I didn't, personally, face too many barriers. I had no hesitation at all, initially, to relay this to my physician because I was scared it was the recurrence of the cancer. Once we had determined that was not the case, I was fairly willing to take some medications. I wasn't particularly into being stoic. At one point when it looked like it wasn't going to go away even though the medication was controlling it, I was sent back to see my surgeon to consider whether or not a nerve block might be appropriate. His comments were that he didn't know anything about this, but sure he thought a nerve block was a good idea. And as we explored that a little further with some of the experts in the field and they said I was very fortunate that medication was working. Leave it alone. Sometimes it is a trial and error thing with nerve pain. It is the most difficult to control. I was very, very fortunate that the first drug we tried worked.

Additional Medical Information:

• Nerve Blocks
• Reluctance to report pain