Dear Betsy -

Not to worry. The relationship between pain and suffering is as important as it is sometimes difficult. Pain, physical and/or psychological is to an extent unavoidable in life. Suffering is not.

Essentially "suffering" - as opposed to pain - is caused by attachments to the way things used to be or aversions to the way they are. Cut those out of the picture, and the pain alone is a lot easier to tolerate. If there's now going to be a drug of all things that can help in the process, that may be terrific. In the meantime, we have the mindfulness practice of meditation and teachers like Jon Kabat-Zinn, whose Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program has given countless pain patients, including myself, a real lifeline out of the morass of chronic pain.

My meditation teacher, Shinzen Young expresses it this way:

Suffering = Pain x Resistance

For a copy of one of his essays on the subject, "A Pain-Processing Algorithm," click here:http://shinzen.org/shinsub3/artPainP...gAlgorithm.pdf. I would urge you to give it a look. (For anyone whose interested, Shinzen's book and accompanying CD "BREAK THROUGH PAIN: A Step-by-Step Mindfulness Meditation Program for Transforming Chronic and Acute Pain" (2005) - which a number of people in this little group have found helpful - is available either through his website or the publisher, Sounds True.)

These are concepts that have been around for a long time, and are really, if I may be forgiven, at the heart of Buddhism. "I teach suffering, its origin, cessation and path. That's all I teach", declared the Buddha 2500 years ago. For four very good audio clips on the subject, by some serious teachers, each around 13 minutes long, I would invite you to open a BBC page on Religion & Ethics - Buddhism/The Four Noble Truths. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religi...letruths.shtml In particular, the pieces by Stephen Batchelor and Robert Thurman are simultaneously accessible and profound.

Enjoy!

Mike

p.s. And good luck on the move to NC.