Pain management without medication

THE LEG THAT I HAVE NOT KEPT HURTING

“I don’t know how this works, but it works.” Those were Bill’s words twelve weeks after his first visit to the Healthy Visions Wellness Center, where hypnosis was used to teach Bill how to manage his phantom limb pain. Before this, Bill took painkillers two or three times a week. Sometimes the pain was so excruciating that he went to the emergency room for pain medication through an IV.

On a beautiful fall day fifteen years ago, Bill went deer hunting at a favorite spot in the mountains near Huntsville, Tennessee. When he reached the area where he would set up his deer stand, he was brought down by a deep, severe cramp and burning pain in his right leg. Pain so severe it brought tears to her eyes and a cry of agony from deep within. Pain so intense that he could neither walk nor stand. He was lying on his back and the only way to get off the mountain was to use his rifle and his good left leg to push himself inch by inch. Moving only a few inches with each desperately painful thrust for what seemed like an eternity. “I pushed with my rifle like I learned to do in the army when I was crawling
under machine gun fire, “said Bill.” Of course crawling under fire from the machine gun and the concertina wire was nothing compared to going down that mountain thinking I was dying of pain. “The pain was relentless and after what seemed like a lifetime once it finally reached the where he had parked his truck. Once there, he was unable to stand or get into the truck. “With nothing else to do in agony, I spread my orange hunting jacket where it could be seen from the sky and crawled under my truck to … “

Bill and a friend had talked about how they would both be hunting.
in the same area of ​​the mountain on the same day. Fortunately, at lunchtime, Bill’s friend decided to walk to where he knew that Bill used to park to have lunch with him. A shiver of dread ran down her spine when she saw Bill under the truck raving in pain. He quickly pulled Bill out from under the truck and struggled to get him inside. He drove as fast as he could to Huntsville Hospital, where Life Star transported Bill to the University Medical Center. Bill is alive today thanks to his friend.

Bill had an aneurysm of the artery of Popetiel, which ruptured and created
a blood clot that stopped the flow of blood to Bill’s leg. That day his leg was amputated just above the knee, but the gangrene started and two days later he had a second amputation that included the hip joint.

For the fifteen years following the surgery, Bill continued to have
Frequent and often severe pain in the amputated leg. Up to one
day a friend gave him a Healthy Visions business card
Wellness Center and suggested that I call. Since her initial visit on March 2, 2005 she has been pain free.

Why and how does this work? No one really knows, but when
do something that causes pain, such as a burn or cut, pain
it is sent by an electrical signal to the brain. There is no pain until this signal reaches the brain. Stop the signal and you stop the pain. A local anesthetic is a good example. The body has the ability to create its anesthesia and, for Bill and many other amputees, the memory of their pain persists and the subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a memory and the real thing. However, when we change memory or thinking, we change the brain’s response. One way to experience this is to imagine or pretend that you are eating a lemon. For most people, that sour, itchy, and sometimes jaw pain happens like you’re actually eating a lemon. This is because the memory or thought of the lemon in the subconscious mind is real, so it responds as it would to the actual ingestion of the lemon. That
creates the same biochemical and physiological response as if the
he actually ate lemon. So, change the thought and change
the answer.

This worked with Bill teaching him how to think back and remember how the leg felt before the trauma and amputation. The subconscious mind does not know the difference between the real and the imagined, which in Bill’s case, by changing a thought and discovering a past memory, was able to transform pain into comfort.

Bill was also instructed to imagine a change between the
amputated leg and brain. Since there is no pain until the message reaches the brain, he was able to turn off the pain signal to prevent it from reaching the brain. They also taught him many other techniques to stop the possibility of future pain; even pretend he had a television remote that he could use to turn the pain up or down. You could press the mute button or just press the off button to stop the pain. He also used the remote control to allow him to travel to the future and see himself doing the things he likes to do and doing them comfortably.

When Bill went to the doctor, they asked him “what is your pain on a scale of 0 to 10”. From the very first session at Healthy Visions Wellness Center you were taught how to think of your pain scale as your comfort scale. He was seen five times prior to writing this article during which he learned self-hypnosis, guided imagery, and creative visualization to manage his stress, comfort, and quality of life. Because all hypnosis is self-hypnosis, he easily learned how to control his pain and not let him control him.

It always amazes me, as I was with Bill, how hypnosis can
make such important changes in people’s lives. I saw it happen so
often while on active duty with the Navy, especially as personnel
member of the Navy Medical Center Portsmouth Virginia Pain
Management center. While I was there I had the opportunity to work
with many amputees and other types of pain. I looked at the people
who had pain for 2 years, 10 years, and even up to 15 years
or become totally pain-free, as in Bill’s case, or simply decrease the pain to a level that would allow them to lead a functional and productive life.

(Copyright 2005)

By M. Ron Eslinger, RN, CRNA, APN, BCH, CI