Imagine gritting it out with sharp, throbbing pain from a migraine or back injury for just a few hours. Or doing your best to concentrate at work through the ache of an abscessed tooth.

    Now, imagine coping with similar pain for years – and though it goes away at times, it's never for long. Sadly, that's the reality for millions of Americans. Chronic pain can take over a person’s life, but it doesn't have to. Still, there's no magic pill. Learning to manage pain is a process you go through and a decision you make.

Pain’s Wide Reach

    Pain is invisible – others can't see it or touch it. There isn’t a blood test that measures pain, or an X-ray that confirms its existence. It can be hard for people to get their pain taken seriously. But pain is a big problem. About 100 million U.S. adults are affected by chronic pain, and it costs up to $635 billion yearly in medical care and lost productivity, according to a 2011 Institute of Medicine report.

    Backaches and headaches (especially migraines) are the most common pain culprits, but there are many others. Arthritis, injuries, pain from cancer or heart disease, genetic conditions like sickle cell disease, and surgical complications like severed nerves – any of these can result in pain that becomes a continual presence.

Here to Stay

     For Penney Cowan, founder of the American Chronic Pain Association, the journey with pain began nearly 40 years ago. Fibromyalgia was the reason, but it took six years for doctors to properly diagnose it. Even today, the cause of fibromylagia is still unclear, but common symptoms include widespread muscle pain, fatigue and sleep problems. In Cowan's case, pain affected nearly her entire body and worsened to the point that her quality of life was "down the tubes," she says. "I couldn't even hold a cup of coffee; it was too painful." It became so bad, she says, that it consumed every waking thought and moment.

     When does pain cross the line from temporary setback to lifelong condition? "If the pain's been around for five years, the chances of having zero pain are probably pretty small," says Robin Hamill-Ruth, an anesthesiologist, pain management specialist and president of the American Board of Pain Medicine. At that point, she says, pain management becomes the goal: "How do you get the pain to a level that it doesn't control [patients'] lives – they control it?"

Facing Loss

     Mariann Farrell, 67, was a music educator in Philadelphia until two car collisions ended her career years ago. “Horrible” sciatica – pain from the sciatic nerve that travels from the lower back and down the legs – kept her bedridden for a year and a half, leaving her husband to cope with two kids, the household and everything else. “I got very depressed, helpless and hopeless,” she recalls.

     At first, Farrell’s strategy was one that many patients fall into – doing less and less in an effort to avoid anything that might trigger pain. “I thought, if I can lie in bed and be very quiet and still, the pain would go away,” she says. But it only got worse. She says the impetus for getting out of bed came as she was crying alone while the rest of her family attended her son’s chorus recital. “I asked myself what I was doing,” she says. Farrell decided she might as well be watching her son in pain, rather than being bedridden in pain.

    Chronic pain "is a loss of function; it's a loss of self," Hamill-Ruth says. Unlike acute pain, where the predominant emotion is anxiety, for people with chronic pain, it's depression. "When people have lost function – they may have had a back operation – there are just things they can't do," she says. The resulting grief, she says, is no less than it would be for the loss of a limb. People like Farrell, who could no longer teach the music she loves, or a manual laborer who's the family breadwinner but can no longer do physical work, have to find ways to "redefine" themselves, Hamill-Ruth says. "Once a person identifies how they can be a person who lives with chronic pain, and still have a quality of life and still be a person, they tend to do much better."

    Through the Acupuncture Pen and Tens Acupuncture Machine you can do more to improve the Chronic Pain.