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CHEYENNE -- Chronic pain!
More than 30 million Americans suffer from it. Each year, it costs billions of dollars in medical costs and billions more in lost productivity, but the real cost is in the millions of broken lives.
To make matters worse, most people suffering from chronic pain had to seek relief from pain centers in larger metropolitan centers such as Denver or suffer in silence. But now there is an alternative -- a new medical team called Pain Consultants of the Rockies has offices in Cheyenne, Laramie, Fort Collins and Windsor and a growing practice in three states.
"People are sitting home in a great deal of pain because either they are unaware that treatment is available or it hasn't been offered them through their primary-care doctor because their primary-care doctor's not aware of what's available," lamented Dr. Harlan Ribnik, one of the founding partners of Pain Consultants. "We hope in time to reach more of these folks."
Ribnik is the first to concede that he and his associates, Dr. Chris Fernon and Dr. Ray Lansing, can't ease everybody's pain or offer complete relief from pain, but they are trying through the latest in pain-management techniques.
"We strive to offer a level of pain relief that will allow them to be more active and to get closer to...