Praying can lessen fear, sadness or anxiety associated with pain.
transplant; today, she’s in remission at last. But while she’s cancer-free and enjoying a full life, like many survivors, Lozano lives with chronic pain from both the nerve damage and scar tissue caused by her treatments. What gets her through? In a word,
prayer, says the art therapy graduate student at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. When she was battling cancer praying lessened her fear of dy- ing; now it helps her cope with flare- ups. “When I pray, I say prayers of thanksgiving and then I also pray for others,” Lozano says. “If it’s a hard time physically or emotionally or otherwise, I pray for help through that time. It helps me through the pain.” She’s far from alone. A 2008 review on religious- ness and spirituality in fibromyalgia and chronic pain patients found that “prayer is the most used complemen- tary therapy” and a 2009 article co- authored by Amy B. Wachholtz, Ph.D., of the UMass Memorial Medical Cen- ter in Worcester, Massachusetts, noted that “prayer was either the primary or the second most frequently used cop- ing strategy to deal with physical pain.”
Help From Above
A spiritual practice could be among the most important parts of your pain-management plan. BY CARY BARBOR
AT AGE 29, Rachel Lozano has already been through more than most people will in a lifetime. Her journey with pain started with a few pangs in her upper back when she was only a sophomore in high school. The cause? A particu- larly aggressive cancer, Askin’s Tumor,
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a rare subtype of Ewing’s Sarcoma in which a tumor grows in bone or tissue. The cancer would return twice more before Lozano was 20 years old. Over the past 12 years, she has undergone every treatment imaginable—surgery, chemo, radiation, even a stem-cell
Turning Within For many, it’s natural to turn to prayer, religion or spirituality when a health crisis strikes. But it’s also not unusual to start a spiritual practice for the first time as you look for a way out of the pain, says Nancy Seifer, co-author of When the Soul Awakens: The Path to Spiritual Evolution and a New World Era (Gathering Wave Press, 2009). A life- altering illness may force you to slow down and reduce the stress level in your life, she says. There’s no question that losing who you thought you were to a disabling condition—like giving up being a runner when debilitating back pain makes racing in 10ks hard, for example—can test anyone’s faith. “Suffering can make or break us,” agrees Carol Taylor, Ph.D., R.N., pro- fessor of medicine and nursing at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “Suffering strips away our false