Pain Treatment Goals

Once your doctor has established the cause and type of your pain (somatic versus neuropathic), he or she will help you establish realistic goals for your pain treatment. In acute pain, it can generally be expected that the pain will be successfully treated, and the pain will go away.

What to Expect from Chronic Pain Treatment
With chronic pain, however, this may not be the case. For example, if you’ve experienced a limb amputation, a stroke, or are dealing with long-standing diabetes and the neuropathy associated with the condition, it may not be realistic to assume your chronic pain treatment will result in the disappearance of all pain related to your condition.

What can you realistically expect? With pain treatment, which may include pain medication, assume that your pain can be reduced, and you’ll be able to improve your daily activities and quality of life.

Supporting Your Chronic Pain Treatment
Your doctor is relying on you – your level of desire, your level of commitment, your determination – to help ensure that the rehabilitation work you do together has the best chance of succeeding.

Only you can decide how much you’re willing to commit to improving your condition, your pain, and your level of activity. Your doctor can assist you by providing the adaptive tools to help improve pain and function, but not with the motivation, commitment, and drive you’ll need to get the most from your pain treatment work.

Chronic Pain and Inactivity
In all chronic pain states, inactivity is bad. Inactivity can not only make your chronic pain worse, it can also render a dysfunctional limb useless.

Rest is good, but for no longer than twenty-four hours; after that, your doctor will have you gradually increase your level of activity to rehabilitate the injured area.

Pain Medication
The good news is that reliable pain medication can be used to decrease the impact of activity-related pain, enabling you to continue to further enhance function. However, your doctor will also point out to you that pain medications should facilitate—rather than impede – activity.

Your doctor will work with you to make sure you’re not becoming over-sedated or lethargic; if this begins to happen, then your doctor will determine that the medications are not achieving the intended goal, and will adjust or replace them.

Next: Pain Treatment for Acute and Chronic Pain