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Mary Vargas spent her last pain-free moments driving down a country road to visit a Connecticut flower farm. She was 23 and newly married, a law student about to start a summer job. It was the day after Independence Day, 1996. It also was the day her independence from doctors and hospitals would end. Vargas stopped to make a left into the parking lot. A driver who was admiring the scenery plowed into the rear of her car. Vargas' head whipped back and forth like a ball on a spring, damaging her spine. The injury transformed her into one of millions of Americans tormented by chronic pain. "My husband describes pain as almost being a third person in our marriage," she says. As many as 40 million people may share Vargas' plight. A new USA TODAY/ABC News/Stanford University Medical Center poll indicates that 19% of American adults — almo st 1 in 5 — say they suffer from chronic pain; 44% have acute, or short-term, pain. Half of the 1,204 respondents cite the source of their discomfort as a medical injury or condition such as joint pain, heart disease or cancer. (The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.) |