Hello all,
By KATINA TENGESDAL, Staff Writer,
ktengesdal@minotdailynews.com
The Tri-Life Center in Minot specializes in helping individuals manage their chronic pain. The center uses a holistic approach to help its patients and a multidisciplinary team to deal with the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of chronic pain.
“Most people that come here have been on many medications and they have run out of benefits from medications,” said Dr. Paul Olson, medical director for the Tri-Life Center. “It’s nice to be able to take people that everybody else has given up on and make a difference in their life.”
“People (who first come to the center) are scared, angry and depressed,” said Bonnie Sjol, owner and director for the Tri-Life Center. “Nothing has worked in a system that is treating them for acute pain and they have chronic pain.
Above: Bonnie Sjol, owner and director of the Tri-Life center, shows a quilt that was made by some of the Tri-Life Center's clients after completing the program |
Tri-Life patient Karen Davidson decided to check out the center when she learned about it from a girlfriend. Davidson had suffered chronic pain since childhood due to a blood disease. While she had learned to cope with the pain over the years, she recently began suffering broken bones, which made the pain even more intense.
Above: Tri-Life patient Karen Davidson displays her zipper mosaic artwork, which she has returned to with full-force after treatment at the center. |
“I really didn’t have much choice anymore, because I was lost,” Davidson said. “I couldn’t cope with what was happening anymore. I was given a bunch of pain medications, but I didn’t like how I was reacting to them. I was hoping it (treatment at Tri-Life) would work and it did.”
Bob Adkins, another Tri-Life patient, sought help for chronic pain he had been suffering for 10 years due to
repetitive work at the computer. He suffered pinched nerves, a herniated disc, arthritic spurs and chronic pain in his back, shoulder, neck, arm and hand. He underwent a two-level fusion in his neck to help with a pinched nerve, he went through two lower back surgeries that increased his pain symptoms. He was on the verge of getting a second neck fusion
surgery when his physician referred him to Tri-Life.
“Prior to going to Tri-Life, I was on one opiate medication, narcotics medications, depression medication and medication for arthritis and peripheral neuropathy,” Adkins said. “At Tri-Life, they got me off all that medication except for one. I was hoping to get off narcotics and opiates, and that was successful. I was hoping to gain different skills to deal with the pain.”
Above - Left: Bob Adkins, a Tri-Life patient, demonstrates one of the self-management techniques he uses for chronic pain using a Thera-Cane. The cane focuses on pressure points. |
Intensive treatment
Individuals entering the program go through intensive treatment for more than three weeks with a small group, and staff continues to follow up with patients for a year. Patients also have continued access to a support group and the warm-water pool and hot tub for as long as they wish. The Tri-Life Center is located at the Dakota Inn in Minot, and the hotel setting has worked well.
“The people have been to all the clinics, all the hospitals,” Sjol said. “They feel like they’ve failed there. We also treat clients from all over and they can stay at the hotel as a guest if they want to.
“In this way, the setting is the most effective for the people we serve,” she added. “It’s a well-setting. Well people stay in hotels and travel.”
Treating chronic pain differently
Chronic pain differs from acute pain in that it is long lasting and there isn’t a fix for it. The source isn’t always easily pinpointed, either. At the Tri-Life Center, the team works to help patients utilize tools other than medications and surgeries to self manage their pain, because it is something they will often have for the rest of their lives.
“Doctors treat chronic pain like acute pain. Chronic pain is different. It’s important to recognize that it’s different and it needs to be treated differently,” Olson said. “Chronic pain can be anywhere in the body. It can be very frustrating. It isn’t like a broken bone that you can see. You can’t put your finger on it and say ‘Here it is.’ ”
Olson explained that with chronic pain, narcotic medications can have a negative effect on the pain sufferer because the body develops a tolerance to the medication and higher doses are needed over time.
“It’s one thing if you have cancer and they (narcotics) are used as an end-of-life comfort measure,” he said. “When you have 20 more years to live, you can’t keep having more and more narcotics.”
While the center’s goal is to help their patients manage pain with as little medication as possible, staff are not focused on taking patients off of every single medication that they are on. They focus on making the patient as comfortable as possible.
“Our goal is to move them from patient to person. They’re on less medication — the least amount possible, the better it is,” Sjol said. “We live in a quick-fix society. There isn’t a quick-fix (for chronic pain). There isn’t a magic shot, pill, surgery or fix. They (chronic pain sufferers) have usually been there, done that, and they still have pain.”
“Some (Tri-Life patients) have been told that we’re going to take them off all their medications and that’s not the case,” Olson said. “Our goal is to make them as comfortable as possible. It all depends on each individual.”
The Tri-Life Center utilizes a team approach with Olson as the medical director, Dr. Julie Rickert as the psychologist, Arlo Pretzer as the physical therapist, Sjol as the registered nurse and Brenda Munsau as the office manager.
