Pain management

Controlling your pain can help you to:

• Be active.
• Sleep.
• Cope better with your treatment for a health problem.
• Enjoy family and friends.
• Eat with pleasure.
• Heal faster after an injury or surgery.

Long-term pain that isn't controlled can take the joy from your life. You may not be able to work. Physical activity may be too painful or exhausting. You may have a hard time sleeping at night, which can make you tired and cranky. Your outlook on life may change and strain your relationships with family and friends. You may become depressed and anxious.

Controlling pain can help with all these things.

Your doctor will explain how much pain you should expect and how long it may last. This will depend on what is causing your pain.

Controlling pain doesn't always mean that you will feel no pain at all. You and your doctor can work together to find ways to limit your pain as you recover so you can feel better and do more for yourself.

Your feelings about how you want your pain to be managed are important. Some things that might shape what you prefer include:

• How you've dealt with pain in the past.
• Your feelings about side effects of medicine.
• Your past health.
• Your age.

Your doctor will talk with you about what options are available in your case. Your choices for pain control might include more than one medicine. In the hospital, you might get intravenous (I.V.) medicines through a tube in a vein in your arm or hand. You may also use a type of pump that lets you give yourself a certain amount of pain medicine if you need it. And some pain control medicines might be in pill form.

Some conditions can make pain control more complex. If this is true in your case, you might be referred to a pain specialist.

Your doctor can't tell by looking at you how you're feeling. But when you can describe your pain and how bad it is, your doctor can help.

You may be asked to rate your pain on a scale from 0 to 10. Or you may be asked to describe what type of pain you have. Try to be as specific as you can.

Here are some things to think about when you describe your pain:

• Is the pain constant? Or does it come and go?
• Where is the pain?
• What things make the pain worse?
• Does the pain feel dull, sharp, aching, shooting, or burning?
• Is the pain getting better over time, staying the same, or getting worse?

Tell your care team about any side effects you have from your medicine. You might be able to try different pain control options.