Typically, patients make their way into Dr. Kyle Christopherson and the FHW Pain Specialist Clinic with a glitch in their step or a slow down in their giddy up. The creep of frustration, aches, and pain may have been sporadic for a long time but now it’s constant. Does your body pain impact how you are living your life? Does it feel like you have more down days than go get’em days? The treatment options Dr. Christpherson does are opioid-free, and in many cases have long-lasting effects with little to no side effects.
It might be a slow burn that intensifies without movement. Or, perhaps, it pulses pain and radiates as you try to move through your day-to-day activities. Do you find yourself repeating the same comments over and over again? About how you’ve slowed down and you feel past your age or how you haven’t aged gracefully? In the medical realm, that’s referred to as chronic pain. The body is screaming for aid that sometimes doesn’t have an obvious cause.
Acute pain can be expected as part of the recovery from surgery. You’ve experienced an injury, and now you are bruised and tender, but day by day, the symptoms are improving. Chronic pain speaks to the debilitating pain that impacts not only your day-to-day life but also your mental health. The neck pain, the back pain, the achy knees, or the glitchy hip. You’ve described your symptoms so numerous that you feel like you speak them in your sleep. Symptoms like tingling, numbness, or burning areas, radiating or burning pain, moving too fast might take your breath away for a moment, or you simply limit your movement for fear of repeated exploding waves of pain.
There is no one-size-fits-all to describe or handle pain. And, as humans, we are innately intricate and unique. We’ve had patients with conditions that impact their entire spine or just parts of it, like the cervical, thoracic, or lumbar areas. The shoulders, knees, and hips are major joints that can have a variety of impacts on them, causing or creating pain. The sacroiliac joints support the weight of the upper body when a person is standing. These joints link the pelvis and lower spine and are made up of the bony structure above the tailbone, known as the sacrum, and the top part of the pelvis, known as the ilium. All of these locations and joints in the body have residual impacts on many other parts of the body, and pain can totally take over.
Neuropathic pain is a result of the nerve system being damaged or malfunctioning. Often, but not always, patients describe it all as a pins and needles feeling, which is often associated with neuropathic pain. It can also feel like an electric shock, tingling, sensitivity to cold or touch, or a burning or shooting sensation.
A more unique chronic pain condition is complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), which causes long-lasting pain and inflammation in the body. It’s often caused by the body’s overreaction to a physical injury, such as a fracture, surgery, or penetrating wound. CRPS can affect any part of the body, but it usually affects the arm, leg, hand, or foot. Multiple sclerosis patients can have multiple pain points with symptoms that include tingling, burning, and painful facial sensations, and because MS causes neuropathic pain, patients can experience all of the symptoms outlined above. Another semi-common diagnosis that causes an array of chronic pain is fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition causing widespread pain and tenderness in muscles and soft tissues throughout the body. Additional symptoms often include fatigue, restless sleep, fogginess, headaches, cramps or abdominal pain, lack of sleep, depression, mental distress, depression, and insomnia.If any of this resonates with you and you want to explore what specific options are available to you, reach out to the FHW Pain Specialist Clinic by calling (970) 858-2239 or visit FHW.org/services/pain-specialists/.
