All during the week when I prepared to write this column, I was in pain. This pain had no clear reason for visiting me – I was not sick – but it made for a difficult few days. The experience does, however, enable me to speak with more authority about pain than I would like to have.

A Gallup poll taken last summer discovered that nine out of every ten Americans experience pain at least once a month. Fifteen percent of them report the pain to be severe.

The same poll found that more than half of Americans over 65 experience pain daily. And a staggering 88 percent attribute their pain to growing older.

As a result of this assumption, many people do not talk with their doctors about pain. Of those who do, less than half think their doctors fully understand how it makes them feel.

Only a little more than one-third of older people, the survey also found, will even talk with family members and friends about their pain. And two-thirds of Americans in all age groups will see a doctor only when they cannot stand the pain any longer.

These findings apply especially to chronic pain, the kind of pain that continues for a long time. Since more than one-half of people over 65 suffer from some kind of arthritis, this disease is frequently seen as the cause of pain.

Several national organizations, including the American Society on Aging and the Arthritis Foundation, have begun a campaign to help people control their pain better and improve their communication with health care professionals about it. In that effort, these agencies have published a brochure called “Speaking of Pain” that offers “tips to help you talk with your doctor about pain.” (To get this brochure, call 800 283-7800.)

The authors of the brochure advise preparing for visits to your doctor by giving thought to questions about where you feel pain, how often, how strongly, and what makes your pain feel better or worse. These are commonsense issues but many people go to their health clinics without thinking them through.

When actually with your doctor, you are advised to ask questions such as the following: What do you think about the options for relief such as exercise, meditation, and so-called alternative therapies? What side effects should I expect with certain treatments? How can various forms of exercise help me?.

Throughout, you might benefit by taking notes to help you remember the doctor’s advice. I would also suggest bringing along a friend or family member with whom you can listen to the doctor’s advice and then discuss it.

The brochure writers end with what they call “the last word on pain.” To quote their conclusion: “You don’t have to live with pain. Follow the suggestions in this booklet and work with your health care professional to relieve your pain.”

The medical director of the Arthritis Foundation, Jack Klippel, reinforces this point of view for elders: “Pain is not a natural part of growing older,” he says, “and is not simply a fact of life.”

To assess just how realistic this outlook is, I contacted one professional health care provider and two retired women who have experienced serious pain.

Robert Furman, as a staff physician at the New England Rehabilitation Hospital, deals with many people in pain. He too does not believe that pain should be considered a natural part of aging. For him, the important issue is “to determine if it represents a disease process that can be remediated or not.”

Dr. Furman feels grateful that so many resources are now available to help people control pain. At the same time, he says “We live in an overly medicated society and I want to avoid simply adding one more item to their medicine cabinet.”

He also makes a distinction between pain and suffering. Part of his job as a physician is to talk with patients and help them sort out the differences. Even with pain, many people manage to keep their sense of themselves intact and carry on their lives rather well.

Asked how she has coped with pain, Joan Keenan gives a lot of credit to her physician, Peter Gross, at Massachusetts General Hospital. “He is very sympathetic and interested in what I have to say,” she reports. “He gives me his complete attention.”

Joan has found that pain “can take over your life” so “you can’t give in to it and have to keep going.”

This comes close to the attitude of Kathryn McCarthy who thinks “the question is what direction you go in seeking help. You can never stop looking for a solution.”

She notes that more and more hospitals nowadays have established pain units, important resources for patients. For her part, she feels fortunate to have a skilled and sympathetic personal physician who has helped her find remedies for her pain and its attendant problems.

Physicians like those mentioned here, and patients such as the two women interviewed, point the way toward doctor/patient collaboration as a creative response to pain.

Richard Griffin