Our Mission

“The Chronic Pain & Spine Health Report” is a thrice-weekly newsletter for people in pain. Our mission for The Chronic Pain & Spine Health Report can be summed up in three overarching goals:

1. Provide Pain Treatment Information and Advice from a Patient’s Perspective - There are many, many thousands of factual medical information resources with advice on how to diagnose and treat pain. However, almost all of them present their information from the perspectives of the physicians, researchers, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies that research, develop, prescribe, and deliver those treatments. While that’s fine as far as it goes, as a long-term chronic pain patient myself, I found that discovering reliable information about the effectiveness, side effects, and outcomes of those pain treatments from the patient’s point of view, is almost impossible to find. Filling this void of patient-centered information is why I research, write, edit, and publish this pain treatment and advice resource for my fellow pain sufferers. I call it “Pain Treatment Solutions for Patients, by Patients.”

2. Help Pain Sufferers Make Better Decisions - Another goal is to help everyone who suffers from chronic pain, regardless of its origin, get the qualified, Patient-Oriented, real-world patient experiences, information, and advice needed to make fully informed decisions on how to treat their pain more effectively and with the fewest side effects and risks to their health.
   
   Of course, your physician or pain specialist should be your primary source of information about the best pain treatment options and solutions for your pain; however, as a chronic pain patient myself, I know that doctors, as smart, well-trained, caring, and professional as they are, they represent only one component of a complete pain solution for patients.
   
   For example, unless your pain doctor has experienced similar pain to yours and taken the same pain treatments they prescribed for you, they aren’t capable of telling you how those pain treatments really feel or their actual short or long-term side effects on your body, mind, and spirit. Only someone on the receiving end of a prescription, procedure, treatment, or surgery fully understands their effects, positive or negative, on their pain, and on their overall health. To get the whole story, you must evaluate each treatment from a patient's point of view and experience.
   
   Providing you with pain treatment information from a patient’s perspective, based on first-hand, personal experience, is why I write this newsletter. I want you to have all sides of the story, not just one or two. This is the only way you can make wise healthcare decisions and avoid making the same mistakes I made when I based my critical healthcare decisions on just my surgeon’s advice without any patient input.

3. More Information = Less Pain - The third goal is to give pain sufferers more in-depth, targeted, “straight from the horse’s mouth” information they can use to discover the right treatment solutions to help them decrease and control their pain. In principle, you can never have too much valid and relative information to make your healthcare treatment decisions. However, there’s also the problem of having so much competing information that choosing which pain treatments, procedures, and surgeries to employ becomes confusing and difficult to compare. This often results in either taking the first solution offered, throwing darts, or giving up entirely. Adding “Been There, Done That” patient experiences to that mountain of treatment information you’ve spent hours compiling can help clarify complicated healthcare decisions.

I hope that you will find the information found each week in “The Chronic Pain & Spine Health Report” useful and clarifying for you as well. I would greatly appreciate your Help and Participation in this mission by offering your Comments and Suggestions, sharing your pain story with others as a Guest Contributor, or by becoming a Paid Subscriber to help us reach out to others in pain to help them discover the patient-centered information they need to find safe and effective solutions for their chronic pain.

All the Best, My Friend!

Franklin Davis, Author & Publisher