Author Sean Meshorer has lived with chronic pain for nine years, since an exercise-related accident left him with torn ligaments in his right sacroiliac joint. Through that time, he has dealt with professional, romantic, familial, mental, and spiritual struggles related to that pain, and has managed to reclaim a mode of life that he finds fulfilling, enjoyable, and spiritually meaningful. This book is an attempt to communicate how he did that, and to offer help based on his experience to anyone who may find themselves in a similar situation. He provides first an explanation of what chronic pain is, and how the modern medical establishment currently handles chronic pain. Then, he discusses the need to accept one’s pain as a part of life, and learn to cope with it on those terms. Finally, he offers some possible strategies for managing, possibly lessening, and even using the pain to achieve greater spiritual, emotional, and social fulfillment.
THRIVING WITH CHRONIC PAIN is a book whose author has direct experience with his topic. Meshorer’s personal experience is useful not only in terms of offering strategies that have worked for him, but in little details like the length of the book, kept short since he knows the effort it takes a chronic pain patient to read a longer work. He offers useful thoughts on how patients can ensure themselves the best care currently available, and gives a clear and sympathetic portrayal of the problems modern medicine has in treating chronic pain. His suggestions are backed by both scientific and medical understanding, as well as his own experience, and he provides a substantial bibliography to support his assertions and provide further reading for those so inclined.
Meshorer’s writing is clear, concise, encouraging, and accessible to the layperson, without medical jargon or excessive wordiness, and he offers concrete solutions for everyday practices that he has found to provide real help. It may be somewhat difficult for a new patient with chronic pain to absorb what Meshorer has to say, since some of it involves accepting pain as part of everyday life and not devoting oneself to a search for a miracle cure that will restore the sufferer to a “normal” life without the pain. But the book is not at all despairing – the author offers hope in the form of both real progress made to lessen pain and also to grow through it and find a fulfilling life, thriving rather than simply surviving. Some aspects of the book might be useful for those suffering from chronic emotional pain as well as chronic physical pain: these include strategies like meditation, refocusing one’s energy, visualization techniques, and encouraging positive thoughts and transmuting, redirecting and disputing negative thoughts, for example.
THRIVING WITH CHRONIC PAIN offers clear, concise, logical and sympathetic help for dealing with chronic pain, from one who has been there himself and tested personally the solutions he recommends.
~IndieReader.