Chapter 13: Pain Management

Pain and cancer are inextricably linked in all of our minds. I think that probably one of the greatest fears people have when they are given a cancer diagnosis is that it will, at some point, result in them suffering from unbearable pain for which there is no treatment; in general, this is not true and very uncommon. In addition, many people before their diagnosis presume that they cannot have cancer because they have no pain. Ironically, this is one of the greatest misconceptions, since many cancers unfortunately are not discovered until later than they could have been, specifically because they have not caused any pain. This very much applies to problems in the ovary where there are effectively no pain receptors. It is also true that if one feels pain in a leg or an arm or, for instance, in a finger, then the brain is very good at knowing exactly where the pain is, i.e. if the pain is in your right index finger, the problem is likely to be in your right index finger as well. It would be inconceivable that the problem would be in your left ring finger. The same does not apply with pain felt in the internal organs; thus, the ovary tends not to cause pain unless there is bleeding into it and it rapidly expands or if it twists so that its blood supply is cut off, after which the pain will be a diffuse pain, usually arising in the lower abdomen. Pain in the uterus is often felt as lower tummy pain, but can also be felt as lower back pain or upper thigh pain. Even more confusingly, the brain can sometimes mistake pain arising from the right for pain felt on the left and vice versa…