Chronic Pain Survival Tricks and Self-Help Techniques: A Survivor’S Manual by One Who Knows

By Stephen Schnitzer

Many people suffer from chronic and sometimes overwhelming pain. In Chronic Pain Survival Tricks and Self-Help Techniques, author Stephen Schnitzer, Esq. offers a host of simple practices that can help patients deal with the pain and strive to become pain free.

Based on his personal experiences searching for his own chronic pain solutions, Schnitzer provides helpful tips for those wanting to ease their suffering. Chronic Pain Survival Tricks and Self-Help Techniques covers a plethora of subject areas:

Selecting and dealing with pharmacists

Working with physical therapists

Choosing a corrective bed

Understanding the effects of hot and cold

Realizing the importance of proper breathing

Using canes

Facilitating medical insurance and public assistance

Valuing a positive mental attitude

Recognizing how weather affects the body

Obtaining second medical opinions

Designed only to be used in conjunction with your treating doctors' advice and medication, the solutions offered by Schnitzer help you deal with the often devastating effects of chronic pain in a positive manner.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462001644

Stephen Schnitzer

Stephen Schnitzer has been a practicing attorney for more than forty years. Now handicapped, he suffers from chronic pain and uses his personal experiences to write his debut book. He currently lives in New Jersey.

Book preview

Index of Chapters

Preface

Pharmacist

Physical Therapy

Sex

Beds

Hot and Cold

Water; Showers and Baths

Pain Prevention

Medical Insurance-Public Assistance

Body Water-Hydration

Testing

Cross-Over Diseases

Meditation

Breathing

Canes

Weather

Braces and Other Support Appliances

Pride

Simple Tricks

Chamomile Tea

Acupressure

General Travel:

Cars, Airplanes, Trains & Buses

Mental Attitude

Surgery and Exercise

Records

Lifting & Sitting

Eating

Letters and Gifts to Doctors

Second Opinions

Shoes

Allergies

Pain Medications

Laughing and Being Mad Avoidance

Do’s and Don’ts and Overview

Winning Is The Beginning

Appendix

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

Appendix E

Appendix F

Appendix G

Appendix H

Appendix I

Appendix J

Appendix K

Appendix L

Appendix M

Preface

The Author’s daughter is a doctor of psychology and is not given to professional humor. During the course of the Author’s development from childhood, he has learned several things:

1)   Being schizophrenic: I may be schizophrenic but at least I know who the both of us are.

2)   Paranoia: I may be paranoid but at least I know who my enemies are.

3)   Depression: Depression is no laughing matter! Neither is chronic pain. It needs to be dealt with comprehensively, competently, knowledgeably and otherwise not neglected.

In a modern age where farming has long since left the modern world reducing physical stamina robust physical health is no longer developed on a daily basis thereby now ignoring our physical power plant (the human body). We are set up by our own lifestyles to confront later-day physical health issues particularly including chronic pain of the back, skeletal structure and similarly related issues that have developed since mankind decided to get off four legs to stand up and walk erect.

The long and the short of it is the majority of the population in civilized nations is on a dead-end course for dried discs, sciatica, skeletal and body pain and virtually whatever else can befall mankind painfully including terrible and dreaded crippling diseases. Do not kid yourself. If not handled properly chronic pain can and will invariably wear you down sufficiently to a low point both physically and emotionally where a dreadful disease is a very predictable consequence. Such is the nature of life and evolution.

This primer is designed to address avoidance, but more importantly how to help yourself if you are already struck in the rushing river bed of chronic or disabling pain by using helpful and clever adjunct methods to whatever medical advice and medicines you are receiving.

The Author is not a doctor and in no way professes to be. He is a human being (assuming you include lawyers in that category) who has dealt personally and professionally with chronic pain issues over the course of his practice of law exceeding 40 years. The motive of this work is to share the learned knowledge of the wealth of help much of which is self-observed and taught. Not all men and women are alike. Some of it will help you and some will not. If it does not apply to you or help, leave it alone but keep an open mind to at least try it first. It is unlike most self-improvement books. This treatise does not build on itself and so there is no order of information you are being told any of which needs to come after the other. The individual chapters should be taken separately and read and considered as needed. It is an inter-developed system of which the components are all addressed for an overall betterment modality against chronic pain and discomfort.

The book is designed to help when and wherever possible. If something suggested does not work for you, give it up when you are sure it does not help. If it does help then by even trying it you understand more about your own conditions and so are much further along. There is no pride in authorship of the techniques suggested. Refine and modify them as it suits you. It is the overall course of conduct which needs to be addressed by you based upon your own individual circumstances.

However, simple it may seem there is an overall substantial elevating psychological benefit to be conferred! Hope. Assume after reading and trying all or many of the modalities on tricks suggested herein that just a few or even only one or two help you. Certainly you are now further ahead of the pain game in a most positive manner. You know other things exist to move you upwards and onwards toward further solutions. Your mind is now attuned to self-help and trying new ideas even if you were not so disposed before. You have a ready arsenal of self-help to discuss with others in pain and perhaps help them bring human joy to yourself by so benefitting another person. Also, such open dialogue removes the fear of your own pain isolation and by it you might well learn from them a beneficial trick or two that helps you. You are now in the mainstream of interaction which is how the world of people goes around. It’s human hands on person to person gravitational pull. Enjoy it!

