Dooley Noted: 8/27/2016
We have all experienced varying degrees and qualities of pain.
As a healthcare practitioner, nearly everyone sees me for visits to help them understand pain.
While people want to get out of pain, it may defeat the purpose of why it presents itself.
I’ll give you a not-so-hypothetical example.
A patient presents to me with crippling knee pain when she descends the stairs.
She gets a cortizone injection, which works at first to decrease her pain. A week later, the pain reappears.
As I analyzed the way she moved, she was using her knee as a driving force for her movement up and down the stairs.
No torn ligaments were to blame.
She had the run-of-the-mill, painful-as-hell bursitis of the knee, due to a knee that works harder than the adjacent joints.
The cortizone helped her get out of pain for a week. But was that efficient?
That pain was serving a purpose.
It was an educator, telling her she was creating movement that was set to damage structures. If she continued to move in the same way, she was on a path to create long-term structural changes.
I feel my job as a doctor is not to be a quick fix to get someone out of pain.
Some patients stay in degrees of pain for several visits.
I consider this Pain College.
When you enroll, you are learning to let pain teach you how certain movements are getting you hurt.
And since pain is often loud in its afference, it will let you know how to improve the way you move to not damage structures.
In these improved movements, you may not have built strength yet.
Your body may find the path of least resistance, much like cheating on an exam.
But in Pain College, the cheater always gets caught in due time.
The price that is paid is pain relapse.
Your pain is not something to cheat your way out of experiencing.
It is the best educator in the course known as movement.
And since you are enrolled in this course for the long haul, learning from pain is your best option to get yourself out of it.
Consider not running from your pain.
Consider not covering it up but understanding why it’s present in the first place.
Pain may be the best education in self-preservation that you will receive.
Enroll in Pain College by scheduling an appointment with a movement specialist.
As always, it’s your call.
– Dr. Kathy Dooley
