Duane Hicks
Starting in January, district residents suffering from chronic pain will be able to access an intensive chronic pain management program that uses a mindful approach, combining appropriate medical treatment, meditation, and exercise.
The “Mindfulness-Based Chronic Pain Management Program” will be offered at La Verendrye Hospital via tele-conference in the new year, chronic pain specialist Dr. Jackie Gardner-Nix, who developed the program, noted during the inaugural Chronic Pain Management and Addiction Prevention Symposium on Saturday at the Townshend Theatre here.
Dr. Gardner-Nix, who was brought in to speak thanks to the North West Local Health Integration Network, said chronic pain is defined as pain persisting longer than six months (such as back pain, fibromyalgia, or arthritis, to name but a few examples) and which not only affects a person’s physical well-being, but their emotional one.
While chronic pain may not be curable, it can be made easier to live with through various techniques, such as meditation.
Dr. Gardner-Nix’s “Mindfulness-Based Chronic Pain Management Program” is meant to help people harness their mind’s power to “quiet their pain” and put them in control of their bodies.
This includes stationary meditations, movement meditations, mindful art, and other strategies to help them understand how emotions and thoughts affect physical symptoms, reverse the debilitating effects of some chronic pain conditions, prevent pain from becoming chronic or long-term, and lift the anxiety and depression that may accompany chronic pain.
The course will include direct instruction from Dr. Gardner-Nix, who will be leading it from Toronto.
This will be of great benefit to patients here, who otherwise are referred to Thunder Bay or Winnipeg for pain management clinics and require a six-week stay to attend the programs, noted local physical therapist Deirdre O’Sullivan-Drombolis, who helped organize Saturday’s symposium.
She added the program also will enhance means of treating chronic pain.
“As a physiotherapist, I realize that once you’re treating people with chronic pain problems, you can’t just do one thing to help them,” O’Sullivan-Drombolis said. “You can’t just do physio, they can’t just take medication.
“It has to be a full-body approach, including the mind and the body,” she stressed.
“I think this will really enable us to have another tool to help these people, to really have that well-rounded program will really help them,” she added. “I am really excited about it.
“[Currently] it’s frustrating for the patients because they don’t get better, and you know what, as health-care professionals, that what we want, we want to help people, and it can be frustrating for us, as well,” O’Sullivan-Drombolis conceded.
“I think it will be a win-win situation.”
By offering alternative means of managing pain, the program also will ideally help curb the amount of pain relief drugs being prescribed here by physicians.
Those interested in taking the course should contact O’Sullivan-Drombolis at 274-4815 or Patti-Jo LeDrew, chronic disease management program co-ordinator for the Fort Frances Community Clinic/Family Health Team, at 274-3287 ext. 270.
They will help patients get a referral from their physician to attend the 13-week course (the referrals must be in a month before the course starts).
Each weekly session will run for two-and-a-half hours.
A limit of 10-12 people will be able to take the course at a time, but LeDrew explained the program will be ongoing.
In other words, the 13-week course will be offered again and again, so those who couldn’t get in the first one can take it, as well as those who choose to take it more than once.
The course is covered by OHIP, but LeDrew said there is a $25 registration fee, as well as a $25 fee for a book and $25 for a CD that go along with it.
“There is a cost of about $75 but it’s well worth it, considering what pain management allows you,” she noted.
It’s likely that sometime next year, local health educators will take the course, not only informing them of the necessary stress reduction techniques, but allowing them to learn a little bit more about providing mindfulness-based pain relief to their patients.
“The North West LHIN has been integral in bringing [Dr. Gardner-Nix] here to us, so I know we’ll be working with the LHIN at looking at other initiatives with this,” added LeDrew.
In the meantime, chronic pain sufferers and those who want to help them can find out more about Dr. Gardner-Nix’s program, book, and several CDs (including one for helping a person get to sleep) by checking out www.painspeaking.com
Her book, “The Mindfulness Solution to Pain,” is available at Betty’s.
While here, Dr. Gardner-Nix also spoke to 14 nurse practitioners and allied health-care providers and one physician during an invite-only session Friday evening.
“Dr. Gardner-Nix did her talk for us and it was wonderful,” said LeDrew. “We got a lot of really positive feedback from that.”
Regarding the fact only one physician was there, Dr. Gardner-Nix said: “The nurse practitioners are very influential . . . they have strong contact with the patients, so as long as the nurse practitioners turn up in force, then I know the physicians will have it put through to them.
“The nurse practitioners will say, ‘Sign here,’ and you’ll get your referral,” she added.
LeDrew noted that due to busy work schedules, only one physician could be on hand Friday, but that “we had a lot of positive feedback from the physicians” for the program.
“They are interested in it, they have embraced us, which is huge, and we will be offering this.
“I think [the public] will find it very valuable,” she added.
The thrust of Dr. Gardner-Nix’s talk was that there is a direct link between the mind and body, and that pain is affected by psychology.
A person’s well-being affects how they feel that pain and even how pain medications affect them.
For example, a woman in a bad marriage will find her pain exacerbated by her circumstances and need more pain relief than a person in love, whose opioid requirements drop due to naturally-caused endorphines.
Dr. Gardner-Nix noted she’s seen how unhappy childhoods can result in stress that affects a person’s mental and physical health for a lifetime. In her experience, people who have had a lack of nurturing and experienced adverse circumstances often end up with chronic health problems and addictions.
As such, she stressed the importance of parents playing a significant role in their children’s lives.
“We need to teach our kids how to nurture their kids properly, and where it needs to start is in the schools,” she remarked.
“From day one, when a child is conceived even, we need to be able to raise that child in a way that stress is being handled and we’re not destining them for poor health,” warned Dr. Gardner-Nix.
“Raising our kids is the most important thing we’ll ever do.”
