Pain Recovery at Bay Recovery on A&E's "Intervention" Monday 1/18

Mardy's Note from January 2012; Please see the box at the bottom of this topic related to concerns raised and brought to my attention in 2011.

Jerry Rand clued me in a couple of weeks ago that he and his treatment facility, Bay Recovery -- Chemical Dependency and Pain Recovery Center of California, LLC,  will be part of a new "Intervention" episode on A&E on Monday, January 18th.  (link below in the Bay Recovery link for you to find the time in your area). 

I met Dr. Rand at the kickoff conference in Berkeley in July for The Chronic Pain Educational Documentary Series, where I was speaking on the subject of the You model from the home page of Lumigrate.com.  In general, empowerment of the medical consumer, with, in our case, progressive health education to go with it in the 'occupation' of health management today.  Since I have been an OTR and had chronic pain since the mid 1990s, I have a unique perspective on how to solve some of the medical difficulties people are having today.  The link for my blog about that from when I returned from that trip will follow for your information. 

I found Dr. Rand to be extremely knowledgeable and passionate about the subject of chronic pain.  "A committed professional."  He uses an 'integrative medicine' approach, which is what Lumigrate.com is based upon as well, so for a variety of reasons, I wanted YOU to get to know more about him and his work and facilities in California and perhaps tune in to the show tomorrow.  (Lumigrate home page You model 'joke' reference ... as ya might know, I do that a lot!)   Please read my blog post if you're interested, but here's the opening paragraph. 

"Doctors train patients to take pills for all their needs.  Doctors are trained to do this.  But in the end, the meds are more problem than the pain."  Dr. Jerry Rand, Medical Director of Bay Recovery Centers and Medical Clinic was a pleasure to hear speak and to get to know more informally later.  He is obviously an expert on chronic pain and it's treatment, and the addictions that unfortunately occur too frequently.  Stating it is 'disgraceful and cruel' what happens between doctors and patients in the escalating struggle that can happen with doctors and patients who originally were trying to treat pain, he impressed upon me his compassion toward people and his passion for his work.  He was a wealth of information, and I'm going to share what I can and also give the link to his clinic's website at the end.  (Link to the full blog post at the very bottom, below the Treatment Magazine segment I've cut and pasted in here for your educational pleasure and ease!)

From my perspective, which comes from what I've learned from that conference on top of my years hearing the doctors, psychologists, pain management specialists in trainings I receive in Grand Junction as a medical professional PLUS my very-good and progressive doctors recently, "pain management" and "mismanagement" is a HUGE issue right now.  And to add into it, everyone's talking about and very confused about medical cannabis right now. I'm very concerned about that topic with the fibromyalgia population, as a matter of fact, and hope we can have some future discussions in the Forum area about THAT as well!  

In general, acute pain medications being used for chronic pain has caused quite a problem for many people who are unaware that their medication regime might not be the most effective. (See video clips on our facebook pages from Dr Chris Young about this if you're curious about our history with this as well.) "Pain management" is a real specialty which, as Dr. Rand has said on a previous Intervention episode, requires a complement of aspects of treatment that must all be included for successful outcomes. 

I'm going to quote information from a Treatment Magazine, which you also can link to from the link I'm setting up for you here, to Dr. Rand's Bay Recovery.  (And then at the bottom the two links I've promised). 

