iPain Living Magazine — 35
hot baths, heating pads, cold compresses,
MRIs, CTs, ultrasounds,
botox shots, and a smorgasbord of
doctors each with various specialties.
My marriage, family, friends, career,
hobbies, and emotional
health all suffered at the hand of a
disease that's medical acronym is
D.I.E., bizarre, and yet strangely
appropriate. After enduring three
surgeries in 3 consecutive years, I
was bedridden, bitter, and feeling
immensely burdensome; sadly, a
fairly common feeling amongst
the chronic pain community.
I was convinced things couldn't
have gotten any worse. However,
in 2011, after three more surgeries,
my father and previous A.P.L.
leukemia survivor, tragically
passed away from glioblastoma
multiforme brain cancer. Then, in
2013, after 8-years of marriage, it
too unraveled...with the rest of
me. The acronym for my disease
never seemed more relevant;
Gripping anxiety, breathtaking
grief, and a deep, dark depression
set in and paralyzed me. The
world may have continued, but
mine had effectively stopped.
However, it wasn't until one late
February morning in 2013, when I
finally faced the fact that I wasn't
living - I was (barely) existing.
My name is Christina H Chororos
- a decade long chronic pain sufferer,
endometriosis survivor, certified
integrative wellness life
coach, speaker and, suicide prevention,
and chronic pain patient
advocate. Additionally, I am the
founder of New Jersey's first exclusive
pain management coaching
practice that is changing the
way chronic pain is being approached
in our country.
Unfortunately, the beginning of
my story with chronic pain is all
too familiar within the chronic
pain and chronic illness communities.
What is a rarity, is how I
fought to change my story and
how I fight daily to help other
chronic pain and chronic illness
sufferers change theirs. With the
country desperate to find a viable
solution to the "great American
opioid epidemic," we have been
approaching chronic pain and
chronic illness incorrectly- a bold
statement, I know.
With chronic pain being the number
one cause of long-term disability,
we need to admit that what
we have been doing to manage
pain hasn't been wildly successful.
To exacerbate and complicate the
lives of chronic pain sufferers, in
an attempt to address the "opioid
epidemic," as of January 2019,
opioid pain medication is being
restricted to a morphine milligram
equivalent of no more than 90
MME day. It's important to note
that these restrictions don't apply
to patients in active cancer treatment,
palliative care, or end-oflife
care.
Now what? What happens to those
chronic pain sufferers who have
solely relied upon prescribed opiates
as their primary pain management
coping skill? I genuinely believe
that the problem isn't necessarily
the fact that pain medication
is being reduced - it's that pain
medication is being reduced without
a proper solution in its
place. What we, as a country, are
failing to see is by restricting a
primary pain management technique
without the education and
implementation of healthier ones,
we are inadvertently contributing
to an even bigger issue... suicide.
A recent report by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention,
the very agency that vehemently
sought to decrease the availability
of pain medication, documented a
disturbing trend in suicides in the
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