My first own blog!!! I still don’t believe it that I am about to write a blog expressing my thoughts and my patients’ concerns. Let me first introduce my self- Panayiota or Pana it’s easier for the people here because they can’t pronounce my full name 😉. A physiotherapist from Cyprus who has just begun this amazing journey into MSc at University of Nottingham! After 5 years of practicing, I felt that I had more questions than answers especially questions regarding pain, so I decided to explore this by taking this Master journey! I thought that I knew a lot of things about physiotherapy but this MSc changed my mind, and the way I was thinking! Well Socrates was absolutely right when he said “The more I learn, the less I realize I know” this is exactly how I am feeling at the moment, and this is how my journey begins!!   

I think it was the first week in the lecture room, sitting in the class hearing Roger talking about pain and chronic pain– I was so focus on what he was explaining, because  chronic pain was always something that I couldn’t fully understand, and suddenly  Roger  blew my mind with  an explanation that pain is in the head!!! What? Wait Roger what do you mean? Are you sure about this? (Of course Pana he is sure, he is a University Professor!!) I thought that my patients were in pain because of prolonged tissue damage and now you just messed up with my brain! Socrates was so right! So I then realized that this is my opportunity to learn and understand more about pain and chronic pain.

Keeping that in mind I can now understand why some of my patients were in continuous pain. I am not saying that I am a pain expert now but at least I can understand the background of it.  I am thinking of my patients asking me, why me? What is wrong with me? Why I’m I still in pain? Can you do something else for me? Back then I couldn’t understand much and most of the times I couldn’t give them specific answers because I didn’t know much about it. But thanks to Roger,Heather and Dr. Paul I can now say that I am able to understand more than before!

After all these I decided that my blog will provide information about pain, pain understanding and pain education! Well let’s make this journey pain free, and make your pain your best friend!!!