Almost 52 million Americans have dealt with chronic pain, a debilitating pain that persists for months or years.

The Cleveland Clinic is taking a different approach at treating chronic pain with a well-known drug that's typically used as an anesthetic agent.

At 19, Emily Ryan was your typical college freshman, playing tennis, taking classes and enjoying her friends.

"I went to bed completely healthy, no issues, and I woke up completely paralyzed from the waist below and had peed the bed," Ryan said.

That was the start of her 10-year journey with chronic pain.

"The conventional treatment of chronic pain is through the biomedical approach. So, here's a medication, here's an injection, here's a surgery, oftentimes, not addressing the other components that are associated with it," Comprehensive Pain Recovery Dr. Pavan Tankha said.

That's why Tankha took a different approach at treating Emily, he used ketamine.

"You would come into the infusion suite, we would start an IV, and then based on your weight, we would infuse an amount of ketamine over 40 minutes. We repeat that process five days in a row. The pain relief effects of ketamine may be immediate, or it can take up to three to four weeks to show up," Tankha said. 

Since starting her ketamine treatments, Emily is back doing things she loves, and even started a flower business.

"What's really special about us, at the end of all our events, all our flowers go back to health care workers and patients. Ketamine has truly given me my life back," Ryan said.

Tankha says patients with unstable angina, uncontrollable high blood pressure, very significant coronary artery disease, extensive liver failure, psychosis or delirium are not good candidates for the ketamine infusions.