admits only around 15% of people with pain syndromes are open to his approach. So , what do you do with that remaining 85% ? Do you force his method down there throats and stick them in a cell to "think psychologically".
My mother passed away in the hospital recently. Upon admitting her I had chest pains and went to the ER. Tests were done and the doctor diagnosed anxiety and gave me a prescription for benzo's. Those terrible pharmaceutical companies had actually created a product that allowed me to take care of my mother for the next 32 days before she died ! THANK YOU , YOU NO GOOD JERKS !..... I was Sarno aware at the time , but found it impossible to practice what I preached.
When my father was admitted to the hospital recently after the neurologist discovered brain cancer , he was injected with another appalling anesthesia drug so he could have an operation without physical and psychological pain. He passed away hopefully with little pain. The neurologist who performed the operation was one of the most wonderful men I have ever had the fortune to meet.
My nephew has just become a physician. He worked so very hard to become a doctor, and now works 24 hour shifts at the ER with very little time off. He already has saved many lives and has also delivered many new lives into the world. He has always been a great kid and is now a wonderful , caring physician. He is not a lap dog for the drug companies !
Dr. Sarno is not a God , however it is my opinion that he is a genius. I hate to think of where I would be without his help and knowledge. Acceptance of his work by doctors and laymen will be gradual and will happen. However , I believe it is a total waste of energy to dismiss other physicians work as of little or no consequence or to chastise the whole drug industry. Better time may be used to ask ourselves the question , " Why do we as TMS type people need all of these "other people" to agree us ? Are we so altruistic ,or do we just selfishly believe we would suddenly discover the courage needed to "cure" our disorder if we have a larger army of followers ?
There is no doubt that many have drug horror stories. I also have those in my family as well. It is not my place or purpose to minimize these abuses or mistakes. But I believe in most cases it is not the doctor at fault , but more times the patient.
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| art |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 16:54:58
quote:
Originally posted by PeterMcKay
I was watching an aspirin commercial on tv. The man talking complained about various aches and pains as he got older- first in his neck, then his knees and finally his back. The pain, according to the speaker, moved around a lot so he did not know where it would be from one day to the next. Another aspirin commercial depicts people with wrist pain, due to excessive typing, and how they find relief when they take the aspirin tablets.
The mobster pharmaceutical industry has teamed up with their lap-dog poodle doctors to perpetuate the myth that this pain is physically based and thus requires a physical modality in order to "correct" the problem. Combined, they are liars, charlatans, snake oil peddlers and are complicit in the perpetuation of more pain and suffering than a million terrorists combined. White used to be symbolic of purity and honesty, but when a modern day doctor dons a white lab coat and spews forth this cartesian horse-****, then white to me becomes a symbol of evil and the infliction of perpetual suffering. Damn them, damn them all to hell. The army of us who are in pain but slowly recovering, thanks to heros like Sarno and those who have embraced his findings, are answering back and are saying that we are as mad as hell and we are not going to take your lying crap anymore.
They have not taken the hippocratic oath, they have taken the hypocritic oath with their nocebo-istic brand of health care and line their pockets on the sufferings of others. I take comfort in the fact that there is a day of judgement coming when these contemptable people will stand before an angry God and answer for their crimes against humanity.
One of the most entertaining rants I've read in a long while... |
| n/a |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 16:45:54
Actually I had a preety good day. Like I said, there are few good docs who are not buying into the lies and they are to be applauded. |
| drziggles |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 14:36:52
having a bad day, peter? :)
we're not all so awful... |
| n/a |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 14:09:35
I was watching an aspirin commercial on tv. The man talking complained about various aches and pains as he got older- first in his neck, then his knees and finally his back. The pain, according to the speaker, moved around a lot so he did not know where it would be from one day to the next. Another aspirin commercial depicts people with wrist pain, due to excessive typing, and how they find relief when they take the aspirin tablets.
