As a spine surgeon, I have witnessed thousands of patients navigate the profound disruption that chronic pain inflicts upon their lives. While my work centers on the mechanical—compressed nerves, herniated discs, unstable vertebrae—I have come to understand that pain’s true devastation extends far beyond the physical realm. Pain is a great thief. It steals not just comfort, but something far more precious: it robs people of their presence in their own lives.
The theft occurs on multiple registers. First, pain diminishes functionality—the simple mechanics of moving through the world become labored, uncertain, constrained. Tasks once performed without thought now require planning, accommodation, or become impossible altogether. But this is merely the surface loss.
More insidiously, pain erodes emotional valence. It drains the color from experience, flattening the landscape of feeling. Joy becomes muted, enthusiasm exhausts itself quickly, and irritability creeps in to fill the spaces where patience and warmth once resided. Relationships strain under this emotional compression, not from lack of love, but from the sheer weight of enduring.
Yet the deepest theft—the one I believe matters most—is the theft of attention. Pain becomes an all-consuming interface between the sufferer and their experience of life. It stands as a distorting lens through which everything must pass. A conversation with a spouse, a child’s laughter, a beautiful sunset—all are experienced through the static of discomfort, their clarity diminished, their immediacy stolen.
This constant intrusion cultivates a mind oriented entirely toward escape. The person in chronic pain develops an almost reflexive aversion to the present moment, because the present moment hurts. They become preoccupied with what might relieve them, what position might ease the discomfort, what distraction might provide temporary respite. In this way, pain traps its victims in a paradox: the more it dominates their attention, the more they seek to escape attention itself—to be anywhere but here, anyone but themselves.
This is where the philosophical weight of pain reveals itself most clearly. To be human is to be present—to engage authentically with our circumstances, to connect deeply with those we love, to participate fully in the brief, unrepeatable moments that constitute our lives. Pain sabotages this fundamental human capacity. It doesn’t merely hurt; it separates us from ourselves and from others, leaving us isolated in a perpetual struggle against our own embodied experience.
My role as a surgeon, then, extends beyond the technical. Yes, I decompress nerves and stabilize spines. But the deeper purpose of this work is to help people transcend their suffering by restoring what pain has stolen. When successful, surgery doesn’t simply eliminate discomfort—it returns patients to themselves. It gives them back their attention, allowing them to re-engage with the world without the constant distorting presence of pain.
I have seen patients cry not because their pain is gone, but because they can suddenly hear their grandchildren clearly, can focus on a conversation without constant distraction, can experience a moment of joy without it being immediately eclipsed by physical suffering. They describe it as waking up, as returning, as being able to breathe again. What they’re describing is the restoration of presence—the ability to inhabit their own lives fully.
This is why I do this work. Not to wage war against pain as an abstract enemy, but to help individuals reclaim what rightfully belongs to them: their functionality, their emotional richness, and most importantly, their capacity to be present. In a world that already pulls our attention in countless directions, pain should not be allowed to steal what remains. Every person deserves to engage authentically with their existence, unobscured by the tyranny of chronic suffering.
The operating room, in this light, becomes more than a place of technical intervention. It becomes a threshold—a point of potential return. And while not every surgery achieves this transcendence, the possibility of restoration makes the pursuit meaningful. For in helping someone transcend their pain, we offer something profound: the chance to come home to themselves, to be present again in their own irreplaceable lives.
Written by Dr. Lon Baronne II, Orthopedic Spine Surgeon