The story blended the latest scientific thinking on severe, chronic pain, especially in cancer survivors, with the all-too-common barriers that patients debilitated by pain face: that they are addicts, or crazy, or should “get over it” (i.e., they survived cancer; what more do they want?) “Help for Where It Hurts” broke ground in countering the popular media/entertainment view that anyone who needs opiates regularly must be “cured” of this, and in emphasizing the importance of an individualized and multifaceted (not just pharmacological) approach to treatment.
