The lived experience of undiagnosed chronic pain.

• Main Author: Sumner, Ronald Andrew
• Other Authors: Black, Timothy G.
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: chronic pain; diagnosis; counseling; psychology; UVic Subject Index::Humanities and Social Sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/1389

When considering the impact of chronic pain on society as a whole, the statistics on the prevalence and societal costs associated with this phenomenon are nothing short of staggering. Traditionally, the research on chronic pain has predominately focused on the neurobiology of pain, pharmaceutical management of chronic pain, as well as the epidemiolgy and etiology of pain. However, relatively less attention has been given to the actual lived experience of individuals suffering from chronic pain, and a notable void was found to exist in the literature in terms of how one’s pain experience might be affected by the absence of an accepted diagnosis. The purpose of this qualitative study, therefore, was to explore, describe, and understand the experience of individuals who find themselves in this challenging situation, asking the fundamental question: “What is the experience of living with undiagnosed chronic pain?” In this study’s investigation of the aforementioned research question, five individuals living with undiagnosed chronic pain participated in semi-structured research interviews. These interviews generated rich experiential descriptions from the participants (captured via interview transcripts), and the resulting data was analyzed using a hermeneutic phenomenologic framework. This analysis generated 10 themes that were deemed to be ‘essential’ to the experience of living with undiagnosed chronic pain. Once these themes were compared with extant chronic pain studies, it was noted that this study’s themes of ‘I have tried everything’ and ‘Feeling exasperated’ had not been previously identified as independent phenomenologic themes, and as such, they offer a unique contribution to the literature. Although there remains a certain degree of ambiguity regarding whether these experiential themes are equally applicable regardless of whether or not one’s chronic pain is associated with an identified diagnosis, it would not seem to be overreaching to speculate that these lived experiences might be more potent if one were lacking a diagnosis to adequately ‘explain’ their chronic pain. However, it was acknowledged that for this assertion to be defendable, future studies would need to be done in a manner that enables stronger comparisons between the experiences of chronic pain sufferers who have, and do not have, an accepted diagnosis. In terms of implications for praxis, an overarching motivation of the researcher was to generate new knowledge that would not only be applicable in counselling settings, but would also have value across disciplines, positively affecting psychological-counselling, medicine, and physical rehabilitative disciplines in terms of promoting deeper levels of empathic understanding regarding the experience of living with undiagnosed chronic pain, thereby giving a voice to this underrepresented portion of the greater chronic pain population.