When Jo Cameron had
surgery for arthritis in
her hand, her anesthe-
siologist found she felt
no pain and referred
the Scottish woman to a
geneticist, who discov-
ered she has two rare
mutations. Researchers
are investigating muta-
tions that deaden or
heighten the sensation
of pain to learn how
it’s transmitted. The
electrophoresis results
below show the pain
insensitivity mutation
in Cameron’s DNA (1)
and her son’s (3), but
not in her mother’s (2)
and daughter’s (4).
RIGHT: ROBIN HAMMOND
BELOW: JAMES COX, UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE LONDON
1234
ORE THAN THREE DECADES AGO,
when Tom Norris was fighting can-
cer, he underwent radiation ther-
apy on his groin and his left hip.
His cancer disappeared and hasn’t
come back. But Norris was left with
a piercing ache that burned from
his hip up his spine to his neck.
Since then, Norris, now 70, has
never had a single day free from
pain. It cut short his career as an
aircraft maintenance officer in the
U.S. Air Force. It’s been his constant companion, like the cane
he uses to walk. On bad days, the pain is so excruciating, he’s
bedridden. Even on the best days, it severely limits his abil-
ity to move about, preventing him from doing the simplest
chores, like taking out the garbage. Sometimes the pain is
so overpowering, Norris says, that his breathing becomes
labored. “It’s like I’m drowning.”
Norris, who lives in a Los Angeles suburb, spoke to me
from a long, cushioned bench, which allowed him to go from
sitting to lying flat on his back. A tall and genial man, he’s
become adept at wearing a mask of serenity to hide his pain.
I never saw him wince. When his agony is especially intense,
his wife of 31 years, Marianne, says she can tell by a certain
stillness she sees in his eyes.
When the pain began to take over his life, Norris sought
solace in speaking out. He became an advocate for chronic
pain sufferers and started a support group. And for 30 years
he has searched for relief. For many of those years he was on
fentanyl, a powerful opioid that he says covered his pain “like
a thick blanket” but kept him “basically horizontal and zoned
out.” He has tried acupuncture, which was somewhat helpful,
as well as bee stings, magnet therapy, and faith healing, which
weren’t. Norris now manages his pain with physical therapy,
which improves his mobility, and steroids injected into his
spine, which quiet his inflamed nerves.
Like Norris, nearly 50 million people in the United States
and millions more around the world live with chronic pain.
The causes are diverse, from cancer to diabetes to neurological
illnesses and other ailments. But they share a common source
of suffering: physical agony that disrupts their lives, intermit-
tently or all the time. It’s not uncommon for cancer patients
experiencing severe, unrelenting pain after chemotherapy to
opt out of treatment in favor of the ultimate salve of dying.
M
52 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
