Read more: Health, Local, Health, Munson, Chronic Pain
TRAVERSE CITY, MI -- Chances are you know somebody who wakes up every day in pain, and they’re in constant search for something to make that pain go away.
Tuesday at Munson Community Health Center, many of those patients got answers to their questions from a doctor who specializes in dealing with chronic pain.
Here’s a fact: 25% of Americans suffer from persistent pain, so if you can imagine, Tuesday’s event attracted many who hoped to find a way to deal with their pain.
“Back pain, excruciating back pain."
Imagine this: Waking up every day to a painstaking, spine-breaking ache that can’t be cured. You’d live the life of Evelyn Kline. Years of frustrating pain and what she calls torture have her wanting nothing more than an answer.
“It's hard to live with day in and day out," says Evelyn Klein who lives with chronic back pain.
Physician Howard Beck knows the reality of those who suffer. Area residents hoped Beck could answer their questions, like why they hurt, and how to make it stop.
“It's difficult to see anybody have pain, but I try to stress to older folks that pain's kind of part of the deal, when you get older, you're going to have issues for pain, and we try to make people understand that, and we also try to help them relieve some of it," says Dr. Howard Beck of the Munson Community Health Center.
The body can be full of aches and pains, especially as you age, and doctors today say most of those body aches stem right here in the spine.
“You could see the turnout and the questions, I think it was very valuable," says Kline.
Beck told the group of aching bodies that there's not a magic pill that will make the pain go away, but there are ways to minimize it and make them functional. Beck says for people like Kline.
“She's someone that needs to be followed very regularly I believe," says Dr. Beck.
“That I get rid of some of it anyway, it bothers me," says Kline.
Kline says her chronic pain is heightened because she lives with curvature of the spine. She says she’s exhausted practically all options of pain relief and says her next option is to schedule an appointment with Dr. Beck.
