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I hate to sound like I'm beating a dead dog, but I've been writing about chronic pain management for five years. I still receive e-mails from well-meaning readers telling me of a great new doctor, pill, procedure or treatment that I should try.

My columns about chronic pain aren't a fishing expedition for another attempt to control my pain. I'm on a pain-control regimen that does a fairly good job. But chronic pain-sufferers are never completely pain-free. Ever.

The points I've been trying to convey are about the discrimination, bias, judgmental attitudes and insensitivity that are a part of every chronic-pain sufferer's life. I've talked about how the chronic pain populaces are treated like liars and drug addicts. I squealed about how the Drug Enforcement Administration treats pain management physicians as criminals, because they prescribe the correct amount of medication. I've lectured about the rings of fire we endure to prove chronic pain exists. I've hammered on the destructive force of a noncaring society that believes Americans should suck it up when it comes to pain - John Wayne-style.

Yet I receive e-mails about how I haven't tried this or that.

One of my personal favorites is my lack of faith. Since I became a wheelchair-user 32 years ago, not a year goes by without someone telling me to pray a novena, visit some place with "special" water or see a particular holy person who could get me dancing just by a laying-on of hands.

I don't mean to be rude, but I don't want to hear about it.

When I was hospitalized late last year, the biggest issue in my recovery was pain control. The hospital didn't carry my usual medication for my existing pain, so I was given a substitute that was 30 percent lower in strength. On top of that, my team of physicians was afraid to give me additional pain medication, because the amount was so large they were afraid of respiratory failure.

They couldn't understand that giving me a high but proper dose of pain medication would give me relief without the side effects of dying or something. I received nothing for my surgical pain. I went home four days early just so I could get back on my regular meds and get the extra medication I needed to recover.

The need for thorough and comprehensive pain-treatment therapy has been ignored for too long. With the aging of the baby boomers is coming the rise of chronic pain and disability patients. New and existing physicians, therapists and nurses require a mandatory year of pain-management therapy instruction that's realistic and truthful.

This painful problem needs to be at the head of every health program. Chronic pain affects the mind and body and deserves attention and respect.

Suffering in silence is no way to go through life.