This week is Book Week (kind of a going-back-to-school theme?) here at How to Cope with Pain, with 3 books related to pain reviewed for you.  Enjoy, and let me know what you think when you read 1 or all!

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Learning about pain has to be dry, academic and… well, painful, right?  Well, not with this book!

Dr. Lorimer Moseley, an Oxford University Fellow and Pain Scientist who’s been interviewed here before, has written an engaging, quirky book of stories to help us understand the most up-t0-date views of the biology of pain.  Painful Yarns is a collection of 10 or so tales of humorous adventures from Moseley’s life, and at 90% story/10% education, the book is funny, funny reading even without the “lessons.”

In Australia, Moseley encounters that continent’s famously dangerous population of deadly snakes and desert temperatures.  At various times, he also finds himself inside death-trap cars, talking with a guy with a hammer through his neck, and watching his co-worker at McDonald’s “crack” under pressure.

What do these stories have to do with pain?  Moseley ties each story to a lesson about pain.  For example, a truck driver who ignores all the blinking warning lights on his dashboard ends up jumping from his truck as it explodes.  Moseley’s take-home point?  Pain is also a good warning system in our bodies – don’t ignore it when your body sends you the “watch out” signal of pain.

Another lesson is that pain can become chronic even after the original damage is fixed.  Your brain just can’t get off the pain track.  Pain becomes repetitive… feelings of pain lead to more feelings of pain.  Moseley illustrates this point with a story about playing in a band when he was younger.  He learned Amazing Grace by heart – so well, in fact, that it would leak out even when he was in the middle of other tunes… which understandably got him kicked out of his band.  The more our brains repeat something, be it musical notes or pain, the more likely it is to get stuck in that groove.

Luckily for us, Moseley survived Australia, as well as the goofy decisions of his teens and 20’s that led to the great adventures of this book.  And he’s extremely clever in drawing out the gems of pain education from his tales.  The stories are captivating reading, and they nicely illustrate advances in our understanding about pain.  Dale Carnegie said, “When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.”  We wouldn’t wish upon Moseley any of his life’s lemons, but out of them he has written a wonderful, thirst-quenching collection!

The other books reviewed in this week’s series:

• Beyond Casseroles:  505 Ways to Encourage a Chronically Ill Friend
• Explain Pain