Join Keith Meldrum in discussing One Thing he wants pain researchers or clinicians to know. Keith challenges the human tendency to compartmentalize the elements of a pain experience. He encourages clinicians and researchers to embrace the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit in pain management.
About Keith Meldrum
Keith has lived with persistent neuropathic pain since August of 1986, following a near fatal motor vehicle accident. In 2021 he was diagnosed with primary mitochondrial disease, which also causes persistent pain. In 2012 he was appointed to the Board of Directors of Pain BC, serving as the Vice Chair and the Chair of the Governance and Nominating Committee until 2018. Since 2018 Keith has focused his advocacy efforts as a personal pain advocate. This led to an invitation to present at the International Association for the Study Pain’s (IASP) 2018 World Congress, his appointment as a founding of the Global Alliance of Partners for Pain Advocacy, an IASP Task Force, and his 2022 appointment to the National Advisory Committee for Pain Canada. Keith’s blog is here.
Transcript
Joshua Pate: What is one thing that you want pain researchers or clinicians to know?
Keith Meldrum: So if there’s one thing and I would have to say, I think it’s the most important thing, but that’s my bias and soapbox, is that: pain, while biological, is a complete total human experience. It is not just the biology that people feel and experience. It is everything that encompasses people’s lives. So it’s a much broader lens that needs to be brought to focus in on this.
You know, back in in the late seventies, when I was a young child. Engel came up with a proposed to biopsycosocial model for pain, which was, you know, I think, leading and very cutting edge at that time. I would offer that unfortunately fast forward 40 years or so, it’s become chopped up. People are like, well, there’s the bio, and there’s the psycho and the social. And I would suggest, and I never met the man, but I don’t believe that was his intent. So the cake has been separated into its individual components instead of one big cake. And what I mean is all pain is biological. You know we have a nervous system. We have peripheral nerves and central nervous system. We’ve got all that funky stuff in us that allows us to feel pain but it’s not just that. It’s our emotions and our psychology, our spirituality. All of these things impact and inform our pain experience. So I think it’s short sighted to say: “Oh, you’ve cut your finger, and you just have pain”. Well, that cut finger might also invoke other emotions and experiences from the past, or other traumas, and that factors into people’s pain experience. So you can’t pull all these layers of the onion apart, it’s all one big onion I guess.
And I mean, I can relate to my own experiences, because I’ve been living, you know, with chronic or persistent pain, for like over 37 years. And I was the person who was very focused in on the scan and the procedure, and every needle intervention and like you say it is, it’s dependent on the person, and where they’re at the particular journey and their pain, but I think it’s incumbent upon the healthcare providers and us as society in general to respect that, but also to never just lose sight of all the other things that influence it. Because that cake is all of those components, and maybe one part of it is more important than other days, and it is for me: To this day my pain changes depending on is work stressing me out? Do I feel relaxed? Then I have less pain. So we have to meet people where they are and find out what’s important to them, but never lose sight of the big picture.
Joshua Pate: That’s great. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it!
Keith Meldrum: Great, thank you.