How Two Patients Found Relief From Cancer Pain

Cancer, a scary enough diagnosis in itself, often brings on unexpected pain that, left untreated, can get in the way of successfully treating the original cancer. Here two patients share their stories.

When diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer, 59-year-old Barbara Chance, of Glendale, Ariz., was not expecting to later feel numbness and pain in her feet and hands. But two bouts of chemotherapy later, she ended up with neuropathy—painful nerve damage in her fingers and feet.

"Sometimes at night if I'm lying down and I turn over, these pains will start shooting through my feet," says Chance. "It can get quite bad."

Standing became so painful that Chance left her job at a pharmacy and went on disability. She had been prescribed Neurontin for day-to-day relief of nerve damage pain and occasionally took Dilaudid, an opioid, to alleviate more intense pain spikes. Both medications helped, but when she told a neurologist what she was taking, Chance says his frosty attitude shocked her. He told her that he thought the Dilaudid might be causing her additional pain, but she also sensed that he thought she had become addicted to it.

"He asked me if I take it every day and I said, 'Sometimes I do, I might take it four days in row.' He didn't want to hear my side of it at all," says Chance. "That doctor believed nothing in pain management. He upset me so badly that I was crying."