Inside chronic pain

"Chronic pain, which affects 70 million people in the United States alone - more than diabetes, cancer, and heart disease combined - is a major public health issue that remains poorly understood both within the health care system and by those closest to the people it afflicts. This book examines the experience of pain in ways that could significantly improve how patients and practitioners deal with pain." "Since surviving a near-fatal car accident, Lous Heshusius has suffered from chronic pain for more than a decade. Inside Chronic Pain, based in part on the pain journal Heshusius keeps, is a memoir of a life lived in constant pain as well as an insightful and often critical account of the inadequacies of the health care system - from physicians to hospitals and health insurance companies - to understand chronic pain and treat those who suffer from it. Through her own frequently frustrating experiences, she shows how health care providers often ignore, deny, or incorrectly treat chronic pain at immense cost to both the patient and the health care system. She also offers cogent suggestions on improving the quality and outcome of chronic pain care and management, using her encounters with exceptional medical professionals as models." "Inside Chronic Pain deals with pain's dramatic and destructive effects on one's sense of self and identity. It chronicles the chaos that takes place, the paralyzing impact of severe pain, the changes in personality that ensue, and the corrosion of the ability to attend to day-to-day tasks. It describes how one's social life falls apart and isolation takes over. It also relates moments of happiness and beauty and describes how rooting the self in the present is crucial in managing pain." --Book Jacket.