Written by Patricia Devaney

March 2008

San Diego’s Bay Recovery Centers: Pictured above is one of Bay Recovery’s five homes, where residential care is delivered. Late last year, Dr. Jerry Rand joined the people on the critically acclaimed Interventions television show to help treat a very difficult case, one that was right up Dr. Rand’s alley. At well over 2 million viewers, the episode turned out to be the most widely watched in the show’s history, with the patient suffering from a viciously painful form of chronic and acute rheumatoid arthritis. As the owner, and lead pain specialist, at San Diego’s Bay Recovery Centers, Dr. Rand was ideally qualified to treat the woman, who after the successful intervention spent an equally successful treatment stay at Bay Recovery, only just recently having completed her care there. "There’s no question this was a very tough case," says Dr. Rand, whose innovative approaches to treating pain and addiction have been widely followed by medical colleagues throughout the nation, and, indeed, worldwide. "But we were able to put the arthritis into remission, while also treating our client for her addiction, teaching her how to deal with pain in the future in ways that would lessen her dependence on addictive pain killers." That there is an enormous medical problem in the treatment of pain - and, thus, also an enormous medical business opportunity - there can be no doubt, with Dr. Rand pointing out that $86 billion a year is spent treating pain, a figure that is just a few billion shy of what is spent annually on the treatment of cancer. And, in their efforts to alleviate the suffering of those in pain, doctors also prescribe an enormous amount of opiates, with Dr. Rand pointing to the fact that 86 million people are currently being prescribed opiates for one reason or another. "We are giving out way too many opiates, there is no question," says Dr. Rand. And this is where innovative places like Bay Recovery come in, offering treatment of chronic pain with cuttingedge modalities that address what are, more often than not, addiction issues that are just as acute and chronic as the pain that clients are suffering. Dr Jerry Rand, Bay Recovery Centers’ owner, and its renowned lead pain specialist. In an industry where claims of uniqueness proliferate, and very frequently fall short, Bay Recovery is indeed unique. What separates Bay Recovery from most centers is the deep and wide variety of medical talent the center can draw on from the thriving medical practice that is also part of the business. "We have an enormous talent pool that we utilize from the practice, and that deeply informs the care we offer at the center," says Bay Recovery CEO Phyllis Meagher, adding that the practice, which treats thousands of patients a year, has MD and PhD specialists in areas ranging from addiction to psychiatry and internists, as well as alternative practices like acupuncture and other Eastern medical approaches. All told, there are 15 specialists working together at the practice. And leading the pain practice, which fills a goodly portion of Bay Recovery’s 30 residential beds - which operate on the California 6-bed model - is Dr. Rand. Dr. Rand employs the latest pain research while treating his chronic pain patients. And at the core of his treatment modalities is the utilization of studies that show the use of narcotics, while actually alleviating pain on a physical level, also increases the perception of pain on the part of the patient, thus becoming, at some point, also potentially counterproductive in the treatment of pain. At Bay Recovery, clinicians use a variety of multi-disciplinary approaches to treating co-occurring chronic pain and addiction disorders, depending on the individual needs of clients as they enter treatment. Always, according to Dr. Rand, adapting modalities in an integrative manner.

Link to the news portion of Bay Recovery's website: www.bayrecovery.com/news.html

Link to my blog post from last summer about Dr. Rand at the Conference where we met: www.lumigrate.com/blog/pain-management-and-medication-addiction-bay-recoverys-jerry-rand-md

Remember ... we LOVE your COMMENTS HERE (add below) OR over at the Forum areas of Lumigrate.com. 

... Or phone calls -- when people are upset the call, I have found, and in this case they fear repercussions for being seen commenting SO here's what I have to say: 

Note from January 2012: I have been contacted by more than one former patient of Dr Rand's at Bay Recovery who have asked me to remove all information about him due to their concerns for others based upon their experiences. I appreciate that they are taking the time to research where he might be doing outreach to get his name heard, so thank YOU.  That is true 'generosity of time and energy' which might be translated into 'spirit'.  

I had encountered a change with Dr Rand's behaviors when interacting with me which were very different than how I had experienced him when we spent a day at a chronic pain conference together, so had stopped working to get information from him into Lumigrate at that time.  I have removed all the solo pieces he and his team had posted in the past in Forums but I have opted to keep this and one other piece but adding this disclaimer/caution, because it is "baby with bathwater" as this is an excellent resource for people.  If he was providing good information in the past which is included here and people can learn from it, that's one thing; using him as a physician would be another which I would want people to make their own decisions about.  

To help in your researching this provider (and I suggest you do this for all your providers) here's a link to the portion of the California Medical Board related to Dr Rand's current and past  http://www2.mbc.ca.gov/LicenseLookupSystem/PhysicianSurgeon/Lookup.aspx?licenseType=G&licenseNumber=25749. My apologies for not having done that step after we had met when Lumigrate was only two months 'live' -- I continue to learn with this enterprise and change my procedures just as I have as a medical consumer. Just because a big TV show uses him doesn't mean there's a good history.  Not something I had to know as a woman with fibromyalgia or an OT practicing in Colorado! 

There is a Forum for Chronic Pain Management, which is: www.lumigrate.com/forums/collaborative-care-discussions/chronic-pain-management

Dr Rand and his staff had posted information there in the past and I have removed it.  As I stated above, I am electing to leave some things in at Lumigrate because to remove them is in a way, like taking away history and you can't learn from things if we never learned of things that had not gone as planned or desired.  The ways that some pieces at Lumigrate are 'integrated' and linked to/from would also be problematic.  I have worked to get another provider who specializes in addictions and pain and there is information from a Judi Larson, who is a therapist and CAC-III who became certified as a spirituality coach and is working with people remotely through a new website endeavor; I know her personally as she is in my community of Grand Junction, Colorado.  I have not found another provider who is an 'addictionologist' with physician's background at this time. I asked an MD in Steamboat Springs, Colorado but she was going off to do a mission for her church in another country and didn't have time, though she was interested.  For everything you see on Lumigrate, which is time consuming in and of itself, there is much I do behind the scenes, and I work tirelessly and also try to keep myself reasonably well, as I am in this for the long haul.  I don't want anyone to go through what I have gone through and I don't want anyone to go through what the people who have contacted me have gone through, much of it was from providers before they sought out Dr Rand's assistance.   Thank you for reading.