1) An Anatomy of Pain
How the Body and the Mind Experience and Endure Physical Suffering
Scribner
Anyone whose doctor ever asked them to describe pain on a scale from 1 to 10 knows just how hazy our understanding of pain is. There is perhaps nothing more private, or more lonesome, than your own pain. Even though pain is the main event that causes us to seek medical attention, if a doctor can’t find the source of the pain, and treat it, they’re very unlikely to have much sophisticated help to offer you for managing the pain.
Dr. Lalkhen, who has been helping patients with pain for over two decades, and who is on the Faculty of Pain Medicine at UK Royal College of Anesthetists, hopes to advance all of our understanding—medical professionals and laypeople alike—of the subtleties of pain. And in so doing he asks that we get past some fundamental and harmful misconceptions: “Simply put, we need to stop viewing our bodies as machines that medicine can fix when they go wrong. If people are educated about their body and about pain, perhaps we might put an end to the undulating fashions of medical meddling—meddling that, in some cases, has far-reaching consequences appreciated only decades later.” The opioid epidemic is a prime example of one of these consequences.
His mission, he says, is to “explain pain in all its forms” so that with “renewed knowledge and understanding, we can become active participants in the art of caring, understanding, and coping with an experience that can become all-consuming.” He fulfills his mission well, beginning with the anatomical mechanics of pain and a history of human relationships with pain, concluding with helpful prescriptions—including mindfulness—for changing our relationship to the way we suffer. – BB