Inside Chronic Pain

"With Lous Heshusius as a guide, pain patients can learn much about the perils of a modern health-care odyssey."—David B. Morris

Lous Heshusius is Professor Emeritus of Education at York University. David B. Morris is University Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He is the author of many books, including The Culture of Pain. Dr. Scott M. Fishman is Chief of the Division of Pain Medicine and Professor of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at the University of California, Davis, and President of the American Pain Foundation. He is the author of several books, among them Listening to Pain and The War on Pain.

Great poets have struggled through time to convey the inner experience of ongoing physical pain but Lous Heshusius accomplishes that task. While her writing is steady, educated, and reasoned, her personal reflections pack a cumulative punch to the reader, building on each other to convey layers of frustration, isolation, and struggle. Much of her suffering is not a result of her illness, but the medical system that is more geared toward treating acute pain than the kind that lingers and becomes a chronic illness in its own right. Meanwhile, the book counters entrenched and malignant cultural stereotypes of the female chronic-pain patient as hysterical and chronic pain as absolutely mysterious and inherently 'unknowable,' and thus medically untreatable. Those who haven't suffered chronic pain will get new insight, and long-time 'thick-folder patients' like me will experience a jolt of recognition with every turn of Heshusius's story. This book will be especially useful as a practical users' manual for caregivers to learn about routine, yet powerful, ways to improve patient care, and to address a critical related issue too often brushed under the rug: the high rates of suicide of these patients.

James L. Henry, Scientific Director, Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Pain Research and Care, McMaster University:

Inside Chronic Pain is a scholarly work of storytelling. It is shocking, powerful, challenging, and assaulting. Lous Heshusius pulls us into her story with truth and balance, with unrelenting honesty and forthrightness, without weeping in self-pity. Inside Chronic Pain is credible narrative, sprinkled with personal experience, mixing events with reflection and interpretation to reveal, in retrospect, a story that should not have happened, portrayed in chapters relating hardships that should not befall anyone. This is a story of a slow metamorphosis that was triggered by a single event, but which evolved over the ensuing years. The author portrays isolation, fear, depression, sadness, disappointment, anger, and exasperation without drowning in sorrow. This is a pivotal work; I hope that it will prompt or provoke others who live with chronic pain to announce their own experiences. Give pain a voice! This work is a wake-up call from the invisible in our society who live with chronic pain. The author leaves it up to the reader how to respond to this call. If you live with chronic pain, this is a must read. If you do not know chronic pain, this is a must read.