“When you have a team of people working toward the same goal, it makes all the difference in the world,” Olson said.
The team uses a holistic approach to treatment. The term “holistic” sometimes confuses patients to what the center’s all about.
“With the word ‘holistic’ they think there will be subliminal messages on the walls or hypnosis, but the word just describes how we are as people,” Sjol said.
“We are all medical professionals with separate disciplines. We talk about what we’re seeing (in the patient) so we can help them along,” Olson said. “A person may tell someone when they’re working one-on-one with them something that affects their whole treatment. Without the whole team communicating, you miss out on opportunities to help people.”
The Tri-Life Center utilizes warm-water therapy, modified tai chi and other gentle stretching and exercises to help patients manage pain and regain their range of motion as a physical part of treatment.
“They’ve been in traditional physical therapy, so they are very skeptical,” Sjol said. “Everything we do here is conducive for people with chronic pain. We don’t do aggressive physical therapy. What we find is that aggressive physical therapy has made their pain worse. Tai chi helps decrease pain while increasing range of motion and the warm water is conducive to healing and relaxation,” Sjol said.
The center also helps individuals cope with setting their own limits. Sjol explained that chronic pain patients may be seen as malingerers or individuals who are just lazy and don’t want to work. She said that with most chronic pain sufferers, the opposite is true — they are often individuals who led very active lives before their pain set in.
“They (chronic pain sufferers) are usually perfectionists and they were working over 40 hours a week,” Sjol said. “They were not lazy. They have to learn to listen to their body. It’s become kind of a denial for them. They’re used to thinking, ‘Do the job of two or three people and get promoted.’ They never had limits before — they could do it all.”
“They’re used to working too much and sleeping too little, then all of a sudden they have this pain and they can’t do that anymore and they almost lose their identity,” Olson said.
Patients also learn to manage the depression, stress, anger and sleep problems that often comes with chronic pain. Sjol explained an illustration the center’s staff often uses for patients — they have run into stop signs in life and have managed to get around them, until they run into a stop sign too big to get around.
“We have to look back and say, maybe I was on the wrong road,” she said.
Passion for life
Patients put in a lot of work in the center’s program to learn how to manage their pain.
“It’s a demanding program. You have to work to get better. The first week, they are frustrated and fatigued and the second week is so much better. It’s amazing to watch the transition, to watch people get better,” Olson said.
For patients who have been through the program, they often experience a renewed energy and passion for activities they enjoyed before their pain became unbearable.
“I’m a freelance artist and I was teaching classes and having gallery shows,” Davidson said. Then after I started breaking bones, I wasn’t doing that much anymore, because I wasn’t able to. Now, since the program, I’m back again. I have my own art studio downtown. I’ve been having a few gallery shows.”
“I have artwork in different stores throughout the United States. This has all happened within the last three years and I know it’s due to being in Tri-Life,” she said.
For Adkins, he felt the need to reassess his path in life.
“I have been trying for many years to stick with computer work and I needed to reassess that part of my life and move forward, using adaptive equipment or retraining for a different type of career,” Adkins said. “Since I’ve been dealing with chronic pain for so many years, I have now gotten the realization that I needed to change jobs and learn limits, to function and have a better
quality of life.”
Adkins is now pursuing a new passion.
“I was called to ministry at 16, I served as associate pastor in the Church of God. Through Tri-Life, I had a better assessment of my life. I am working on my ordination and starting a new church in the area,” he said.
The program has also helped Adkins regain his stamina in his everyday activities.
“Now, by using self treatment tools, I may have to stop a few times in a day for 30 minutes to do self-treatment, but now I’m able to do most housework,” he said. “Before, I could take a four-block walk. Now I can do a two-mile walk.”
Group atmosphere, support
Both Adkins and Davidson cited the group atmosphere as a helpful part of the program. Many patients still get together after their treatment by attending a support group and exercise sessions in the pool.
“It was good to have the group situation because you realized you weren’t the only one,” Davidson said. “You don’t realize that a lot of other people have pain, too, and once you go through the program, you hear things from others and you realize that they have to learn to cope as well.”
“It enables you to see that other people are in a similar situation,” Adkins said. “You learn more about the things that you have been taught. We interact, we become like a family in a three-week period.”
Adkins and Davidson also recommended the program to others who are suffering from chronic pain.
“If a person has chronic pain, they don’t need to go through years of it before going through this program,” Adkins said. “If it continues to be chronic and at high levels, this program is for them. Discuss the program with your physician and get a referral. The staff is very caring and loving and they will support you any way they can.”
“I always recommend Tri-Life because I believe in it and it helps people,” Davidson said. “I tell them, when they go, to not give up. The first week is the hardest, because everything’s new, but just keep going because it will help.”
