03/12/2006       [ Listen to the whole show]

The History of Pain
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Pain and its treatment have evolved rapidly over the last forty years, starting with the hospice movement in the 1960s. Historian Marcia Meldrum guides Queena Kim through the history of hurt at UCLA's biomedical library, which houses a special collection on pain.

Pain and Color
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Blacks and whites may come to doctors experiencing the same type of pain, but that doesn't mean they get the same diagnosis or treatment. Queena Kim asks Dr. Carmen Green of the University of Michigan why there are racial disparities in how doctors view patients' pain.

Cancer Diary
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Dr. Susan Stone works in the emergency room at County USC General Hospital in Boyle Heights. She felt a flash of pain one night that led to a cancer diagnosis - and a transformation in how doctors in general, Dr. Stone in particular, approach the pain and comfort of patients.

Dr. Stone will head up the new Palliative Care unit at County USC General Hospital in Boyle Heights starting this summer.

Jolene Siana
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Jolene Siana was 17 when she started writing letters to her new favorite musician: a guy named Kevin Ogilvie (aka Ogre) who fronted the seminal '80s goth band Skinny Puppy. Her letters are like diary entries about suicide, depression and about how Jolene became a "cutter": a relatively common form of psychologically-induced self-injury.

Jolene used razor blades in a diligent routine of self-mutilation, where her inner pain would physically manifest - first on her arms, then later on her legs. Jolene's letters to Ogre have now become the book, Go Ask Ogre: Letters from a Deathrock Cutter. It's a tender, tragic chronicle of Jolene's late teens and early twenties.

Song: "As It Is When It Was"
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...by New Order from the album Brotherhood

King Drew Dental Clinic
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Unwittingly, dental care has become a fat, bold, brightly-colored line between the haves and the have-nots in these United States. If you want to pin down someone's past, present and future, check out their teeth. Ayala Ben-Yehuda spent a morning at the emergency dental clinic at King Drew Hospital in South LA.

The Day My Mother's Head Exploded
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Hannah Palin knows how pain can change a person in a single instant. Her mother survived a brain aneurysm only to emerge with a completely different personality. "The Day My Mother's Head Exploded" was produced by Hannah Palin and comes to us through the public radio website Transom.org.

Song: "First Day of My Life"
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...by Bright Eyes from the album I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning