Chronic pain should not be treated in the same way as acute pain. Chronic pain is more complex and its treatment should reflect that complexity. A series of Ketamine infusions can make a significant impact on baseline pain levels and decrease the incidence of pain flares. Additionally, it is our goal at Transcend to not only treat your pain but also address the toll that living with a chronic pain condition may have had on your mental wellbeing. By working with a therapist during the process of receiving ketamine infusion therapy most clients are able to experience greater quality of life and reductions in symptoms of depression, anxiety and PTSD that often accompany chronic pain conditions.
Chronic pain can have a devastating effect on your life. Not only does it cause you constant discomfort and limited enjoyment of daily activities, but it also negatively affects your ability to work and maintain relationships with those you love.
Traditional pain treatments can be ineffective, resulting in unwanted side effects and sometimes developing into life-altering addiction to painkillers or opioids.
Transcend Health Solutions offers a different approach to pain management. Our holistic method uses ketamine infusion in tandem with mental health counseling (known as Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy or “KAP”) so you can manage chronic pain and get back to normal life.
Sustained chronic pain can have many negative effects on your life, both physically and psychologically. When you live with chronic pain you may experience:
These immediate effects ripple outward, impacting all areas of your life. You may find the longer you deal with chronic pain, the more your relationships suffer and life enjoyment wanes.
The standard treatment for chronic pain care includes nerve blockers, opiates, and surgeries, all of which can have destructive side effects.
Nerve blockers may work to manage acute pain but are often ineffective for chronic pain conditions. Surgery may provide relief, but it is not a solution for many chronic pain conditions and can be costly and dangerous.
The worst consequence of standard pain care comes in the form of prescription opiates used to manage pain. Opioid addiction resulted in over 112,000 overdose deaths in 2023, making it the leading cause of accidental death in the U.S.
Ketamine therapy offers you a different approach to pain care that doesn't come with the negative consequences of traditional treatments.
Transcend Health Solutions’ ketamine-assisted therapy combines intravenous (IV) ketamine infusions with access to a licensed counselor to give you the physical and mental tools you need to break free from unhelpful thinking patterns that affect one’s ability to overcome chronic pain.
Ketamine is a long-standing, trusted pain medicine that has been used as an anesthetic, analgesic, and sedative since it was first synthesized in 1963. Although it was initially used as an anesthetic, the mood enhancing properties of ketamine therapy were discovered in the 1990s when researchers found that ketamine helped patients suffering from depression. These positive treatment effects allow pain patients to move beyond chronic pain and improve depression to build healthy, fulfilling lives.
When administered in a controlled treatment setting, ketamine is safe and effective and can "reset" pain sensitivity experienced in chronic pain conditions.
When you arrive for your ketamine treatment (done by IV, ketamine infusion not a ketamine injection), expect to remain at our clinic for approximately two hours.
While your IV infusion treatment may only last for about 35-45 minutes, you will continue to dialogue with a therapist after your infusion. Further, because symptoms like drowsiness, dizziness, and mild nausea may persist immediate following cessation of your infusion, we require patients to remain under our care until these short-term side-effects subside. For many patients, they experience a sense of calm and relaxation during their treatment, a feeling that can persist for days and weeks after ketamine assisted therapy.
At Transcend Health Solutions, we offer pain care for the following conditions, including:
If you struggle with chronic pain caused by a different condition, reach out to our team for a free phone consultation to discuss your situation, and we will assess our ability to help treat your condition.
Ketamine for pain care is a fast working, practical approach to managing symptoms of chronic discomfort that keep you from living the life you want.
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Your peace of mind is worth the time.
Ketamine Infusion Therapy/Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy is ideal for people suffering from treatment resistant depression, anxiety, suicidal ideations, OCD, PTSD and chronic pain conditions with no relief from other medications or therapeutic interventions.
Ketamine is a very short acting medication. Generally speaking, any side effect experienced from Ketamine will be short-term and will subside after the infusion has stopped. It can be normal to have slight increases in blood pressure and heart rate during an infusion. A small percentage of patients do experience some nausea during or right after the infusion. Nausea, elevated blood pressure and heart rate are easily managed through IV medications during the session should these arise. Most patients who do not eat for three hours prior to the session, and keep their eyes closed or use eyeshades during the session, will not experience any nausea.
In high doses and/or with very frequent administration Ketamine can be irritating to the bladder. For the purposes of facilitating KAP, doses of ketamine are low and most patients will only do one or two sessions per week. In this dosing and frequency there is an extremely low risk of developing bladder irritation caused by the administration of Ketamine. We have never had a patient develop bladder issues from this treatment at our clinic.
During your medical intake, we will determine if you need to alter your medication regimen prior to treatment. There are only a few medications that should be altered prior to initiating treatment. For instance, stimulant medications, benzodiazepines, and medications like Lamictal may need to be held or adjusted prior to treatment.
We request that you don't eat a meal within 3 hours of the start of your appointment time.
After receiving a ketamine infusion, it is normal to feel slightly tired or loopy for several hours. It would be unsafe to drive after a session so we do require that you arrange a family/friend to pick you up or utilize a taxi or other ride service.
It is best to provide time to fully process the therapeutic content that may have been worked through in the session. We encourage our clients to journal and integrate in the time following the session.
At Transcend, it is our goal to have this treatment be a highly transformative, short term intervention for you.
One of the reasons to undergo the KAP process with a therapist vs. receiving Ketamine infusion or injection-only is because most people are able to avoid needing maintenance treatment long-term with KAP. When symptom reduction has occurred through the chemical effects of ketamine only, there is often a need to re-administer ketamine every 20-30 days to keep symptoms at bay. With KAP, symptom reduction is more often secondary to therapeutic progress which does not dwindle in time, and therefore maintenance treatments are often not required.
The majority of our clients will reach sub-clinical levels of distress after an average of 6-10 sessions. Most of our clients will discharge from our care after these sessions and won't need any form of maintenance therapy. Some people do benefit from revisiting KAP intermittently throughout the year following the initial series as needed to continue therapeutic progress but this is not the most common treatment plan at Transcend.
For chronic pain treatment, it is more difficult to keep baseline pain levels down and flare-ups without maintenance infusions ongoing. The majority of patients with chronic pain will do sessions every 30-90 days to keep the baseline pain levels reduced.
You can expect to be at the clinic for approximately 2 hours. There are many factors that influence the length of the infusion but most patients will receive a 35-50 minute ketamine infusion. Your Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy trained therapist and a registered nurse will be by your side throughout your entire time during the infusion. Your therapist will be with you before to help set goals for the session, during for guidance and processing, and after for continued therapy, integration, and reflection.
Have another question? Don't hesitate to reach out to us.
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