A Pained Life, a Chronic Pain Journey

A Pained Life, a Chronic Pain Journey
Author: Carol Jay Levy
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2003-09-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1462813771

In the blink of an eye, the most agonizing pain imaginable. And the authors life as she knew it was gone. The diagnosis was Trigeminal Neuralgia. And then, after months of spontaneous and constant pain - Chronic Pain. Ms. Levy takes us with her on her journey from who she was to who she became. We experience the fight with herself, the pain, and often the medical system itself, as she reaches out for relief and acceptance. "A fascinating story, honestly told and courageously lived." Stephen S. Hall, N.Y.Times magazine science and medicine writer. Author, Invisible Frontiers: The Race To Synthesize A Human Gene. "This is the first time I have been let in so completely into the life of somewone living with chronic pain. A Pained Life is a compelling read. Ms. Levy has laid bare her experiencr so that others know that ultimately there is hope. I recommend it to pain patients, members of the medical community and the public at large." John Park, M.D., anaesthesiologist and pain specialist. "A Pained Life is an unsophisticated book, but it is so real, so honestly told, so suspenseful, that it is hard to put down. Carol Jay Levys courage and perseverance can help light the way for others who endure pain and a medical maze, with little hope and less help. Medical professionals might also gain insight from this personal story of someone at the other end of the stethoscope." Kathy Lyons 3/28/04, American Chronic Pain Association. "The detail with which the writer is able to describe the lead-up and surrounding details of the medical condition finally diagnosed as Trigeminal Neuralgia captures the readers attention with great intensity. The author has a good ability to draw emotions from the reader. She has done an exceptional job in writing so that the reader feels strong emotion about the author." Writers Digest International Self-published Book Awards competition. "My husband is reading your book now and seems *much* more empathetic. After he finishes it, I am lending it to my therapist and chiro who are great people but havent a clue what its like to live with pain 24/7. You are such a wonderful writer." A.gye, pain patient. "I finished the book, and it really was a GREAT read!! The way you described everything so vividly, made it feel like I was there along with you every step of the way! Jeremy Baker, Fox TV.

All in My Head

All in My Head
Author: Paula Kamen
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2009-04-24
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 0786736755

At the age of twenty-four, Paula Kamen's life changed in an instant. While she was putting in her contacts, the left lens disturbed a constellation of nerves behind her eye. The pain was more piercing than that of any other headache she had ever experienced. More than a decade later, she still has a headache-the exact same headache. From surgery to a battery of Botox injections to a dousing of Lithuanian holy water, from a mountain of pharmaceutical products to aromatherapy and even a vibrating hat, All in My Head chronicles the sometimes frightening, usually absurd, and always ineffective remedies Kamen-like so many others-tried in order to relieve the pain. Beleaguered and frustrated by doctors who, frustrated themselves, periodically declared her pain psychosomatic, she came to understand the plight of the millions who suffer chronic pain in its many forms. Full of self-deprecating humor and razorsharp reporting, All in My Head is the remarkable story of patience, acceptance, and perseverance in the face of terrifying pain.

Hurt and Pain

Hurt and Pain
Author: Susannah B. Mintz
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1441148329

Hurt and Pain: Literature and the Suffering Body examines the strategies authors have used to portray bodies in pain, drawing on a diverse range of literary texts from the seventeenth century to the present day. Susannah B. Mintz provides readings of canonical writers including John Donne, Emily Dickinson, and Samuel Beckett, alongside contemporary writers such as Ana Castillo and Margaret Edson, focusing on how pain is shaped according to the conventions-and also experiments-of genre: poetry, memoir, drama, and fiction. With insights from disability theory and recent studies of the language of pain, Mintz delivers an important corrective to our most basic fears of physical suffering, revealing through literature that pain can be a source of connection, compassion, artistry, and knowledge. Not only an important investigation of authors' formal and rhetorical choices, Hurt and Pain reveals how capturing pain in literature can become a fundamental component of crafting human experience.

Chronic Pain For Dummies

Chronic Pain For Dummies
Author: Stuart Kassan, MD
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2011-05-04
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1118068505

Proven exercises and techniques for dealing with pain Your compassionate guide to conquering pain and living a full life Do you suffer from chronic pain? This reassuring, practical guide helps you understand what causes pain and how to manage it with the newest pain-relieving techniques. You'll see how to track your pain triggers, weigh the benefits and risks of pain-reducing medications, improve your pain levels with diet and exercise, and determine whether surgery is right for you. Discover how to: Diagnose your pain Build an anti-pain medical team Prevent or minimize pain attacks Explore alternative therapies Make helpful lifestyle changes

End Back Pain Forever

End Back Pain Forever
Author: Norman J. Marcus
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2012-05
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1439167443

By the director of Muscle Pain Research at NYU School of Medicine, a revolutionary book about solving back pain without surgery and drugs.

