As the province relaxes, she recalls that pain cannot be put on pause as easily.
According to Céline Charbonneau, president of the Quebec Chronic Pain Association (AQDC), this is one of the lessons to be learned from the first wave, which saw access to pain and rehabilitation clinics be greatly limited to a time when the needs were nevertheless crying.
The isolation, the anxiety surrounding the crisis and the fear of becoming more fragile by contracting the virus have exacerbated the torments of chronically suffering patients.
Living with chronic pain is already living with uncertainty. And often, the less active we are, the more the pain takes up space.
The association says it could see this distress firsthand through its help line, where the duration of calls has increased tenfold since the start of the pandemic, generally going from a few minutes to over an hour.
A pan-Canadian study was also launched by the CHUM Research Center to observe how the quality of life of people suffering from chronic pain was affected by the new coronavirus crisis and to make recommendations on this subject in the fall.
One in five
In Quebec, there are approximately 1.7 million people living with persistent pain that did not go away after the initial health problem was healed.Charbonneau. It invades the rest of life. “,” Text “:” It becomes another disease, explains Ms. Charbonneau. It takes over the rest of life. “}}” Lang = “en”>It becomes another disease, explains Ms. Charbonneau. It invades the rest of life.
However, while the resources of the health network have focused on responding to the pandemic, many chronically ill patients have fallen between the cracks, she regrets, with an interruption of different facets of their treatments.
Medical follow-up by phone does not allow for pain injections, she illustrates, while the turmoil of the past three months has changed the condition of many patients, who would need various adjustments.
L’AQDC therefore requests the Minister of Health and Social Services, Christian Dubé, to issue directives and a public message to the attention of chronically suffering patients to assure them that they will not be forgotten during a possible second wave.
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