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If columnists wrote only on topics they know firsthand
the average newspaper would have a lot more crossword puzzles. That
wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing but the fact remains that few
writers have direct experience with everything on which they
comment.
I’m no exception but today’s subject is one I know too
well: pain. I don’t complain much, but when I do get the urge to
whine I remind myself how much worse it could have been.
I was 23 and on vacation in Mexico with my wife. We had
just checked into the hotel. It was late, hot, and the pool
beckoned. I dove in without checking the depth, and cracked
headfirst into an extended step meant for splash play by parents and
small children. When I was helped to my feet the water came about
to my knees.
My wife and a hotel employee on a smoke break waded in
and guided me back to our room. I lost a patch of scalp the size of
a fifty cent piece and suffered neck injuries that have bedeviled me
since and gotten worse with age. It’s a nuisance, but if the angle
of my dive had been a degree or two steeper I might have spent the
last 27 years navigating a wheelchair by blowing into a tube.
I have tried many things to manage the pain, which
ranges from annoying to nuclear. Surgeons can see the damage on an
MRI but can’t pinpoint the exact cause so can’t make any promises.
I have had good results with chiropractic treatment, though that has
become less effective in recent years. Over-the-counter pain
medication usually has little effect; treatments I receive at a pain
clinic help sporadically. I avoided prescription painkillers until
about a year ago and now take them when the need is extreme, but
fear addiction more than pain so go lightly.
I have told few people this until now, but there have
been a small number of occasions on which I have understood why some
sufferers of severe chronic pain kill themselves. I have never
considered it and my faith precludes it, but I understand the
impulse.
That same faith has led me to prayer. I’ve never
thought of it as a pain management tool but there have been many
times when there was no other explanation for the sudden relief I
felt.
It turns out I’m not alone. According to an ABCNews/USA
Today/Stanford University Medical Center poll (which is painful just
to type), over half of all Americans suffer from chronic or
recurrent pain. Of these, 58 percent turn to prayer for relief,
just a hair under the 60 percent who use prescription drugs.
Ninety percent of those turning to prayer report that it
works well, with 51 percent saying it works “very well.” Only
prescription drugs were as effective, with 89 percent saying the
drugs worked well and 51 percent very well.
There are, of course, skeptics. A quote from Columbia
University psychologist Richard Sloan, reported by Gannet News
Service, seems typical: “I don’t think it’s anything special about
prayer. It’s any kind of mental activity that serves to distract you
from the pain-producing circumstances.”
That may be true for low-to-mid level pain, but I wish I
could invite Sloan into one of my worst headaches; it would be like
trying to distract yourself from a charging rhino. Too many doctors
label pain and other symptoms they can’t solve as psychosomatic and
figure any cure other than theirs is all in the mind. Their conceit
is that if today’s medical science doesn’t have the answer then
there can’t be a problem. If there isn’t really a problem, prayer
isn’t really a solution.
It isn’t prayer that’s working anyway but God. But
until you can put him in a bottle for a profit, some in the medical
profession will remain skeptics.
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