Okay, try to think of pain as a low smoke detector battery alarm going off. Most people hear it, change the batteries and it stops. That’s acute pain.

Patients with chronic pain have tried changing the batteries, then they tried taking down the alarm, they even tried shutting off the circuit breaker, but the beeping never stops. So, they learned to adapt. They then put the alarm under a pillow, to make it quieter, they are still annoyed but at least they can function. Then someone comes along and says, “oh they seem fine they probably don’t even hear the alarm anymore. Let’s take away their pillow”. As a result, the beeping gets louder, and louder, and louder, making the patient feel like they are going insane. (This is when the patient shows signs of pain on the outside).

And then someone says, “oh you don’t look so good! Here. Here’s that pillow”. But now that pillow doesn’t really work cause now it’s so bad that they need multiple pillows (meaning more medicine or stronger medicine) to drown out the beeping sound. So, now they need to get multiple pillows when originally only one was needed. That’s called chasing pain. The patient will most likely end up getting more medication in the long run when this happens instead of getting ahead of it or staying on top of it.

Here at Keystone Advanced Therapies, we want to help you make the beeping stop.