Pain is a common experience, yet it is unique to each person. Good pain control may help you to:

• Enjoy greater comfort while you recover.
• Get well faster. With less pain, you may start walking, do your breathing exercises, and get your strength back more quickly. You may even leave the hospital sooner.
• Improve your results. You may avoid some problems, such as pneumonia and blood clots, that affect others.

Pain control options

• Drug therapy -- taking a medicine to relieve your pain, such as a pill or a shot, or having medicine given to you through a tube in your vein or back.
• Non-drug therapy -- using measures such as massage, hot or cold packs, relaxation, music or a TENS unit which stimulates the nerves.

Your doctors and nurses can decide which ones are right for you. Often a combination works best to decrease pain. Many of these measures must be ordered by a physician.

Drug therapy options

• Medicines may be ordered on an "as needed" basis when you ask for them.
• Medicines may also be ordered at scheduled times throughout the day to keep pain under control.
• You may have a patient controlled analgesia (PCA) pump which will allow you to give yourself pain medication through a tube in your vein (IV) whenever you begin to have pain. The pump has a built-in limit so you can't give yourself too much medicine.
• You may have a tube placed in the epidural space in your back with pain medicine given continuously. This is called epidural analgesia.

Your part in pain control
You can help your doctors and nurses control your pain better by doing the following:

• Discuss the pain control options with your doctors and nurses and make a plan.
• Talk about the schedule for your pain medicines in the hospital.
• Request and take pain medicines when the pain first begins.
• Don't wait until the pain is severe. It will be much harder to manage.
• Help your doctors and nurses measure your pain by rating it on a scale of 0-10.
• Tell the doctor or nurse about any pain that won't go away.
• Tell the doctor or nurse if your pain treatment is not as effective as you would like.

Don't worry about getting "hooked" on pain medicine. Studies show this is very rare, unless you already have a problem with drug abuse.

For more information about pain control after surgery, call Baptist Hospital East's Center for Pain Management at (502) 896-7246.

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