The Pain Chronicles

Each of us will know physical pain in our lives, but none of us knows when it will come or how long it will stay. Today as much as 10 percent of the population of the United States suffers from chronic pain. It is more widespread, misdiagnosed, and undertreated than any major disease. While recent research has shown that pain produces pathological changes to the brain and spinal cord, many doctors and patients still labor under misguided cultural notions and outdated scientific dogmas that prevent proper treatment, to devastating effect. In The Pain Chronicles, a singular and deeply humane work, Melanie Thernstrom traces conceptions of pain throughout the ages—from ancient Babylonian pain-banishing spells to modern brain imaging—to reveal the elusive, mysterious nature of pain itself. Interweaving first-person reflections on her own battle with chronic pain, incisive reportage from leading-edge pain clinics and medical research, and insights from a wide range of disciplines—science, history, religion, philosophy, anthropology, literature, and art—Thernstrom shows that when dealing with pain we are neither as advanced as we imagine nor as helpless as we may fear. Both a personal meditation and an intellectual exploration, The Pain Chronicles illuminates and makes sense of the all-too-human experience of pain—and confronts with extraordinary grace and empathy its peculiar traits, its harrowing effects, and its various antidotes.

Personal history of medical procedures, treatments and hospital stays.

Michael J. Murray’s powerful memoir chronicles his difficult battle to conquer his undiagnosed pain. Murray confides his emotional torment and near collapse as numerous doctors—most of whom don’t actually take the time to truly listen to their desperate patient—promise relief but only deliver ineffective treatments, contradicting diagnoses, and often dispassionate care. In the end, Murray’s chance discovery in a book on back pain leads to a dawning awareness of the emotional root of his near-constant agony. As he digs deeper into this line of medicine and therapy that connects the mind and body, he uncovers how significant moments from his past manifest as physical and emotional pains in his present. Murray’s recounting of his journey is honest and vulnerable, and anyone who is suffering from chronic physical or emotional pain or knows someone on this difficult path will appreciate what he learned about • the deep connection between mind and body • the inspiring, innovative methods that can cure physical and emotional pain • how to heal our inner selves to heal physical pain This eye-opening memoir is an excellent guide for anyone who wants to truly feel better and enjoy a heightened sense of well-being . . . beginning right now.

This text draws on multidisciplinary sources to explore the concept of pain as it has been seen by different cultures over the course of history. It highlights the transformation in humanity's relationship to pain and chronicles the progress made in its understanding and treatment.

A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis. Empire of Pain begins with the story of three doctor brothers, Raymond, Mortimer and the incalculably energetic Arthur, who weathered the poverty of the Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. Working at a barbaric mental institution, Arthur saw a better way and conducted groundbreaking research into drug treatments. He also had a genius for marketing, especially for pharmaceuticals, and bought a small ad firm. Arthur devised the marketing for Valium, and built the first great Sackler fortune. He purchased a drug manufacturer, Purdue Frederick, which would be run by Raymond and Mortimer. The brothers began collecting art, and wives, and grand residences in exotic locales. Their children and grandchildren grew up in luxury. Forty years later, Raymond’s son Richard ran the family-owned Purdue. The template Arthur Sackler created to sell Valium—co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug’s addictiveness—was employed to launch a far more potent product: OxyContin. The drug went on to generate some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue, and to launch a public health crisis in which hundreds of thousands would die. This is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world’s great fortunes.

Druid Atticus O’Sullivan hasn’t stayed alive for more than two millennia without a fair bit of Celtic cunning. So when vengeful thunder gods come Norse by Southwest looking for payback, Atticus, with a little help from the Navajo trickster god Coyote, lets them think that they’ve chopped up his body in the Arizona desert. But the mischievous Coyote is not above a little sleight of paw, and Atticus soon finds that he’s been duped into battling bloodthirsty desert shapeshifters called skinwalkers. Just when the Druid thinks he’s got a handle on all the duplicity, betrayal comes from an unlikely source. If Atticus survives this time, he vows he won’t be fooled again. Famous last words. Don’t miss any of Kevin Hearne’s phenomenal Iron Druid Chronicles novels: HOUNDED | HEXED | HAMMERED | TRICKED | TRAPPED | HUNTED | SHATTERED | STAKED

Exploring the medical rhetoric surrounding pain medicine, the author chronicles the work of interdisciplinary pain management specialists to found a new science of pain and a new approach to pain medicine grounded in a more comprehensive biospychosocial model. His analysis shows how these materials shape the healthcare community's understanding of what pain medicine is, how the medicine should be practiced and regulated, and how practitioner-patient relationships are best managed.

The Whitsborough Chronicles Series books 1-4. Ember Craven is raised by a single mother on the rough streets of The Bronx in New York, runs with gangs and uses her fists to pay the bills. Through tragedy, she's forced to move to Ontario, Canada with her mother's sister and husband. These books will lead you through the small town of Whitsborough, filled with wealthy and prestigious individuals, ones whose exteriors shine with a clean brilliance, but their insides are rotten to the core. In a world where money talks and immorality is masked by power, a young woman finds herself caught in a world where her resilience is often tested. Once Ember is pushed too far, she succumbs to her inner villain, and no one is safe from her blade, no matter how much money they have. Take this journey of pain, darkness, finding the light, then ultimately, the road to redemption, and witness just how dark a person can get to protect the people she loves.