Chronic pain: Managing it, living with it Health system lags in chronic pain treatment

By Erin McPhee, North Shore News:

 North Vancouver resident Heather Divine has been living with chronic pain since 1990. For 23 years she's worked to help other sufferers and recently launched the People in Pain Network, a growing non-profit organization dedicated to connecting patients and their families with education, support and solutions. Photograph by: News photo , Mike Wakefield

THE last day Heather Divine worked as a nurse was May 31, 1991.
She even recalls the exact time she stepped down from her post: 3: 15 p.m.
"It's only the last couple of years that I haven't actually got teary-eyed when I say that. Because it was what I thought made me special and important and I loved it and I was good at it and the last thing I wanted to do was leave," says the former operating and recovery room nurse.
Divine is among the estimated one in five people who experience some form of chronic pain. In her case, it's 24/7 neuropathic pain from the waist down, which she began to experience following four surgeries over the course of a year in 1988-1989 related to cyst removal.
January 1990 is the last time she's been pain-free.
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