The mobster pharmaceutical industry has teamed up with their lap-dog poodle doctors to perpetuate the myth that this pain is physically based and thus requires a physical modality in order to "correct" the problem. Combined, they are liars, charlatans, snake oil peddlers and are complicit in the perpetuation of more pain and suffering than a million terrorists combined. White used to be symbolic of purity and honesty, but when a modern day doctor dons a white lab coat and spews forth this cartesian horse-****, then white to me becomes a symbol of evil and the infliction of perpetual suffering. Damn them, damn them all to hell. The army of us who are in pain but slowly recovering, thanks to heros like Sarno and those who have embraced his findings, are answering back and are saying that we are as mad as hell and we are not going to take your lying crap anymore.
They have not taken the hippocratic oath, they have taken the hypocritic oath with their nocebo-istic brand of health care and line their pockets on the sufferings of others. I take comfort in the fact that there is a day of judgement coming when these contemptable people will stand before an angry God and answer for their crimes against humanity. |
| art |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 12:42:00
I think we need to be careful about being universally dismissive. While it seemed to me the ballerina, with her migrating pain and vocal chords clearly is a candidate for this forum, I have doubts about the woman who had all that trouble after giving blood. Something about her situation rang true to me...
No way to know one way or another of course, but just making th general point that not everything in the world is TMS |
| HilaryN |
Posted - 06/02/2006 : 06:59:51
quote:
I was thinking about writing a letter to the editor, but it would certainly be ignored.
It doesn’t matter if it’s ignored – it’s still not wasted, because you’ve at least given them the info. Writing and being ignored is better than not writing at all (assuming one has the time to write, of course), because not writing means they won’t even know about TMS.
Wasn’t “Healing Back Pain” a New York Times bestseller? It’s worth mentioning that in one’s letter.
I think it’s also worth writing to “For Grace”:
http://www.forgrace.org/contactus.html
if anyone has time.
Hilary N |
| Carolyn |
Posted - 06/01/2006 : 19:03:39
Reading this really made me emotional. I know exactly how she feels- the frustration- the willingness to try anything, the need to just do something, the anger when people suggest it is all in your head. It just really hit me that I could still be living that hopeless life if I hadn't stumbled onto Sarno's work and this board.
I so want to help her but I suspect she has so much of herself now invested in this diagnosis- starting a foundation, running for office -that I doubt if she'd be able to even consider the possibility that it could be emotionally based. IT becomes almost a matter of saving face after so much time and public attention. I imagine the subconscious would have a hard time giving that up. I can almost feel my own subconsious freaking out- 'what will people think of me- I'd rather have the pain than the embarassmentthat it wasn't even 'real''!"
Her case reads like the prototype for TMS, coming on at what seems like a stressful time, migrating from one place to another, followed by depression. It is such a strange thing that people can be convinced by doctors that pulling a muscle doing a light stretch could lead to years of pain so severe you can't get out of bed and that it can jump to the other leg and even affect the vocal cords!!!!! There is no rational way to explain that yet they will accept a lot of hand-waving by doctors that don't understand it either but they won't even entertain the notion that the mind affects the body.
Carolyn |
| whitris |
Posted - 05/30/2006 : 14:24:35
Below is the text of the article. I agree it is very sad to read and deserves letters to the editor from everybody on the forum. They might print one. The message would need to be calm and simple. For example, "Ms Toussaint seems to believe that when a doctor suggests that a pain is psychosomatic, the medic is minimizing her condition. However, the connection between the mind and body means that all pain has a mental dimension. Mysterious pain that moves around may be a result of unresolved emotions. Thousands have found relief by trying this non-drug, non-surgical approach. Dr. John Sarno is the leading advocate of this theory."
**************
"Doctors Struggle to Treat Mysterious and Unbearable Pain"
by Kathleen McGregory
It was supposed to be a typical ballet class. Cynthia Toussaint, then a senior dance major at the University of California, Irvine, engaged in her usual stretching routine: she raised her left leg to the barre and slowly bent her upper body down to her right knee.
