Imagine having a disease that doctors can't cure. Worse yet, one where they think you may actually be faking the symptoms to get off work or out of school.

There's no growth or lesion to point to; no swelling or broken limb. At times you have trouble convincing yourself that you're sick, except for the pain. It just won't go away and gets so bad it makes you question whether life is worth continuing.

For thousands of people living in our midst, the scenario described above is anything but hypothetical. It's a day-in, day-out reality as they struggle to cope with chronic pain.

"We've all had pain. We believe we know what it is is," says Dr. Ellen Thompson, an anesthetist at the Ottawa Hospital who's treated chronic pain for more than 25 years. "But you probably didn't have chronic pain, which we know is a disease of the nervous system," she tells reporter Holly Lake in a special Sun series that starts today.

Chronic pain is defined as pain that persists more than six months, but as one medical expert told Lake because it's a silent epidemic, we don't pay attention to it. It's not dramatic enough -- no one's dropping dead.

"Pain is not sexy," says Dr. Roman Jovey, president of the Canadian Pain Society. "It doesn't have the sex appeal of other medical conditions," like heart disease and cancer.

Shockingly, despite the prevalence of chronic pain as an illness, there is an acute shortage of treatment facilities, and nowhere is the problem more serious than here in the national capital. The waiting list for treatment can stretch to 2-3 years in Ottawa and the lack of facilities is condemning some patients to a lifetime of needless suffering.

There are real costs -- as well as human costs -- associated with chronic pain. According to the Chronic Pain Association of Canada, the cost to our national economy is $10 billion per year. "It hits individuals in the most productive years of their lives," says Dr. Angela Mailis-Gagnon, director of the comprehensive pain program at Toronto Western Hospital.

In a country like ours, where medical resources are already stretched to the limit, we have to do better. That means recognizing chronic pain for what it is -- a devastating illness that needs better diagnosis and treatment.

The medical community and the health care system as a whole cannot ignore the problem or continue to give it short shrift. We have been given a wakeup call. Now it's time to act on it.

We like the idea of reducing the application of pesticides in the city of Ottawa, particularly when chemicals are being used just to give someone a leg up on the neighbours in the my-lawn-is-better-than-yours competition.

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