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Pain Rehabilitation Center
Davette Baker, patient: This literally changed my life.
Julie Maxson, patient: I had a snow tubing accident and realized that the pain I'd been feeling settled into becoming chronic pain.
So much of the messaging that we might have heard is: There's nothing wrong with you physically. This is in your head. Or that's the implication.
One of the important parts of the PRC is that we learn that it is in your brain and there are ways that we can retrain the brain.
W. Michael Hooten, M.D., pain physician: Clearly, there's physiological abnormalities associated with acute but also long term persistent pain.
Wesley P. Gilliam, Ph.D., L.P., pain psychologist: As pain goes on, people start to view activity itself and engagement in life as part of pain, and so they start to distance themselves. But over the course of time, people start to recognize a lot of these things that I enjoy in life have been left along the side and all I am left with is my pain.
Davette: I was never going to get out of my bedroom. The loss of my career, the loss of my social life -- I couldn't do any of it because I just couldn't get up, couldn't sit up. I wasn't me.
Julie: I kept hearing myself say in my head, "I can't do this anymore. I just can't do this anymore."
The one-year anniversary of the accident was a tipping point for me to seek out a program that would help me manage chronic pain. I ended up here and I'm so glad I did.
Davette: What they do is, your program is designed for you. You're never going to be asked to do something that you don't want to do.
Dr. Gilliam: We are going to challenge people to do things that make them uncomfortable, no doubt. I mean, the goals of the patient when they're coming into the program is the primary gauge for where we're going to go moving forward.
Julie: When I came into the program, they asked me the first day, what do you want to get out of this? I said, I just wanted to feel safe in my body again. Seeing people at all stages in the three-week program really gave me a good sense of what was coming.
Davette: Motivation can be contagious because you see other people doing the same things and if they are getting it, you want to get it too.
It makes such a difference when you can see the path forward and you can see you're getting better and stronger.
The day I knew PT was working was when I could start walking around the clinic without my walker.
Julie: There is no one size fits all physical therapy. That individualization of physical therapy was great and really satisfying to be able to see myself do things that I hadn't been able to do three weeks earlier.
The biofeedback is a really tangible way to see the progress in relaxation. In particular, seeing the data, slowing heart rate, lowering our shoulders, really contributed so much to reclaiming what could happen in my body. I began to see my body as a team member instead of an adversary, right?
Dr. Gilliam: We want to get people developing confidence that I can stand for long periods of time to prepare meals, for example, but then also recognizing using chairs, using adaptive devices to try to get jobs done is also reasonable to do as well.
Dr. Hooten: Family members are oftentimes shocked, and I use that word intentionally, to see and experience that their loved one can function at a very high level.
Davette: One of the best things about completing the program is, when I got back, my sister said to me, "I got my sister back. My sister is herself again."
Julie: I'm happy to say that after going through the pain rehab program, it was very obvious that I went from somebody who was really kind of depressed about my future to somebody who just sees so much possibility now.
Davette: I am proud of all of the hard work that I did. Without this place, I wouldn't be sitting as tall and looking like I do in this chair.
I am thankful and grateful forever.
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