12 Sep When Cancer Pain Seems Worse Than the Disease Itself
Here at Lone Star Pain Medicine, we treat patients experiencing all varieties of pain. From mild pain within the shoulders and arms to major lumbar pain that makes life difficult on the most effective days, we now have seen all of it. And yet cancer pain seems to face out. It shouldn’t be that cancer pain is all the time more serious than other sorts of pain. It’s just that it often seems worse than the disease itself.
Certainly one of the things that makes cancer pain so difficult is that it may possibly be brought on by each the disease and its treatments. It shouldn’t be unusual for us to see patients whose disease-related pain is less severe than the pain brought on by chemo or radiation. As pain medicine specialists, our job is to treat whatever the origin of a patient’s pain, in such a way as to not inhibit the success of their treatments.
When the Disease Causes Pain
It goes without saying that cancer causes pain all by itself. There are a number of ways this may occur. For instance, consider a cancerous tumor that grows and spreads. Because it does, it presses on nerves. Any amount of pressure to a nerve may cause excruciating pain.
Tumors also can create pain by working their way into vital organs; they may cause pain by destroying otherwise healthy tissue. There really is not any shortage of the way the disease can result in pain – whether that pain is mild, moderate, or severe.
When Treatments Cause Pain
In comparison with treatments for other varieties of diseases, cancer treatments are inclined to be quite aggressive. Oncologists depend on every little thing from chemotherapy to radiation and surgical procedures in an try to rid a patient’s body of cancer. Unfortunately, such aggressive treatment isn’t without negative effects. Pain is among the many negative effects.
On the lower end of the pain scale is the pain experienced during chemotherapy injections and intravenous treatments. More severe is neuropathic pain brought on by either chemotherapy or radiation treatment. Also referred to as neuropathy, neuropathic pain is the results of nerve damage.
Pain will almost all the time be a symptom following surgical procedures. More complex surgeries, like mastectomy, tend toward more severe pain together with additional risks including infection. So yes, treating cancer can feel worse to patients than the actual disease.
We May Be In a position to Help
Cancer pain is considered one of the sorts of pain we treat at our Weatherford, TX clinic. As pain medicine specialists, we don’t recommend a one-size-fits-all approach to managing cancer pain. Reasonably, we imagine in individualized treatments customized for every patient. For those who are currently undergoing cancer treatment, we’d have the ability to assist higher manage your pain.
Our treatments include things like intrathecal pump implant and spinal cord stimulation for chemotherapy and radiation-related pain. Our metastatic cancer treatments include lumbar sympathetic blocks, kyphoplasty, radiofrequency neurotomy, and even epidurals.
Now we have a wide range of treatments we are able to recommend based on the style of cancer you’re being treated for and the way you feel pain. A consultation with considered one of our pain specialists will help us work out together what’s going to work best for you.
We Need to Help You Through
We might never be so daring as to ensure a positive final result from cancer treatment. Nevertheless, we are able to say that our real desire is to assist you to through this time in your life. If we are able to assist you to find some relief through customized pain treatments, we wish to achieve this. Treating chronic pain is our specialty. We’re here to assist you to find the pain relief you could have been on the lookout for.
