A Soldier’s War on Pain - NYTimes.com

Four years and a lifetime ago, a new war began for Sgt. Shane Savage.On Sept. 3, 2010, the armored truck he was commanding near Kandahar, Afghanistan, was blown apart by a roadside bomb. His head hit the ceiling so hard that his helmet cracked. His left foot was pinned against the dashboard, crushing 24 bones.Sergeant Savage came home eight days later, at age 27, with the signature injuries of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan: severe concussion, post-traumatic stress and chronic pain. Doctors at Fort Hood in Killeen, Tex., did what doctors across the nation do for millions of ordinary Americans: They prescribed powerful narcotic painkillers.What followed was a familiar arc of abuse and dependence and despair. At one point, Sergeant Savage was so desperate that he went into the bathroom and began swallowing narcotic tablets. He would have died had his wife, Hilary, not burst through the door.Today Sergeant Savage has survived, even prevailed, through grit, his family and a radical experiment in managing pain without narcotics. When off-duty, he pulls on cowboy boots and plays with his children, does charity work and, as part of a therapy program, rides horses. The only medication he takes for pain is Celebrex, a non-narcotic drug."You have to find alternative ways to get out and do stuff to stay active, to get your brain off the thought process of 'I'm in pain,' " said Sergeant Savage, whose ears push out from under a Texas A&M baseball cap.The story of Serg...
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs