My dad isn't doing very well these days and is dealing with a lot of pain. He is only 54 years old but has beaten his body up over the years. The earliest injury I recall him having was a motorcycle accident when I was 6 years old or so that nearly killed him. They had to put a metal plate in his shoulder but don't know more than that. He later broke his ankle roller skating too. In the past half dozen years he had neck surgery (disk problem) and most recently (2 years ago or so) had a hip replacement surgery which never did ANY good and after another surgeon told him he hadn't need the hip surgery but another major back surgery dad had that too which ended up not helping at all. My dad was also a professional machinist for the past 30 years which is hard on the body. He recently had to completely quit work as his body just couldn't take it anymore but he is on 33 major pill dosages a day just to keep the pain tolerable (evidently the back problems have caused a degenerative nerve problem to his legs and he gets terrible back spasms too). Most of the pills are heavy narcotics. I am sure in this day and age there has got to be a better way to manage long term pain but wanted to poll everyone here to find out about experiences. He can barely walk and falls a lot. This is all terribly hard for him because he has always been an avid outdoorsman and loves to ride horses, fish, hunt, etc and can no longer really do any of it now. I have just started doing some research from all the big pain management societies online but wanted input from real personal experiences. Thanks a bunch,

Teresa

My mother suffers from constant pain and had a pain pump put in and she was a crazy woman. She couldn't toleerate the medication. so sad now she has alziemers and we don't know if she complains because of pain or just to talk