Join Allen Finley in discussing One Thing he wants people challenged by pain to know. Can teens and children with pain still plan for the future? Explore the current state of pain science research and clinical practice in this straight-to-the-point interview with Allen.
About Allen Finley
Dr Allen Finley is a pediatric anesthesiologist and has been involved in pain research and care for more than 30 years. He currently works in acute and complex pediatric pain management as part of an outstanding interdisciplinary team. Find out more about Allen here.
Transcript
Josh: What’s one thing that you want people challenged by pain to know?
Allen: Well, we deal with children and teenagers, as you know, in our clinic. And one of the things that we often have to talk to parents about is that we don’t want them or their teenager to cross anything off their list of things they might want to do in their life.
We don’t want anybody to assume that they’re not going to be able to follow a certain career or do a certain sport or activity or whatever in the future. Pain in children and adolescents, even chronic complex pain can resolve or be managed or controlled. I think we do better than in adults in that regard.
So there’s no reason why anybody should say, I’ll never be able to be whatever they want to be, um, just because of the pain they have right now.
Josh: Yeah. So is that, I guess the fact that you’re saying, you, you say this frequently in a clinical setting suggests to me, people’s natural tendency is to go, oh, like throw the baby out with the bath water. This is going to ruin our whole future. Is that right?
Allen: Exactly. People, will sometimes get scary information from the internet, or they’ll see posts from people in their later years who describe pain and pain disability for a long period, and then that becomes a very frightening and debilitating message that they can get.
So that’s one of our challenges sometimes is to make sure that people keep their goals in place, that they look forward. And they look forward with an expectation that they’re going to be able to do the things they want to do.
Josh: And if someone’s watching this and going, oh, well that sounds nice, but like, what’s the next immediate step? What would you say?
Allen: You know, you never know what’s going to happen in the future, but there’s no reason at this point to be crossing things off your list. You may find out in five years that such and such a career just isn’t working out for you because of ongoing issues. But don’t make that assumption now.
Don’t cross that off your list now. Keep working towards what you want to do as an adolescent. Keep working towards the things you see yourself doing in the future and, you know, keep hope going.
Josh: Great. Well, thanks so much for sharing that, Alan. it was really insightful and useful.