Pharmacist

When you have pain normally one seeks to address its removal. One of the places to visit obviously is the pharmacy. All drugs (even those sold over-the-counter are expensive) so people have a strong tendency to go to large volume stores where the pharmacist is hidden behind aisles of prescriptions and pain relievers and staffed by pill-counters who handle great volumes and know little or nothing about you or your condition. These stores are good for saving money but virtually useless in identifying what you need to know about your medicines. They are not given to react to what is in your own personal good or what is bad. Moreover they usually know little about the doctor who gave them to you or are reluctant to discuss your physician with you. It should come as no surprise that pharmacists know best which doctors enjoy a good reputation as a competent and dependable physician and who does not. Not all doctors are created equally. Some are much better than others and have better training and bedside manner. Leave out friendship and getting along. The doctor who is best is the one who can help you actually and not perhaps the one you like most.

The smart thing to do is to shop around for a neighborhood pharmacy until you finally discover a pharmacist in attendance who you accept to be knowledgeable and willing to address your questions and needs in a direct and professional manner.

Many drugs have different effects when used with each other and some of them are quite subtle (drug interactions). You need a pharmacist who knows you day in and day out and who is willing to check your current medicines and be able to sort out what can befall you once you start taking new or other substantial medications including for pain relief syndromes. They can also explain to you the alternatives and what is available appropriately generically since if you have a drug plan or Medicare it is possible to max out your coverage before you come in to what may be catastrophic drug coverage assuming you have it. The plan also can keep track of your co-pays so that you know when you are getting close to maxed out dollar caps and often can suggest to you if you are given a non-generic supplement what the lesser cost alternatives are. If you are given a generic supplement of great expense they can also be influential in getting your insurance company to pay the sum due for them. The cost of drugs can shock you. The Author recently was told he might have MRSA and was prescribed medicine for which his co-pay was $700.00 for 20 pills the gross cost of which exceeded $2,000.00!

Many drugs for pain relief contain the words cet such as Ultracet and Darvocet and the like. Basically, these descriptions mean to indicate that principle operating medication also is buffered-up by Tylenol which is the cet portion of the drug referenced. Accordingly, you might want to inquire about receiving the direct non-Tylenol drug (e.g. Darvon not Darvocet) whereby you will receive a greater dose of pain killer and thereafter to relieve enhanced chronic pain whether to elect also to take Tylenol to buffer it up or extend the pain drug itself if you choose. This is a good choice to have on a bad pain day but you can take just so much Tylenol daily. Having the choice is better than having none at all.

While usually a small shop presumably has good knowledge and concern of drug interaction, it is not perfect in all medical instances. A smart pharmacist will tell you when any new drugs interact with whatever also you might be taking (assuming you ask). At a time of possible drug interaction it is best to get a referral to an endocrinologist who while a physician is a scientist in this medical area of drug interactions. He is the person best able to help and guide you to avoid the pitfalls of drug interactions which themselves can cripple and kill you. Moreover, many drugs used on a substantial basis even temporally need to be monitored with blood work to make sure that your kidney, liver or other body functions are not being impaired. An endocrinologist can order and interpret certain tests in this regard to benefit you in which area most physicians are less or not at all experienced.

Physical Therapy

Now you have chronic pain and drugs. Perhaps for a bad disc or other body problem for which the likelihood of it going away with medicine alone is not good. P.T. means you need physical therapy. That does not mean a gym or personal trainer. Normally it means a person who has been trained after college to become a doctor of physical therapy who is to be found in a P.T. facility which may look like a gym but which is far more sophisticated.

Obviously some physical therapy facilities are much better than others and have different and more modern equipment and health minded approaches. Word of mouth is probably the best resource to find one since the choices are very substantial. Your pharmacist and your pain physician and general physician are principal sources to locate such a facility. For insurance purposes, you will need a referral from a physician. Actually, it is difficult to get more than three visits a week by prescription but a good physical therapist will design an at-home program for your pain exercises with which you need to comply on your days off from P.T. rather than just show up on the prescribed days for treatment. The Author goes twice a day for physical therapy six days a week but enjoys a developed relationship with the P.T. facility gym over the last five years since having been struck with an automobile. He broke his left shoulder, his left pelvis, broken ribs on both sides and skin removed from his arms and legs. He got better and then age and prior medications lead to osteoporosis and disc degeneration.

Dogs are man’s best friends not physical therapists. You need to shop around to find the right facility where the people are kind and attentive and take your questions and answer them to your satisfaction even though you might not like what you hear. It’s not about who gives you good news only. It’s who you perceive tells you the truth and what you need to know whether you like it or not. In some states, it is unlawful for referring doctors to