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A Word from Our Executive Director “We must all die. But that I can save (a person) from days of torture, that is what I feel as my great and even new privilege. Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself." -- Albert Schweizer
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| Chronic
pain is one of the most frequently overlooked, mistreated, under treated,
and poorly responded to public health issues in the San Francisco Bay
Area… Given the laudable sophistication and maturity of the health-care
delivery system in the San Francisco Bay Area, this is quite a statement.
If this is true here, what must things be like in the rest of the country? Nationally, we do know that the problem of chronic pain impacts the lives of more than 75 million people in the United States each year. Annually, it leads to 100 million doctor visits and 550 million work days lost. One in ten experience migraine; Arthritis affects 80 million Americans; Low-back pain has disabled 10 million Americans, generating 22 million visits to physicians every year. Pain costs our nation an estimated $100 billion every year, (D. Bressler, 1996--Founder UCLA Pain Service). Health-care
statistics tell us that “chronic pain is an epidemic in this country”,
(Bressler, 1996). While statistics can open our eyes to the magnitude
of the problem, they merely point to harsh realities. They do not move
us to act... However, real people in our own community do. What moves
us to act is our own spouse cut off early from their vibrant career;
it is our own cousin ripped out of their long planned retirement; it
is our own child born with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, the one who
rarely experiences the joy of childhood; it is the one who cleans our
office: the father of four who now must tragically exchange those three
$7 dollar per hour jobs for a two year stint on the sofa. “Low
income and uninsured / underinsured are often isolated in dealing with
the horrors of chronic pain”, (R. Weiner, Ph.D., 1994). “These
individuals have typically suffered through several years of agony,
undergone two or more failed surgeries for pain relief, are restricted
in their jobs if not totally unable to work, take various and multiple
medications for pain, experience chronic sleep disturbance and marital
and family dysfunction, suffer depression and emotional distress, and
are physically and psychologically depleted", (C. David Tollison,
Ph.D., 1982). This
could become the fate of any of us; on any given day, on any given turn
of any given dime. For Those In Pain, Inc. is deeply concerned about
this. Hence, we take very seriously the responsibility to educate the
community about the issues at hand. Our intent is to create and write
compassionate and compelling educational materials to improve the quality
of life of those Tollison and Weiner describe. We have chosen to do
so by advocating for, writing about, and persuading toward the marvelous
realization that, in the context of chronic pain, the most important
pain management tool any pain patient can have access to is themselves.
One’s own heart and mind is the perfect counter-balance to the
limitations of medical management. Hence,
we work to popularize, articulate, and argue for the value of educating
and training the patient toward successful and effective self-management.
In like manner, we also work to popularize, articulate, and argue for
the need of ancillary providers (nurses, psychologists, family therapist,
etc.) to learn more about how they can learn to contribute to the arduous
journey we call chronic pain. For
Those In Pain, Inc. labors with passion and zeal to be a voice in the
community for those who cannot be heard. We are proud to know that we
are the San Francisco Bay Area’s only nonprofit solely dedicated
to providing professional no & low cost non-medical pain management
services to this most underserved, overlooked, and ignored segment of
our community. Hence,
it is most imperative that we succeed in the delivery of our Mission.
As we slowly develop our web presence, I truly hope that, whether you
be patient or provider, it will become a source of instruction, training,
compassion, community, and some strength for the journey. Our
motto is “ from solitude to community “. While the problem
of pain may ignite itself as a symptom in someone’s body, it soon
connects itself to a full equation of persons: the patient, their family
& significant others, their employers, and their health-care providers. And,
so it is, that For Those In Pain, Inc. is about community building.
It is about providing health-care providers with relationships that
can assist them in developing new ways of thinking about & interfacing
with their patients… in order that they can be the best pain practitioner
they can be. It
is about introducing the pain sufferer to new relationships that can
help them maintain their “ eyes on the prize “; namely, the
reduction of pain, suffering, and disability. Godspeed, Beto
Tellería, M.A. |
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