For a moment, she delighted in the long stretch. But as she returned to an upright position, she felt a sudden pop in her hamstring. "It felt like a guitar string had been plucked and it had broken," said Ms. Toussaint, who is now 45.
An intense burning sensation followed; it felt as if her leg had been doused in gasoline and set on fire, she said. The next day, the college athletics trainer determined that she had pulled her hamstring. But even years later, the pain would not subside. It migrated to her other leg, leaving her bedridden for nearly a decade, and overtook her vocal cords, leaving her temporarily mute.
All the while, doctors puzzled over and even doubted her mysterious condition.
Ms. Toussaint now knows that she is among an estimated one million Americans living with complex regional pain syndrome, a nerve disorder formerly known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome. For patients with the disorder, a trauma as mild as a fractured wrist or a twisted ankle can cause the nerves to misfire, so much so that intense pain messages are constantly sent to the brain.
For the past 150 years, so little was known about complex regional pain syndrome that it was often diagnosed as psychosomatic. But doctors now believe that the condition complicates 1 of every 1,200 traumatic injuries. And desperate patients are turning to new, often unproven, drugs and treatments. "It is still quite a mysterious condition," said Dr. Scott M. Fishman, a pain management specialist at the University of California, Davis, and the author of "The War on Pain."
"It raises doubts in the eyes of doctors and the people that are looking for hard lab evidence or good imaging confirmation," Dr. Fishman said. "With this condition, we simply don't have that."
Baffling as it may be, the syndrome is not new to the medical literature. It was first documented by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a Civil War surgeon. But few physicians are familiar with it; the average patient sees 8 to 10 doctors before a diagnosis is made, according to a recent survey by American RSDHope, a support organization.
Pain is the hallmark of the condition, which outranks cancer as the most painful disease on the McGill Pain Index. For some, the sensation remains in one place, most commonly one of the extremities. For others, it spreads throughout the body, making even a light touch or minor changes in temperature agonizing.
For Ms. Toussaint, as for many other patients, the pain was life altering. When she tore her hamstring, she was on the verge of completing her bachelor's degree. She was also being considered for a part on the television series "Fame." But the injury left her in debilitating pain. She could no longer stand on her own or leave her house; riding in a car on the bumpy California roads was torture.
Ms. Toussaint dropped out of school and fell into a deep depression, she said. It took 13 1/2 years for her disorder to be diagnosed. Dozens of doctors told her it was "all in her head"; one even suggested she suffered from stage fright.
Without clear clues as to what induces the syndrome or who is particularly susceptible, doctors say that treating it is a challenge. Sympathetic nerve blocks can reduce the pain, and doctors say the relief often lasts longer than the anesthetic.
More than two dozen drugs are also being used to treat the pain. But none of the medications, which range from acetaminophen and ibuprofen to morphine and methadone, have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for this use.
"The myth is that this condition isn't treatable, but the truth is that it responds to the same kinds of treatments that have been found effective for other neuropathic pain," said Dr. Anne Louise Oaklander, director of the nerve injury unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of neurology at Harvard.
Dr. Russell K. Portenoy, chairman of the department of pain medicine and palliative care at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, added that treatment was "a trial and error" process.
Doctors tend to use the drugs that are most commonly prescribed for other conditions before the drugs that are less commonly used," he said. "But in many cases, doctors need to perform sequential trials to find out which drug or combination of drugs helps the most."
Dr. Portenoy said he is a consultant for drug companies but not on work related to the syndrome or its treatment.
Another treatment is to implant an electrical stimulator near the base of the spinal cord or the injured limb. The device sends low-level electrical signals to the spinal cord or to specific nerves and blocks pain signals from reaching the brain.
Dr. Robert J. Schwartzman of the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia is skeptical of the electrical stimulators. Although he first began implanting them in patients in 1986, he no longer does. "Long term," he said, "stimulators don't work. From what I've seen, they wear out and then they stop working."
