Pain: HONORS 222
Pain presents a challenge as a problem in science, as a problem in health policy and patient treatment, and as a problem in understanding deeper human experiences. Pain is a universal experience. While all of us have experienced acute pain following surgery or an injury, not all of us have experienced chronic pain, which is pain that persists after tissue healing has occurred, usually > 3 months after injury. In this seminar course, we will explore pain from multiple perspectives. Some of these include the physiology, pathophysiology and psychology of pain, the epidemiology of and risk factors for pain, the subjective experience of pain. Readings, short lectures, and discussions will address the "sciences" of pain, the expression of pain in literature, philosophic analyses of pain, and social science/anthropologic analyses of pain and its role in different cultures..
I had a very love-hate relationship with this class. The one thing I hated was how it was fundamentally organized. We would do all this reading outside of class, and then in class Dr. Loeser would just ask "What questions do you have?" And then we would have a three hour Q/A session. Such a set-up for the class was not conducive for an engaging environment, which is a shame because it was a major disservice to some truly engaging material.
I loved the topic of this class. Before taking it, if I saw "chronic pain", I would have been able to tell you what that meant based on my understanding of that two words separately, but now I know what chronic pain really is. I had never realized what a significant and debilitating issue it can be, and each week's reading had me going "Oh my god this is crazy". My favorite reading of the class was for Week 7, for which we had to read Reynold Price's "A Whole New Life". It was such a brutally honest portrayal of the chronic pain experience, written so beautifully. There was some truly haunting passages in the book, ones which I will come back to over and over again throughout the course of my career as a physician to remind me the kind of physician I should be (or should not) be.
And that brings me to the other aspect of the class which I loved: having the chance to interact with Dr. Loeser. It is no small thing for me to say with absolute conviction that Dr. Loeser is the kind of physician I want to be in the future. I'm not talking about his specialty or field of practice, but I mean as a human being, with the way he behaves. Dr. Loeser understands what medicine should be fundamentally. He is not swayed by politics, personal interests, or societal standards. This is a man whose only concern is his patient; the only thing more immense than the pain of a chronic pain victim is the warmth and compassion that Dr. Loeser harbors for these individuals (and that is really saying something). Dr. Loeser has inspired me to become a physician that always remembers to treat humans, not bodies.
It was the culmination of my knowledge of chronic pain and my desire to be this sort of physician that led me to craft the term paper you'll find below. I hope that one day, when I'm a physician, I can return to Dr. Loeser and thank him for all that he's done to shape my outlook on medicine.
I loved the topic of this class. Before taking it, if I saw "chronic pain", I would have been able to tell you what that meant based on my understanding of that two words separately, but now I know what chronic pain really is. I had never realized what a significant and debilitating issue it can be, and each week's reading had me going "Oh my god this is crazy". My favorite reading of the class was for Week 7, for which we had to read Reynold Price's "A Whole New Life". It was such a brutally honest portrayal of the chronic pain experience, written so beautifully. There was some truly haunting passages in the book, ones which I will come back to over and over again throughout the course of my career as a physician to remind me the kind of physician I should be (or should not) be.
And that brings me to the other aspect of the class which I loved: having the chance to interact with Dr. Loeser. It is no small thing for me to say with absolute conviction that Dr. Loeser is the kind of physician I want to be in the future. I'm not talking about his specialty or field of practice, but I mean as a human being, with the way he behaves. Dr. Loeser understands what medicine should be fundamentally. He is not swayed by politics, personal interests, or societal standards. This is a man whose only concern is his patient; the only thing more immense than the pain of a chronic pain victim is the warmth and compassion that Dr. Loeser harbors for these individuals (and that is really saying something). Dr. Loeser has inspired me to become a physician that always remembers to treat humans, not bodies.
It was the culmination of my knowledge of chronic pain and my desire to be this sort of physician that led me to craft the term paper you'll find below. I hope that one day, when I'm a physician, I can return to Dr. Loeser and thank him for all that he's done to shape my outlook on medicine.