Out of Joint

Out of Joint
Author: Mary Lowenthal Felstiner
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2007-09-01
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 9780803260290

She begins, in the morning, by casing her joints: Can her ankles take the stairs? Will her fingers open a jar? Peel an orange? But it was not always this way for Mary Felstiner, who went to bed one night an active professional and healthy young mother, and woke the next morning literally out of joint. With wrists and elbows no longer working right, she?d discovered one of the first signs of rheumatoid arthritis, the most virulent form of a common disease. Out of Joint is her account of living through arthritis, a distinction she shares with seventy million Americans. ø While arthritis pain affects one out of three Americans, this book is the first to tell the personal story of the nation?s most common yet neglected disease. Part memoir, part medical and social history, Out of Joint folds the author?s private experience into far-reaching investigations of a socially hidden ailment and of any chronic condition?how to handle love, work, sexuality, fatigue, betrayal, pain, time, mortality, rights, myths, and memory. Moving from the 1940s to the present, this story of one life with arthritis exposes little-known medical research and provocative social issues: alarming controversies over arthritis miracle drugs, intense demands concerning disability, and the surprising and disproportionate number of women affected by chronic illness. From this prize-winning historian comes a call for healing through history, a moving meditation on the way chronic conditions can be treated by enlisting the past.

There I Am

There I Am
Author: Ruthie Lindsey
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1982107928

Brain on Fire meets Carry On, Warrior in this inspirational memoir and “testament to the things that break us, heal us, and make us who we are” (Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author) that explores one woman’s journey from chronic pain and hopelessness to finding joy, redemption, and healing. At seventeen years old, Ruthie Lindsey is hit by an ambulance near her home in rural Louisiana. She’s given a five percent chance of survival and one percent chance of walking again. One month later after a spinal fusion surgery, Ruthie defies the odds, leaving the hospital on her own two feet. Just a few years later, newly married and living in Nashville, Ruthie begins to experience debilitating pain. Her case confounds doctors and after numerous rounds of testing, imaging, and treatment, they prescribe narcotic painkillers—lots of them. Ruthie has become bedridden, dependent on painkillers, and hopeless, when an X-ray reveals that the wire used to fuse her spine is piercing her brain stem. Without another staggeringly expensive experimental surgery, she could well become paralyzed, but in many ways, she already is. Ruthie goes into the hospital in chronic pain, dependent on prescription painkillers, and leaves the same way. She can still walk but has no idea where she’s going. As her life unravels, Ruthie returns home to Louisiana and sets out on a journey to learn joy again. She trades fentanyl for sunsets and morphine for wildflowers, weaning herself off of the drugs and beginning the process of healing—of coming home to her body. Raw and redemptive, There I Am is not just about the magic of optimism, but the work of it. Ruthie’s extraordinary memoir “like going on a walk with a best friend and listening to a life-changing speech at the same time: it’s equal parts familiar and profound, warm and insightful, comforting and challenging, relatable and unlike anything you’ve read before” (Mari Andrew, New York Times bestselling author).

In Pain We Trust

In Pain We Trust
Author: Vicki Whiting
Publisher: Blooming Twig Books
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2011-11-11
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1933918934

Unplanned

Unplanned
Author: Abby Johnson
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1414396546

The author shares her journey from Planned Parenthood director to anti-abortion activist.

The Princess of Pain

The Princess of Pain
Author: Carolyn Gage
Publisher:
Total Pages: 74
Release: 2019-01-16
Genre:
ISBN: 9780999593059

Carolyn Gage is one of our most courageous and innovative writers to come of age inside the lesbian feminist movement of our time. Throughout her prolific career, Gage has given voice to women missing or misrepresented in the literary canon. Whether a lesbian Joan of Arc regretting her service to the king or a Harriet Tubman arguing with her therapist, Gage's women startle us not only because they are unfamiliar, but because they ring so true. In The Princess of Pain, Gage once again lures us past our threshold of comfort as we journey through the interior landscape of a woman suffering with irremediable pain. Under the magic of Gage's crystalline prose and Sudie Rakusin's resonant illustrations, any residue impulses to blame or otherwise distance ourselves from human suffering are exposed as base and cruel when set beside Princess' heroic, clear-eyed refusal of false palliatives. -Patricia Morgne Cramer, co-editor Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings In Carolyn Gage's The Princess of Pain we go on a moving journey of discovery with a woman tortured by constant pain. She takes us along in her wheelchair, seeking peace, answers, and an end to her pain, as she visits goddesses from around the world. The goddesses, lusciously illustrated by Sudie Rakusin and richly described by Gage, provide the princess with many beautiful and terrifying truths. The Princess of Pain delves deep into myth and story in gorgeous detail, leading the reader and the princess to recognize our incredible purpose, showing us how to name it, and to take into our hands the mystery of ourselves and our universe in acceptance. - Jen Rouse, author of Cake The Princess of Pain is deceptively simple and universally human. Gage's story engages the heart and mind, pulling the reader forward with hope and desire. Rakusin's illustrations absorb the reader-this is not a story you merely dip a toe in; it is full-bodied, immersive. Part-metaphor, part-hero's journey, it remains entirely original. It is a necessary story teaching necessary lessons that somehow avoids preachiness and moralizing. We find our way into the Princess' heart and see the hope in her apparent pessimism. - Hilary Brown, author of When She Woke She Was an Open Field