I first incurred a serious back injury at work in 1985. It was not able to be evidence-based for five years (at the time of surgery).
My injury happened over two days – August 30-31, 2001 – when I was asked to reorganise the office's new filing system.
I had two major cycling accidents in the 1980s which caused a spinal fracture and severe whiplash.I quickly got over the accidents and was fine until the early 1990s when I started to have migraines. This gradually progressed to daily migraines by 1996.
My problems started in the early 1980s with the introduction of computers in most public service departments.In 1986,
6 when I was 17. Unrelated to any incident, I began to experience extreme back pain. I later discovered it was a degenerative disease with no cure, but at the time I thought it could just be 'fixed'.
Breast cancer is a diagnosis heard all too often these days at 13,000 diagnoses a year in Australia.
I'd survived the traumas of a major motor car accident, the ignominity of a prostatectomy, and the despair and exasperation of three separate cancers and their harsh therapies, but nothing had prepared me for the greatest challenge of my life, dealing with chronic pain
That Friday in June 1990 began like any other Friday – two adults, three teenagers, family pets, all heading out. I was totally unaware that this was the day "Super Mum" would die and life as I knew it would be over.
It was during a long jump attempt at my school's athletics try-outs when I was nine that I first hurt myself.As usual, I ran and jumped but as I hit the sand I felt pain in what I thought was my ankle.
It happened on 28 August 2008 at 8.28am. Everything after that is a bit of a blur, but the moment the accident happened will be stuck in my memory forever.
I was an advisory teacher when I suffered a spinal injury in 2007 that landed me in a Brisbane hospital emergency department.Thanks to a neurosurgeon, I regained the use of my left leg and the crushing pain eased. 
"Fortunately", the pain from my neck injury was so severe that it was taken seriously from the start.
As a chronic migraine sufferer I've lived with pain since I was a small child. With the help of sub-occipital electrodes and an implanted pulse generator (IPG implant) I can now manage my daily pain and rely less on heavy medications.
Harry Perkins, son of Olympic champion swimmer and Painaustralia Director Kieren Perkins OAM, was diagnosed with chronic migraine at the tender age of eleven.
I woke up one morning in 1988 with a sore back.As the pain continued to increase, I consulted my general practitioner who referred me to an orthopedic surgeon. After some tests, I was told that there were no problems and that the pain should go away. It didn't.
I injured my neck in 1993 while attending a Scout Jamboree in Canada as a carer for a child with cerebral palsy.My pain symptoms didn't really show up until 1997 when I started getting lots of neck and arm pain. 
I was nine years old when I damaged the ligaments in my left leg in a hurdling accident.After a year of treatment my leg hadn't healed – in fact the pain had worsened and I was diagnosed with chronic regional pain syndrome. 
My first taste of pain and injury was when I was only three years old.We had a car accident and I had my lower lumbar joints damaged as well as whiplash injuries to my neck. No one knew this at the time, though, and by the time I was nine I was having X-rays on my back to find out why I was in so much pain.
In 1962 at the age of 21, Renée was involved in a serious car accident that kept her in an English hospital - in a 40-bed geriatric ward - for nearly two years.
Before my accident, about six years ago, I worked at a prestige car dealership in Brisbane. This work was physically demanding as well as being quite social. We all had to get on well as it could be quite a pressured environment and humour often kept us going.
September 23, 2006 was a beautiful, still, sunny autumn day.I was in the UK to visit my elderly mother and other family members and had taken the train to London to visit a friend.
Declaration of Montreal
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"The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 5 billion people live in countries with low or no access to controlled medicines and have no or insufficient access to treatment for moderate to severe pain." Declaration of Montreal, 2010 |
Around the world countries are beginning to view the management of pain as a crisis in healthcare. It is under-funded and under-treated on a global scale, leaving sufferers to live and die in pain.
Management of acute pain is inadequate for more than 50 percent of people in developed countries and 90 percent of people in developing countries, while chronic non-cancer pain occurs in at least one in five people worldwide, including Australia.
As part of the 13th World Congress on Pain in Montreal, the International Pain Summit, hosted by the International Association for the Study of Pain in September 2010, the summit delegates from 129 countries supported a Declaration that Access to Pain Management is a Fundamental Human Right.
The Declaration states that all people:
- Have a right to the access to pain management without discrimination.
- Have a right to be both informed about how their pain can be assessed through the recording of a fifth vital sign, and informed about the possibilities for treatment.
- Have a right to access an appropriate range of effective pain management strategies supported by policies and procedures appropriate for the particular setting of health care and the health professionals employing them.
- Have a right to access appropriate medicines, including but not limited to opioids, and to access health professionals skilled in the use of such medicines.
- Have a right to assessment and treatment by an appropriately educated and trained interdisciplinary team at all levels of care.
- Have the right to a health policy framework that, in governing pain relief treatment in the social, economic and regulatory environment, is compassionate, empathetic and well-informed.
- Have a right to access best-practice, non-medication methods of pain management (ranging from relaxation and physiotherapy methods to more complex cognitive behavioral treatment) and to specialist-performed interventional methods, depending upon resources of the country.
- Have a right to be recognized as having a disease entity, requiring access to management akin to other chronic diseases.
Additionally, the Declaration proposes that:
- Healthcare professionals have an obligation to offer a patient in pain the management that would be offered by a reasonably careful and competent healthcare professional.
- Governments and all healthcare institutions establish laws, policies and systems that will help promote access to pain management.
Endorsements of the Declaration
The principles of the Declaration have been endorsed by the Institute of Medicine and the World Medical Association.
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Institute of Medicine the report Relieving Pain in America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education and Research is the result of rigorous study into pain as a national health problem. The report details the burden of pain in human lives, dollars, and social consequences and states relieving pain should be a national priority. |
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World Medical Association The 62nd World Medical Association (WMA) General Assembly adopted a Resolution on the Access to Adequate Pain Treatment. Delegates from almost 50 national medical associations attended the annual General Assembly of the WMA in Montevideo, Uruguay from 12 to 15 October. The resolution on the Access to Adequate Pain Treatment states that people facing pain have a right to appropriate pain management, including effective medications such as morphine. Denial of pain treatment violates the right to health and might be medically unethical. |
Editorial on the Declaration
The following papers have been written in response to the Declaration of Montreal, which states access to pain management is a fundamental human right.
Denial of Pain Relief, December, by Professor Michael Cousins AM
Presentation to the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organisations, The Netherlands, 2011
PAIN - Journal of the IASP
Chronic pain is a growing public health problem with inadequate access to care. Scientific and economic arguments have failed to get the attention of government and policy markers, many advocates are turning to the moral persepective offered by the health and human rights movement.