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Relief From PainUntreated pain not only causes unnecessary suffering but can also contribute to depression, immobility, dementia, sleeplessness, substance abuse, and inability to enjoy simple pleasures. Pain management will contribute to your care receiver's well being and to yours. A combination of medications, therapies, and lifestyle changes such as yoga, massage, meditation, exercise, and counseling may control pain and help your care receiver (and you) remain as active as possible. Seniors under-report the amount of pain they feel, and doctors often under-treat them for pain. Report evidence of pain to your care receiver's doctor and demand that your request for pain management be taken seriously. The American Pain Foundation www.painfoundation.org offers a Pain Action Guide and a Pain Care Bill of Rights. Report evidence of pain to your care recipient's doctor and, if necessary, demand to have your request for pain management taken seriously. The American Pain Foundation offers a Pain Action Guide and a Pain Care Bill of Rights. Their web site is www.painfoundation.org. Here are some symptoms that may tell you someone is in pain even if he or she cannot describe the pain verbally:
Intensity of pain is sometimes measured on a scale of 1 to 10 if the person is verbal or can point to a number on a written scale. Medical professionals will use a picture board showing smiles, tears, frowns, and more to describe how someone feels. Look for the Happy Face Pain Assessment on the Pain.com web site, www.pain.com. Select "Consumer Information", then "Pain Support", followed by "Pain Assessment Tools". This web site describes many types of pain such as cancer pain, arthritis pain, and breakthrough pain (pain which occurs in spite of pain management strategies) and has a listing of pain management professionals and an "Ask The Doctor" feature. Discuss pain medication needs with the care receiver's health care provider. Additional information can be found many places on the Internet. Visit the National Library of Medicine's web site, www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus. This web site also includes disease and healthy lifestyle information, and more sites with information like this are included in the Caregiver Web Sites section. You may also want to run a general search for "medications" or "drug interactions" on an Internet search engine. Caregiving - A Step-By-Step Resource for Caring for the Person With Cancer at Home discusses pain. This American Cancer Society publication is available in the public library system. It includes a list of observations you should write down before calling the doctor or nurse about a severe pain emergency, which means a time when your care receiver is in terrible pain (perhaps an 8 on a scale of 10) not relieved by medication, hot water bottles, etc., and more pain medication is not due for hours. Also included in this cancer caregiving book is an emergency pain chart and a list of symptoms that indicate that you need to get immediate help from the doctor or nurse because your care receiver is allergic to a pain medication, the medication is too strong, or there is a drug interaction. Danger signs for drug interactions that should be reported include the following:
It is recommended that before calling about problems with medications, you make a note of what medicine was taken during the past few days, how much was taken, and how often it was taken. You probably already have this information because of regularly recording it in your Caregiving Notebook. |
