CLEVELAND — There was a time when Susanne Morgan said she couldn’t imagine getting behind the wheel.
“It took a lot to get me into a car,” she said.
But she said she loves driving, and that’s what made a 2013 car crash all the more devastating. While her husband was driving, someone hit their car. Morgan took the brunt of the accident and was seriously injured.
“I’ll have flashbacks of the whole thing. I can still see the lady’s face,” Morgan said.
Morgan said the fear, anger and pain linger almost a decade later. But she said she is shifting her attitude.
“I didn’t want one person and one event in my life to rob me of something that I love to do,” Morgan said.
She said a spine and back surgery left her with a dependency on opioids and the pain persisted. That caused Morgan to retire from her career as a nurse, and she said she had a hard time finding treatment that helped her get back to doing the things she loves, like hiking.
But then she discovered the TREK for Surgical Success class at the Cleveland Clinic. It aims to help patients understand the psychological aspect of their pain.
In February, she gave the class a try, even though she was skeptical.
After feeling some relief, Morgan enrolled in a four-week intensive online group therapy behavioral pain management class. It’s geared toward spine surgery patients to help alleviate post-surgical pain through psychological interventions.
“How can a month of my time change anything? But it did. Because months ago, I could not have walked this path,” Morgan said while walking a trail at Lake Erie Bluffs Metropark in Perry, Ohio.
Now, Morgan is off opioids and mostly relies on over-the-counter medication when needed. She said her pain level is much more manageable.
“Before, on average, it was probably always a six out of 10, and now, walking right now, I’d say it’s a one,” she said.
She said she’s amazed and overjoyed to be able to take long walks and have happy thoughts.
“If you would have told me in February of this year that in July, I would be a different person, I would have just laughed. Because that is not possible for someone to change that quickly, but here I am,” Morgan said.
Dr. Sara Davin is the director of the Center for Comprehensive Pain Recovery within the Center for Spine Health at the Cleveland Clinic. She said chronic pain patients often feel isolated and misunderstood.
“It’s not uncommon for folks to come to see me and be a little turned off because they perhaps feel that they have been told that pain is all in their head. The way that they’re interpreting that is that this is some sort of weakness. It’s some sort of psychological illness that they have. And that’s not the case. But the reality is that pain is produced in the brain. So it is kind of is in their head. But the way in which we want to work with folks is to help them to use their brain to manage their pain experience,” Davin said.
Davin said it’s essential to rehabilitate one’s mind and body to heal. There are a wide variety of behavioral programs for pain patients at the Cleveland Clinic. Every chronic pain and spine surgery patient is offered a two hour online class that is based on a self-management intervention method from Stanford University. Davin said this is a great entry point to the Cleveland Clinic’s treatment model.
Patients like Morgan who are interested in more can take part in intensive four to six week group therapy sessions that involve working with a social worker, psychologist, physical therapist and occupational therapist.
