Every time someone turns on a ceiling fan, it feels like razor blades are cutting through my legs. He has been to 20 doctors, depleted his savings and sold possessions to pay medical bills, and his friends, weary of trying to coax him out to dinner or a movie, are gone. By night, he watches old movies to distract himself, by day, he fights off suicidal thoughts as his current doctor searches for ways to stop the pain. Many people suffer longer than necessary because the source of their pain has never been properly diagnosed. In two studies involving 180 patients in chronic pain, Dr. Nelson Hendler found that about half were diagnosed incorrectly.
Doctors have their own concerns about prescribing narcotics.
State and federal drug enforcement agencies routinely monitor narcotic prescriptions, and they arrest more than 200 doctors and pharmacists a year on charges of giving them out too freely. But few doctors will even consider using the drugs to treat people who live in chronic pain, that is, pain that is not caused by cancer and lasts longer than a few months. Chronic pain patients who receive worker's compensation find the least compassion from healers. Suspecting them of being malingerers out for an easy buck, many hospitals and pain clinics turn such patients away at the door. Faced with the desperation of their patients, a few doctors, particularly those at top pain clinics, have changed their minds about the use of narcotics for chronic pain.