Health & Wellness: Mays and Schnapp Gives Pain Sufferers Hope

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Mays and Schnapp Gives Pain Sufferers Hope

Daily Bread

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:27

Pioneering physicians offer empathy and expert treatment

When you suffer from pain day after day, it is easy to become isolated. Chronic pain often prevents people from taking part in the everyday activities of life – cooking a meal, tending a garden, going to work everyday and spending time with family and friends.

Helplessness and hopelessness take hold.

The Mays and Schnapp Pain Clinic and Rehabilitation Center is dedicated to returning hope and quality of life to people suffering from pain. It is the only comprehensive center for the treatment of severe chronic pain in the Mid-South, offering advanced technology, an ambulatory surgery center, a physical therapy department, psychological support, and physician private practice all under one roof. It was the first pain clinic in North America accredited in all areas of adult outpatient rehabilitation and is the only pain clinic in the Mid-South so certified.

Clinic directors Kit Mays, MD, and Moacir Schnapp, MD, are pioneers in pain treatment, collaborating for more than 25 years. Dr. Mays, an anesthesiologist, developed the original Pain Clinic at the University of Tennessee and served as the clinic’s first director. Dr. Schnapp, a neurologist, was the clinic’s second director. Dr. Mays was inspired to help people in pain after losing both his parents to cancer during his teens. He remembered the toll pain took on them.

Drs. Mays and Schnapp’s philosophy of care is to treat the whole patient using a multidisciplinary approach, which may include medication, nerve blocks, physical therapy and psychological support.

“We’re a team – all working together for our patients,” Schnapp said. “They get comprehensive care. We deal with a multitude of symptoms. Pain is often the superficial indicator of what is really going on with the patient.”

Every employee – from doctors to front desk workers – is empathetic and knowledgeable about pain management. Sometimes a patient might confide a personal issue to a nurse or a receptionist may notice something about the patient’s behavior that, when appropriately reported to the treating physician, could help in treatment. Everyone contributes to caring for the clinic’s patients. “Every employee is required to keep their eyes open,” Mays said.

Pain is a complicated condition to treat, because it can be caused by all sorts of problems. “The medical cause of pain we usually find, but it may not be exactly where you were looking,” Mays said.

Many advances have been made in pain treatment, but Drs. Mays and Schnapp don’t rely solely on high-tech innovation. They listen to their patients and get to know them. Often emotional issues, sleep disorders, or misdiagnosis is at the root of the problem. The average patient has likely been seen by several other physicians before going to the Mays and Schnapp clinic.

“We promise our patients that we’ll do our best not to let them hurt,” Schnapp said. “We will do what it takes to try to control the pain.”

One main goal of the clinic is to restore function to each patient without causing additional pain. Physical therapy and regular exercise are an important part of the healing process. “Inactivity can make pain worse. Activity can make it better,” Mays said. “When you improve function you improve the quality of life.”

Drs. Mays and Schnapp have developed and patented rehabilitation devices to treat reflex sympathetic dystrophy, a chronic neurological syndrome that is characterized by severe pain.

An estimated 50 million Americans live with chronic pain, according to the American Academy of Pain Management. The Pain in America: A Research Report done in 2000 found that 60 percent of respondents said pain was something you had to live with and 28 percent said there was no solution for their pain.

That is simply not true, Drs. Mays and Schnapp said.

The Mays and Schnapp clinic helps patients with a variety of conditions, including reflex sympathetic dystrophy, pain from cancer, ruptured discs, shingles, spinal stenosis, arthritis, chronic neck and back pain, nerve pain and fibromyalgia.

If someone comments that it must be depressing and difficult to deal with patients in pain day after day, the physicians have this response: “We don’t deal with pain. We deal with pain relief.”

Published: April 25, 2005
Source: Dr. Kit Mays, Dr. Moacir Schnapp, The Mays and Schnapp Pain Clinic and Rehabilitation Center
Writer: Elizabeth Todd Bartholomew, MA, APR

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