Dr. Schwartzman treats the condition with ketamine, an anesthetic that blocks one of the body's pain receptors. In most cases, this five-day inpatient therapy reduced the pain significantly for three to six months, he said.
In addition, a 10-day outpatient procedure — more than 1,200 people are on a waiting list for it — is being tested in a controlled experiment. Although the trial has been approved by the F.D.A., it is awaiting approval by Drexel's institutional review board.
Dr. Schwartzman has also sent the most extreme cases — the 30 patients who were found to be intractable to all other treatments — to Germany for five days of prolonged ketamine anesthesia, enough to put them into a coma.
Ten patients were completely relieved of their pain, Dr. Schwartzman said, noting that the treatment has not been approved in the United States.
Some doctors have strong concerns about the ketamine treatments. Dr. Oaklander, for one, believes there is not enough research to support its effectiveness, especially in light of the risks.
Either way, said Ms. Toussaint, who has not had the therapy herself, "It says a lot about this disease that we are willing to be put in comas." New research is also helping doctors understand the pain syndrome. In early 2006, a team at Massachusetts General was the first to identify organic nerve injuries in a large group of people with the disorder. The research, published in February in the journal Pain, confirmed that the syndrome was not psychosomatic, said Dr. Oaklander, who led the study.
This progress is promising for Ms. Toussaint. Since her illness was diagnosed in 1995, medications have reduced her pain, enabling her to stand and speak again. She and her partner, John Garrett, now manage For Grace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing awareness of complex regional pain syndrome. Ms. Toussaint is also running for the California State Assembly on a health-based platform.
"People see me and they recognize me as the ballerina, but they don't remember the name of my disease," she said recently, "but that's all about to change."
-- end -- |
| tennis tom |
Posted - 05/30/2006 : 10:19:04
Dr. Ziggles,
I would encourage you to write that letter to the editor, if you have the time. Coming from an MD, it would have much more impact than from one of us civilians.
Regards,
tt  |
| ndb |
Posted - 05/30/2006 : 09:25:36
why did the article make a point of stressing that it was NOT psychosomatic? |
| drziggles |
Posted - 05/30/2006 : 08:57:24
Did anyone notice that she had not only pain in the affected leg that spread to the other leg, but also some involvement of the vocal cords? How does that have anything to do with her injury or pain?
Can you say TMS?
I was thinking about writing a letter to the editor, but it would certainly be ignored. |
| Logan |
Posted - 05/30/2006 : 00:02:57
I really thought they were at least going to mention Sarno in this article considering he lives in the NYC area and practices at Johns Hopkins.
No wonder the masses persist in believing the answer to their pain lies in a pill or a procedure when "legitimate" news sources like the NY Times prints articles like this - and did you see the next article in the queue was about a woman who claims she "got" chronic pain in her arm after giving blood?
How tragic that people like this "ballerina" in the first article are subjecting themselves to ketamine, that's a horse tranquilizer I believe, as in Special K, a drug abused by narcotic addicts.
I mean, I understand their desperation because I was once very angry at my insurance company for not letting me get a procedure that would have killed nerve cells in my neck and shoulders but to put oneself in a Special K induced coma, to risk death...knowing what I know now, it seems so pointless and dangerous when the cure is literally within.
I know it's cruel and petty but my first thought when I saw this woman's picture was, "Food; look into it." But seriously, she's probably got eating disorders too but still won't look at the underlying psychological issues.
I feel bad for her yet frustrated with her for embarking on this campaign that will ultimately not help people but instead encourage them to stay in the prison of TMS pain that this line of thinking enables.
I just thank my lucky stars that I was receptive to finding the cause for my own pain and that maybe I can help others do the same.
I hope more people will be helped by Sarno's latest book although when I went to buy it the other night at my local independent bookstore they did not have it... |
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