The Pain Chronicles by Melanie Thernstrom

We hear about opium in all its ramificiations from ancient concoctions to the current political paradoxes of opium being at the same time over and underprescribed for pain. The chapter dealing with pain as history draws a picture of how the pharmacology of pain has developed over time. This suffering is seen through different lenses: there is the spiritual lens that introduces martyrdom and imitatio Christi, there is the lens of global health inequality, epitomised by a situation where she, the privileged American pain sufferer, meets an Ethiopian man who has leprosy. The author demonstrates bargaining strategies for the alleviation of suffering.

‘ Holidays from pain’, ‘ shelter from bad weather’. She summarises the world of treatments instead of cures. ‘The idea of exercising a body part which is in pain felt completely counterintuitive’, she writes and explains her resistance to physical therapy. She sees neurologists, physical therapists, internists, and psychiatrists and we are privy to their explanation models and the way they are conveyed to the patient. Her pain stays, she describes it as ‘a sour domestic partner’ and writes about her strategies of dealing with it, her interactions with others, her search for help, and the responses from helpers. We learn about Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Christian ways of interaction with supernatural forces. This evolutionary model is expanded to humans seeking meaning in their suffering. An injured deer is used as a simile to illuminate the link between nociception, escape strategies, and pain behaviours which are linked to social interactions. She leads us into the realms of explanation models: pain as metaphor, as history, as disease, as narrative, and as perception. The reader is a witness to her monologue and dialogues with experts in the field. She keeps a pain diary her pain narrative leading to key discourses of pain. The story begins with her romantic life she swims with someone who will become her boyfriend and sprains her shoulder. A resourceful young journalist, she has chronic pain. This book combines the narrative of the authors own pain experience with a journey through the concepts of pain. Melanie Thernstrom’s The Pain Chronicles provide comprehensive material to turn what otherwise may end in mutual anger and frustration into a shared exploration of all concepts involved in the experience of pain. Psychological flexibility is needed for both parties involved in pain dialogues. There is not much scope for optimistic problem solving and the limits of mainstream medicine are quickly reached. Conversations about chronic pain can be challenging.

The Pain Chronicles by Melanie Thernstrom