Suggest Remedy For Chronic Pain Due To Leukemia

Hi, First of all, I would like to congratulate you for being a cancer survivor for 8 long years and counting, it must have been an interesting and inspiring journey. Regarding your pain, in order to help you, please find below a part of my article on management on cancer pain and available options:- In order to address pain especially in cancer patients, it is very important to understand the nature and cause of pain. If there is an organic cause, which means the pain can be attributed to an abnormality/disease in the body, it is called somatic pain. This pain is much better controlled. Options for controlling this type of pain are various pain killers having a different mechanism of actions, radiation therapy and nerve block. The pain killers which are usually prescribed are according to a step ladder pattern recommended by WHO. As per this pattern, the mildest medicine is prescribed and response is observed, based upon response, further modifications are done such as - increasing or reducing the dose, adding another medicine having a different mechanism of action so that a combined effect can be observed. Lastly, if these don’t work, then opioids such morphine and analogues can be used. Another approach is giving pain killers when there is pain and not round the clock since pain is an important distress signal in our body and we should not be suppressing that. However, the prescription of these medicines should be solely at the discretion of the treating registered medical practitioner. Radiation therapy is another method of controlling pain, usually, it takes a week or two to have its effect and persists for 6 months or beyond. The dose and mechanism involved in controlling pain by radiation are different from that used to cure the patients. There have been multiple studies and evidence to support that radiation effectively controls pain for a longer duration. Radiation therapy delivered in such cases is usually either in a single sitting, five sitting or 10 sittings. Each sitting is usually of not more than 10 minutes duration where the patients lie still and the machine does the rest. Usually when radiation is delivered patient is asked to continue his or her pain killer medications for 2 weeks. Nerve block, is another alternative when above do not succeed, in such cases by identifying accurately the nerve which is responsible for pain and blocking it with the help of medicines. This is an in-patient procedure done by an anesthesiologist where the patient gets admitted at least for a day. Hope I have answered your query. Let me know if I can assist you further. Regards, Dr. Jatin Bhatia, Radiation Oncologist