Annual race to raise funds for pain research

Tricia Scott chose to overcome her pain, not relent to it.

Such a choice isn't easy, though, if the pain never ends. Community support of her choice returns Saturday at the fourth annual Triumph Over Pain 10K/5K Race at the Cooper Aerobics Center at Craig Ranch in McKinney.

Its mission is simple: fight the pain.

"The whole problem with pain is unbelievably bad in the United States," said Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a medical pioneer dubbed the "father of aerobics" who remains an international authority on healthy living. "It's estimated about 60 million Americans are suffering from chronic or severe pain."

Scott, marketing director for the Center, is one of them. Ten years after a serious auto accident, she lives with constant pain.

After falling out through the back windshield of a Ford Explorer on Feb. 9, 2002, landing on U.S. Highway 75 on her face, hands and knees, Scott spent 72 hours on life support and two weeks in the hospital. As the rest of her body healed, her left knee seemed to worsen.

Doctors thought she had torn cartilage, but they operated to no avail. Following surgery and rehabilitation, the pain remained.

She was soon diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD), also known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) Type I, a chronic neurological syndrome characterized by severe burning pain, pathological changes in bone and skin, tissue swelling and extreme sensitivity to touch.

Normally, people's nerves give their brain signals of perceived pain so they know they're hurt, but in those with RSD, their nerves go awry and trap those signals in a loop, flagging constant pain, Scott said.

"A lot of people think it's just a mental situation, all in your head, and you could say that, but it's not something you're manifesting yourself," she said. "It's something that is physiologically happening."

Two years later, Scott received a spinal cord simulator implant, a device in her abdomen connected to wires around her back that emits electrical stimulations that suppress pain signals, essentially confusing the nerves, she said. There was still one major problem.

"It wasn't until 2010 that I found out I did not have RSD, but a type of arthritis," she said. "But I felt so ingrained in the chronic pain community, I'm still an advocate. I do not have RSD but I lived as an RSD patient for eight years."

Scott has undifferentiated spondyloarthropathy (USpA), the most difficult disease to diagnose in the spondylitis family, and just one of many arthritic disorders, according to Spondylitis Association of America. Her previously dormant condition -- one spurred by a cheerleading injury and multiple car wrecks in high school -- surfaced after her 2009 accident.

Rheumatologists told her shifts in her hip joint were causing the incessant pain in her knee, and before the correct diagnosis, she showed symptoms of RSD, just one of many pain disorders that annually cost Americans a normal, affordable life.

Costs of unrelieved pain result in longer hospital stays, increased rates of re-hospitalization, increased outpatient visits and decreased ability to function, often leading to lost income and insurance coverage, according to the American Academy on Pain Medicine.

A recent Institute of Medicine report, "Relieving Pain in America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education and Research," showed that pain as a public health issue costs the nation between $560 billion and $635 billion annually, equal to about $2,000 for every U.S. citizen. That amount includes the total incremental cost of health care due to pain, ranging up to $336 billion because of lost productivity, which is based on days of work missed, hours of work lost and lower wages, according to the report.

In 2008, Scott founded the nonprofit organization Triumph Over Pain to garner money for pain research, and to help find a cure for RSD. It became the fundraising arm for the U.S. Pain Foundation, which sponsors the annual 10K/5K races, this year to be held in McKinney and in Rockport, Massachusetts.

More than 100 people participated in the first Triumph Over Pain run in May 2009, and close to 400 ran in last year's race. The organization has raised between $12,000 and $15,000 every year, and nearly all of it goes toward research, finding answers for an oft-questioned problem.

"I don't want others to be misdiagnosed," Scott said. "Any time there is chronic pain, you have to treat it, or it will truly overtake your entire body."

As can many of the medications used to treat the pain. If generic treatment isn't relieving the pain enough for a patient to be functional, doctors sometimes prescribe medications to which patients can easily become addicted, said Dr. John Lavery, a Plano rheumatologist who treats pain associated with joints, muscles and their surrounding tissues.

"The number one goal is to get people functional," Lavery said. "We try to manage the pain with anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxants and new muscle-energy techniques, but if these measures fail, we sometimes have to resort to narcotics."

Doctors prescribe medications like Celebrex and Cymbalta, common remedies for treating forms of arthritis, only to lessen the pain until patients are again functional. "Most will agree, you go with generics first, but sometimes those don't work," Lavery said.

Thus, physicians are searching for alternative options such as different non-prescription drugs, yoga and exercise programs. In January, Cooper attended a clinic in California, where a medical center concentrated on medication-less pain treatments.

"People who get involved in this type of program can get better control, if not complete relief of their pain," he said.

Scott stressed that those with constant pain must "move through it" with exercise and physical activity, a sentiment Lavery shared in regards to knee and joint pain. He said exercise, simply walking, can strengthen the muscles around the joint, relieving the tightness and pressure that's causing pain.

But there must be balance and caution. Because of the body's ability to produce pain-relieving endorphins, like its own morphine, short-term benefits of exercise are sometimes deceptive, Cooper said.

"Always listen to your body," he said. "If the pain disappears and when you finish, about two hours later, it really comes back with a vengeance, you're actually hurting yourself, not helping yourself."

Cooper mentioned Dr. Nathan Walters, pain management director at Center for Spine Care in Dallas, and other such specialists around DFW as expert resources available to those suffering from chronic pain. He hopes to open a similar pain center at Craig Ranch in coming years.

But specialized treatment often isn't cheap, so doctors continue to search for affordable relief methods. They rely on organizations like Triumph Over Pain, and its annual fundraisers, to accelerate their discovery.

The fight against pain continues.

"When you deal with pain, sometimes you put your own road block up," Scott said. "I want to empower the pain community in knowing they can do more than they think."

The Triumph Over Pain one-mile run begins at 9 a.m. Saturday, and will be followed by the 10K/5K Race, which will run from Cooper Aerobics Center around Craig Ranch.

Registration costs $25 for the 10K and $20 for the 5K.

For more information, visit www.triumphoverpain.org.

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