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Our highly trained specialists are available 24/7 via phone and on weekdays can assist through video calls and online chat. We connect patients, caregivers, and family members with essential services and resources at every step of their cancer journey. Ask us how you can get involved and support the fight against cancer. Some of the topics we can assist with include:
For medical questions, we encourage you to review our information with your doctor.
Only you know how much pain you are having. Telling your cancer care team when you’re in pain and describing it the best way you can is very important. This will help them come up with the best plan to control your pain.
Pain is different for every person with cancer. A plan to control pain needs to consider the person's diagnosis, type and stage of cancer, other health problems, medicines being taken, personal response to pain, and other personal choices.
Pain can also be an early warning sign of the side effects of your cancer treatment or some other problem. Call your cancer care team to talk about how best to treat your pain.
Your cancer care team will follow a set of steps to develop a pain control plan that works best for you. You should expect your doctor and cancer care team to develop a good pain control plan that works for you by:
The first step is for your cancer care team to talk with you about any pain you may be having. This is a pain assessment. Describe your pain to your cancer care team giving them as much detail as possible.
The cancer care team will ask you questions and use certain tools to help you describe your pain. They will want to know the type of pain you are having, where it is, how bad it is, and how it may be affecting your activities and life. Talk to your family and friends about your pain. They can help you describe it to your cancer care team.
It might be helpful to keep a diary or other record to keep track of details about your pain and what works to ease it. You can share this record with those caring for you. This will help them figure out what method of pain control works best for you. Your records can include:
Using a Daily Pain Diary might help you record details of your pain. You can download or print a Pain Diary from our website.
Using a pain scale might help you describe how much pain you’re feeling. For example, here is a Pain Intensity Scale that is commonly used.
To use it try to give your pain level a number from 0 to 10. If you have no pain, give it a 0. As the numbers get higher, they stand for pain that’s getting worse. A 10 means the worst pain you can imagine. For instance, you could say, “Right now, my pain is a 7 on a scale of 0 to 10.”
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
No pain |
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Worst pain |
You can use the rating scale to describe:
Some pain rating scales use faces instead of numbers, and these may help you better describe how bad your pain is. Ask your cancer care team if they have another pain rating tool to use if you don't think numbers are the best way to describe it.
Give your cancer care team, family, and friends details about your pain:
Your cancer care team may also need to know other details, like:
Your cancer care team will work with you to find ways to manage your pain.
Choosing the best pain medicine should include what medicines work best for the type of pain you have, how bad your pain is, what side effects you might get, how active you are, and what other medicines and treatments you are getting.
Here are some questions you might want to ask about the pain medicines your cancer care team suggests.
Most people with cancer can be helped by services from a palliative care team. One of the goals of palliative care is to manage pain and other symptoms. The specialists that are part of a palliative care team can help to develop a pain control plan that works for you.
A palliative care team has some of the same people as on a cancer care team, but often has others. The team might include doctors, nurses, mental health specialists, social workers, chaplains, pharmacists, and dietitians.
There are things you can do to help make sure your pain control plan works well:
The American Cancer Society medical and editorial content team
Our team is made up of doctors and oncology certified nurses with deep knowledge of cancer care as well as journalists, editors, and translators with extensive experience in medical writing.
National Cancer Care Center Network (NCCN). Adult Cancer Pain. Version 2.2023. Accessed November 16, 2023 at https://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/pdf/pain.pdf.
National Cancer Institute (NCI). Cancer Pain (PDQ®) – Patient Version. 2023. Accessed November 20, 2023 at https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/side-effects/pain/pain-hp-pdq
Last Revised: March 29, 2024
American Cancer Society medical information is copyrighted material. For reprint requests, please see our Content Usage Policy.
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