Pain Management - What Can You Do to Help Control Your Pain?

What Can You Do to Help Control Your Pain?

Your pain is unique. Only you know where your pain is located, how it feels, how much it hurts, how long it hurts and what makes it better. The key to getting the best pain relief is talking with your doctor and nurse about your pain. They will want to know how much pain you feel, where it is, and what it feels like.

The First Step: Talk About Your Pain

Telling your care team in detail about your pain is the best thing that you can do to assist in your cancer treatment. Sometimes patients don't receive the best pain treatment because they don't let their care team know about their pain. Patients may not want to complain, they may fear becoming addicted to pain medications, they may fear the side effects of pain more than the pain itself, or they may want to save their pain treatment options until they "really" need them. Each of these beliefs will hinder pain treatment and also hinder cancer therapy.

Why Pain Should Be Treated

Pain can affect you in many ways. It can keep you from being active, from sleeping well, from enjoying family and friends, and from eating. Pain can make you feel afraid or depressed. Pain may also prevent your full participation in general rehabilitation programs and may slow your recovery from treatment.

Most cancer pain can be controlled with treatment. When there is less pain, you will probably feel more active and interested in doing things you enjoy. Tell your doctor or nurse right away if you are feeling pain. Getting help for your pain early can make pain treatment more effective.

Answering the questions below will help you communicate with your health care provider about your pain. After discussing your pain, your doctor or nurse may want to examine you or order x-rays or other tests. These tests will help the doctor or nurse find the pain's cause.

To communicate how you feel, ask yourself the following questions:

Where is the pain?You may have pain in more than one place. Be sure to list all of the painful areas.

What does the pain feel like?Does it ache, throb, burn or tingle? You may wish to use other words to describe your pain.

How bad is the pain?You can use a number scale to rate your pain (pdf) from 0 to 10, where 0 means no pain and 10 means the worst pain you can imagine. Or, you can describe your pain with words such as "none", "mild", "moderate", "severe" or "worst possible pain". A special pain rating scale that uses faces(pdf)to indicate levels of pain has also been developed to help children communicate how they feel. You may find these scales useful for keeping track of how your pain changes in response to treatment, activities or the time of day.

What makes the pain better or worse?You may have already found ways to make your pain feel better (for example, using heat or cold, or taking certain medicines). You may have also found that sitting or lying in certain positions or doing some activities affects the pain.

If you are being treated for pain now, how well is the treatment working?You may want to describe how well the treatment is working by saying how much of the pain is relieved, such as all, almost all, none, etc.

Has the pain changed?You may notice that your pain changes over time. It may get better or worse or it can feel different. For example, the pain may have been a dull ache at first and has changed to a tingle. It is important to report changes in your pain. Changes in pain do not always mean that the cancer has come back or grown. Describe how the pain was before and how it is now.

Next: Havea Plan

Work with your doctor or nurse to write a pain control plan that meets your needs. In a pain control plan, you and your doctor or nurse plan your pain control activities, including when you take your medicine, how and when to take extra medicine, and other things you can do to ease and prevent your pain. Your doctor or nurse may also list medicines and other treatments that will help with side effects or other aches and pains, such as headaches.

Many medicines and treatments can be used to treat pain. If a schedule, medicine or way that you are taking the medicine doesn't work for you, your doctor and nurse can help you find the medicine or approach that will help the most.

It may be helpful to keep a record of how the medicine is working. Sharing that record with your doctor or nurse will help them make your treatment more effective.

When To Take Your Pain Medicine

Take your medicine on a regular schedule (by the clock) and as your doctor tells you. This will help to keep pain under control. Do not skip a dose of medicine or wait for the pain to get worse before taking your medicine. The goal is to preventthe pain. Once you feel the pain, it is harder to get it under control.

Your doctor will usually give you additional medicine for "breakthrough pain" (a brief and often severe pain that occurs even though the patient is taking pain medicine regularly). If some activities make your pain worse (for example, riding in a car), you may need to take extra doses of pain medicine before these activities. Ask your doctor or nurse how and when to take extra medicine.

Call your doctor or nurse immediately if your pain increases or if you have new pain.Also call your doctor early to receive a refill of pain medicines. Do not let your medicines get below three or four days' supply.

From Yahoo Health