From Salon:
Melanie Thernstrom’s pain began inconspicuously, as a burning ache in her limbs after a long swim. But instead of drifting away over the next few days, the feeling dug in, traversing her neck and shoulder and eventually smothering her entire right arm. She popped aspirin, applied hot compresses, and simply tried to ignore it, but slowly the reality became clear — this pain wasn’t going anywhere. For the next several years, she bounced from doctor to doctor searching for an effective treatment for her mysterious ailment. Despite being young, active and seemingly healthy, Thernstrom had joined the ranks of the more than 70 million Americans who suffer from debilitating chronic pain.
In her new book, “The Pain Chronicles: Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering,” Thernstrom, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, shadowed doctors and talked with patients about the science and experience of pain. Despite its being so common, she discovered, chronic pain remains a massive medical enigma, hard to treat or even isolate. She met amputees who complained of a constant ache in their missing limbs, women who felt like their entire bodies were bruised when there was not a scratch on them, and hundreds of others haunted by the invisible and devastating burden of constant pain — all the while pursuing a cure for her own suffering (which turned out to be caused by a degenerative arthritic condition in her spine). Her book examines the human experience of pain through the lenses of science, history, philosophy and memoir, creating a comprehensive and thoroughly engaging portrait of a force that all of us have experienced, but few of us truly understand.
More here.