People who have cancer can feel overwhelmed emotionally. Patients need to worry about many things including laboratory tests, surgery, treatment options, and pain management. If you are already dealing with mental stress, emotional anguish, and physical weakness brought about by your bout with cancer, you can only hope to strike off as many agonies as you can from your list of worries. You can start by dealing with the painful sensations caused by the disease. Don’t be afraid to ask for help to manage the cancer pain, regardless of its degree.
Here are five ways to help you relieve the debilitating physical pain resulting from cancer.
1. Address the Source of Pain
In many cancer patients, the tumor is the primary cause of their crippling pain. Sometimes, the growth is pressing on an organ or nerves, and that can trigger extreme aches. If this is the case, then the best way to address pain is through surgery or other cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or immunotherapy. Often, the pain will go away once the tumor is removed or shrunk.
2. Take Pain Medications
There are cases where the tumor’s location makes it hard to remove via surgery or any invasive operation—these options would be difficult, if not impossible. In case where the cancer has already spread, it’s better to treat it first using drug therapy. When removing the cancer is not an option, taking medications is your only way to mitigate the pain. But sometimes, even if the cause of the pain is removed, chemotherapy and other drugs can trigger pain and discomfort.
Cancer therapies and medications can take their toll on your body. It would help to give your body and mind a break from pain by taking medications. If your case is mild, you can use over-the-counter pain meds. However, since you are already taking many drugs, it would be best to consult your doctor before popping a pill of paracetamol or ibuprofen.
You can work with a cancer pain treatment facility for moderate and extreme pain since you may need stronger medications under a doctor’s supervision. For severe cases, pain specialists can prescribe treatment that may include opioids or narcotics. These can be injected or delivered intravenously.
3. Tweak Your Diet
If inflammation triggers your pain, you can tweak your diet to help address the issue. By merely incorporating salmon, turmeric, ginger, or blueberries into your diet, you can alleviate inflammation and its symptoms, including pain.
4. Do Mindful Meditation and Relaxation
In mindful meditation, you control the way you think about matters around you by using techniques like relaxation, positive thinking, and cognitive restructuring. Some consider this a mind-over-matter strategy to conquer the chronic pain caused by surgical operations, cancer treatment, and radiology.
Positive thoughts and affirmations can help condition your mind into believing that everything is okay in your body and that you’re feeling healthy and free from pain. Aside from meditation, you can also achieve anti-pain relaxation through touch or massage therapy.
5. Use Alternative Therapies
When it comes to beating cancer, you must trust your medical doctor. However, it doesn’t mean that you should shun away from alternative therapies. Such treatments can assist or supplement your overall cancer pain management. Below are some unorthodox therapies that can help you against cancer as well as the pain associated with it:
6. Hypnotherapy
It uses hypnosis to relieve symptoms caused by cancer drugs. These include nausea, insomnia, and pain. Hypnotherapy works by placing patients in a state of deep relaxation and comfort. As a result, they forget the pain and other symptoms they are suffering from.
7. Acupuncture
This ancient Asian practice uses fine needles to stimulate specific areas or points in the body to address various ailments, including pain in the body.
8. Yoga
Focusing on breathing techniques and meditation, this Indian discipline can increase muscle flexibility and boost relaxation. When used as an alternative therapy, it can help clear the mind of emotional, mental, and physical stress and pain.
Summary
Pain is something that most cancer patients are familiar with. The best way to address cancer pain is by getting rid of the source, or the tumor, through surgery or other cancer treatments. If there are still aches and discomfort after a medical procedure, patients should consider taking pain medications or going to a cancer pain facility to manage the symptoms. They can also supplement their cancer pain management with healthy eating, mindful medication techniques, and alternative therapies.
