Too many suffer in pain

2010-09-04
OTTAWA CITIZEN

Many of us involved in trying to ensure people who require pain management get what they need have personal experiences involving pain in our background. That's true for me. I can remember as an 11- year-old, with life-threatening peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, consciously wanting to die the pain was so severe. In 1983, my father was terminally ill with prostate cancer that had metastasized to his bones. I was telephoned in Montreal and told he was about to die, so I jumped on a plane to Australia. I found my father in a university teaching hospital in horrible pain. I created a huge fuss and managed to get a pain specialist to see him -- in fact, that specialist was Dr. Michael Cousins, who has piloted the development of this declaration we are considering. My father's pain was brought under control and, as it turned out, he lived another nine months. Dad said to me, "I want to live as long as I can, Margo, but I don't want to live if it means such terrible pain. It's great what you did for me, but not everyone has a daughter who can 'go berserk' to get them the pain relief they need. You have to do something to help other people in pain." That was the start of my research on ethical and legal aspects of access to pain relief treatment.

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