TME Tuesday: Music To Assist with Pain

Yesterday's day off ended up being a bit more painful than I thought it would be. I coughed and tore one of my oblique muscles. It hurts lots, mostly when I cough, but also when I twist my torso in any direction. This is a problem because I have to be able to assist with behaviors of concern, if we have any, and I don't know that I will be able to do so without significant pain. I was able to sleep with the assistance of a positioning pillow and eventually finding a position where I was relatively pain free, but this has added some complications to my existence. As a result, I am talking about what I know about music for pain today.

This is not something that I know much about, other than some information offered in AMTA presentations a long time ago and personal experience, so note that my information may not be the most up-to-date. What I know is that we have found that people who listen to music before and after surgery often have less need for pain medication than those who do not. I have had three surgeries and have never been offered music to help. I did get a chance to listen to music during an MRI and also during a CT scan, but never for surgery. To be completely honest, with the two surgeries that I was able to plan, I didn't even think about having a playlist available for me.

What I know is that music can have analgesic properties.

I have a pretty high pain tolerance. I am always off pain medications before the doctors think I will be off of pain medications. I have walked on broken foot bones and my gallbladder didn't cause me any pain until it was completely blocked and had to be removed immediately. When I experience significant pain, I always think about how much damage have I really done. I looked up these types of strains and sprains and the common treatment is ice and heat and gentle stretches, so I will do those things and monitor what is happening. The general prognosis is that these types of strains stick around for about six weeks, so there's that.

So, for the next six weeks, I will be working on some music playlists for pain tolerance.

Of course, these playlists are for a music therapist, so there may not be much transfer from my iPod to others', but I will see what will help. I'm not entirely sure where to start, so I'll start with my knowledge of music and myself to get going. I will start with music that I love - things that I know really well to help me relax into the structure of the music, and then I will program things with some knowledge of what tasks I need to do by the end of the playlist. There can be playlists for sleep and for work and for just because times.

Let's start with the sleep playlist. I do not do particularly well trying to go to sleep to music, so my playlist has to be something that is very familiar. New music demands my attention which is the complete opposite of trying to relax into sleeping. I will be looking for instrumental versions of familiar and loved songs - things that I know so well I can sing them without thinking about them. I will use the ISO-principle for this playlist - starting from a place of more complexity and energy and then moving to a place of simplicity and less energy. Chances are that I will not use this playlist very often. I don't tend to listen to music to go to sleep, but the exercise will be interesting. I definitely need a playlist to assist me in doing my core-strengthening exercises, so that is one that I am more likely to use.

Playlists for exercise routines are a completely different animal. For these types of playlists, I want to make a list of the exercises that I have to do, the duration of each stretch/exercise per repetition, and the number of times I am supposed to complete each stretch/exercise. This will help me figure out what music to use. Timing is essential to some of my prescribed exercises - "Hold this stretch for 5-10 seconds" - so I need something in the playlist to help me figure out how much time to hold positions. I think it might be easier to have different songs for each exercise. I could then coordinate the exercises to the beats per minute and have enough time in each song to complete the program. For this playlist, familiarity with the music is not important. The most important element will be the tempo of the music which will shape the timing of the exercises.

There are so many things to consider when you curate playlists for other people. I have never been tasked with making playlists for people in pain, so I am not sure if my thoughts here are things that those music therapists would do, but it makes sense to me based on my knowledge of music. I will see what happens with my lists and will adjust as needed. That's what I can do at the moment.

Time to head to work to see how this will all work for me. I have one more week before I have to go through physical behavior management training again, so I'm going to hope that I don't have to assist or initiate any sort of physical behavior management situation until this tear heals a bit more. I'm telling you that my life is getting more complicated because my body is breaking down - one weird way after another...