(10 of 10)
Such drugs are needed by patients with diseases like shingles, which does not respond to opiates. Levine at U.C.S.F. is enthusiastic about the analgesic properties of the chili pepper, which, like oil of cloves and ginger, contains a substance that causes sensory nerves to release substance P. Though this causes a burning sensation at first, repeated application produces numbness. Levine believes that capsaicin may eventually prove useful in treating arthritis.
Pain Pioneer Bonica believes that drugs are not the entire answer, and he envisions a day when people will look to their own innate mental powers to relieve suffering. Says he: "I don't think it takes too much scientific license to say that we will discover mental activities that can produce specific analgesia. In ten or 15 years, perhaps we can begin to teach people to control their own pain." The mystical swamis of India have long used what Bonica suspects is "a form of self-hypno sis" to recline peacefully on a bed of nails.
An inner peace can also be induced by music. Lucanne Bailey, who is a music therapist, is using melody and harmony to relieve the suffering of cancer patients at Sloan-Kettering.
Perhaps the only thing worse than having cancer is having it again. As a boy of ten, Charles Lanning fought and won a long, hard battle against Hodgkin's disease. He was free of the disease for years and was beginning to establish himself as a graphics designer in Alaska when, on the eve of his 28th birthday, he learned that he would again have to fight for his life: he had developed another, unrelated form of lymphoma that would prove even more difficult to treat. He returned to Sloan-Kettering six months ago for treatment. When Lucanne Bailey found him, he was in considerable pain, particularly in his back. Says Bailey: "He was very tense and guarded about his feelings, very bottled up. " She offered to play him music and asked him to choose the songs, hoping "to give him a greater sense of being in charge. He was missing a sense of control in his life and over his disease."
Lanning appeared to select songs that reflected his feelings. One favorite: Mr. Bojangles, a song Bailey describes as "sorrowful, about a lonely man, in and out of jail, who loves to dance and drinks a bit. "Seeing that the music seemed to comfort her husband, Lanning's wife Tammy bought him a guitar, which he began to play for the first time in years. "In spite of all the medication, you have to be able to take your mind off pain and on to other things, " Lanning told his mother. "I can lose myself in the music. " He has continued his playing at home, and has begun to sing with his wife.
At a time when she is doing so much for him, Bailey observes, "it is a way for him to give something to her. "
— By Claudia Wallis. Reported by Ruth Mehrtens Galvin/New York and Dick Thompson/San Francisco