Managing pain without drugs?

OKChris

My partner has just been accepted for Provenge, so he can't take Vicodin or pain opiates of any kind. But he is still having pain, sometimes extreme, related apparently to ongoing Xofigo treatments and recent radiation on one hip. Can anyone suggest ways to reduce pains so he can stay off pain meds? Thank you!

Rakendra

Pain

I am not the expert here, but here is what has worked for me in the past not from Pca but from various injuries, including a pinched nerve in the spine.  Weed is a great help, but this, of course, is very controversial.  You might look for pain biofeedback clinics combined with Hypnosis.  Also, there are meditation methods to deal with pain, but generally, they take time to work.  Massage may also be of help.  Medicinally, I have had good luck with Celebrex.

  My heart goes out to your friend.  Good luck.  love, Rakendra  

Actually, I try to see pain as energy.  Surely, it is not the kind of energy I look for, but I tell myself that it is only energy, and I need to convert that energy into something positive.  I try to connect to it, to see what it wants.  I ask it if we can work together to both our benefit.  I do not fight it.  I understand that the pain is going to be difficult, but I try to accept it and work with it and not fight it.  For fun, here is my teacher's opinion on pain.  From The Discipline of Transcendance by Osho.

What I suggest is a very life-affirmative, life-loving way. My suggestion is: when there is pain, go deeply into it, don’t avoid it. Let it be so, be open to it, become as sensitive as possible. Let the pain and its arrow penetrate you to your very core. Suffer it. And when the pleasure comes, let that too move you to your innermost core. Dance it. When there is pain be with pain, and when there is pleasure be with pleasure. Become so totally sensitive that each moment of pain and pleasure is a great adventure. And I would like to tell you one thing: that if you can do this, you will understand that pain too is beautiful. It is as beautiful as pleasure. It also brings a sharpness to your being; it also brings awareness to your being – sometimes even more than pleasure. Pleasure dulls. That’s why people who live just in indulgence will be found to be shallow. You will not see any depth in them. They have not known pain at all; they have lived only on the surface, moving from one pleasure to another. The playboys…they don’t know whatpain is. Pain makes you very alert, and pain makes you very compassionate, and pain makes you sensitive to others’ pains too. Pain makes you immense, huge, big. The heart grows because of pain. And it is beautiful, it has its own beauty. I am not saying seek pain; I am only saying whenever it is there, enjoy that too. It is a gift of existence and there must be a hidden treasure in it. Enjoy that too; don’t reject. Accept it, welcome it, be with it. In the beginning it will be difficult, arduous. But by and by you will learn the taste of it. The taste has to be learned; it is just like other tastes. If you start drinking alcohol, in the beginning the taste is just bad and bitter. Mulla Nasruddin is a drunkard. One day his wife went to the pub, and he was drinking there with his friends. And the wife was in a really bad mood; she had tried every way and he wouldn’t listen. Today she wanted to shock him. And of course he was a little puzzled; she had never come to the pub: “Is she going to create a scene here? Home, it is okay. Home is the place where scenes are created and enacted, but in the pub?” And she came and just sat by his side and said, “Mulla, I have also decided to drink, from today. He was a little more puzzled. But then he poured a glass for her. She tasted and it was so bitter, and she just could not believe it. She said, “It is so bitter, Mulla.” Mulla said, “Look! And you have always been thinking that I am enjoying. It is a great sadhana; it is not easy.” When you start anything new you have to learn the taste. And of course the taste of pain is bitter. But once you have learned it, it gives such sharpness and brilliance to you. It shakes all dust, all stupor and sleepiness away from you. It makes you so fully mindful that nothing else can make you so mindful. In pain you can be more meditative than in pleasure. Pleasure is more distracting. Pleasure engulfs you. In pleasure you abandon consciousness. Pleasure tends to make you unconscious; pleasure is a sort of oblivion, a forgetfulness. Pain is a remembrance: you cannot forget pain.

Cancel

VascodaGama

Acupuncture

Chris

Adding to Rakendra’s post I would recommend Acupuncture. There is also the Japanese Shiatsu ("finger pressure") which is similar to acupuncture but lesser invasive.
Some patients have indicated taking marijuana (Cannabis) to treat pain.
http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/news/20100830/marijuana-relieves-chronic-pain-research-show

Best wishes for fast recovery.

VG