“If you haven’t found something (for pain) that
works,” she said, “one therapy is not equal to another. Keep
searching until you find one that works, because they are out
there.”
Carmen Beck, Channahon woman
Channahon nurse finally finds relief from pain
By Jeanne Millsap for The Herald News, May 18, 2011
Carmen Beck, of Channahon, wants the world to know that
sometimes it takes a bit of a journey to find the right path to
pain relief. She thought she had tried everything, she said,
then she gave herself up to medications.
It was almost 10 years of pills and pain. Trying one last
therapy at the suggestion of her sister, however, was just the
medicine she needed.
It all began in 1999, when Beck, a critical care nurse, was
driving down Jefferson Street in Joliet near the airport.
Stopped, waiting to make a left-hand turn, she was violently
rear-ended by a driver she said wasn’t even looking up at the
road.
“I kind of watched it happen in my rear-view mirror,” she said.
“After he hit me, I guess I passed out for several minutes.”
Beck’s air bags didn’t deploy, but she suffered a concussion in
the accident. The damage to her brain caused her to have speech
and memory problems, she said, and she couldn’t go back to work
for six months.“I was stuttering my words,” she said. “I was
forgetting things, and I wasn’t speaking right.”
Long recovery
Then there was the pain. She had neck and upper back pain and
migraines that she had never experienced before. “I did physical
therapy and speech therapy,” she said, “and about six months
after the wreck I went back to work in a limited capacity as a
surgical intensive care nurse.”
The physical therapy seemed to help the pain a bit, she said,
but it was still there. An MRI showed spinal cord compression
and a large herniated disc in her neck, probably a result of
whiplash from the accident, she said her doctors surmised.
The therapy she received at that point just seemed to cause her
more pain. Surgery was not an option at her age, she said she
was told. The advice was to wait until it got worse.
Beck didn’t know how she could handle pain worse than that, so
she went to a pain clinic and received medications that she took
whenever the pain got too bad. Then, over time, the pain got
worse, and Beck began taking a long-acting pain medication.
“I took it over several years,” she said, “from 2000 to 2010 …
Then the meds started causing stomach and GI problems. I asked
the doctors to reduce the medication. I thought I’d deal with
the pain later. That’s when I realized how much the meds had
affected my life.”
‘Wake-up call’
Beck said when her dosage was lowered, she was in more pain, but
she realized she was able to think more clearly and focus
better.
“That was my wake-up call,” she said. “I hadn’t realized how
much it had affected my attention, focus, and awareness with my
kids and my family. I pretty much just suffered through the pain
that came back. There were times I couldn’t hold up my head
without severe pain.”
She talked with her family about the possibility of surgery, but
her sister asked her to try one more therapy first. It was a
physical therapy facility down the road from where she lived.
“I knew it would be different, and I was willing to give it a
try,” she said.
Beck said her pain decreased by half after the first three
treatments. A few months later, last December, she went off her
pain medications completely.
Pain-free
Since then, she said she has felt like a new person and wishes
she had tried more options before going on medications. That is
her message. The facility she finally went to was Promotion in
Minooka, but Beck said the message she wants people to know is
that it’s good to try all the options you can if you’re in pain.
“I think doctors are quick to give the pain medication without
trying other things,” she said. “In hindsight, I would not have
gone down the road of taking the long-term medication … I felt
stuck. I felt I had no choice. You try everything to manage that
kind of pain.”
Beck said sometimes people who are on pain medications for long
periods don’t realize their personalities can change.
“I’m very happy now,” she said. “I’m a more active and involved
parent. The truth is, my kids think they have a different mom.
I’m bringing the best self I have to each day.”
Beck said she felt it was important to get her message out. “If
you haven’t found something (for pain) that works,” she said,
“one therapy is not equal to another. Keep searching until you
find one that works, because they are out there.”