Pain Management - Hanover Park,IL

You're correct about what a pain management specialist does. They look at the reasons for your pain and try to come-up with the most appropriate plan to treat it effectively. The goal, because of the likelihood of addiction, is generally to do so with as few medications as possible.

The suggestion about acupuncture is a good one. I wanted to try it during chemo to help manage my nausea, and my insurance was willing to cover it. I couldn't find anyone within 50 miles of Indianapolis that participated with acupuncture as a primary specialty.

Good luck - I hope you find relief soon!

There are lots of things that can be done to manage pain in addition to medication and physical therapy, including biofeedback and meditation. Even increasing your social support helps with managing pain. I don't know what any one specific doctor will do, but many pain management professionals will encourage you to work with multiple professionals to manage all aspects of pain--physical and psychological.

Hi, I'm a nurse and pain mgmt MD pretty much looks at the history and nature of your pain, see what tests have been done, and give you options for so called "pain management". However, this is usually done when all other options have been tried or exhausted. Some options go way deeper than typical traditional therapy. So if you haven't tried things like physical therapy, epidural injections, acupuncture, etc. -they start looking at options like surgery, alternative medications, pain pumps, etc. However, they will discuss all of this, work with you, and see what may be the best option for pain relief and quality of life. good luck.

They for the most part will not hand out pain meds. Too many people fake pain to get pills to get high, so they have to be careful about that. They will do many tests (xrays, cat scans, etc) and then they can better give you options on what to do next. Therapy will go hand in hand with meds (if they htink you need it).

Pain Management Specialists will help you in the maintenance of pain. So you can live your life with controlled pain. Have you tried accupuncture? That is the only thing that allowed me to avoid a radical surgery and live a relatively normal life.

Hey Marion -

My husband sees a pain management doctor, and yes, they prescribe pain medications and give you ways to manage your pain. This can sometimes include physical therapy, other alternative therapies and sometimes surgeries to fix the root problem, if that is possible.

Best of luck to you!

I'll tell you what the one I went to did. He didn't have to send me for mri's because I had them done already, so I gave him copies of all my mri reports. I have herniated disks from top to bottom. The ones that were hurting me really bad at the time I went to see him where c3-c4, he gave me shots of steroids for the pain. That helped for about three months and made me gain 10 lbs!!! then I was in pain again. I had three shots in total, and then it worked. I have other issues going on, so I can't say that he was a bad doctor. But be ready to gain so weight if you get some shots.
Blessings