Beyond Firefighting: Why I Traded My Old Pain Management Playbook for the Principles of Ecosystem Restoration

Part 1: The Burnout of a Firefighter

For the first decade of my 15-year career as a physical therapist, I saw myself as a firefighter.

It’s a noble image, isn’t it? People would come to me in distress, their lives disrupted by a blaze of pain—a searing lower back, a smoldering shoulder, an arthritic knee that flared with every step.

My job, as I understood it, was to find the fire and put it O.T. I had a whole truck full of tools: targeted exercises, hands-on manual therapy, ultrasound, electrical stimulation, heat packs, and i.e. I was trained to be a master of this craft, to identify the precise location of the “problem tissue” and extinguish the flames of inflammation and dysfunction.

And for a while, it felt like it worked.

I’d rush to the scene, hose down the area with my best techniques, and the patient would walk out feeling better.

The fire was dampened.

But then, a week or a month later, they’d be back.

The embers had reignited.

Or worse, a new fire had started somewhere else.

The back pain was better, but now their hip was screaming.

We’d chase that fire, and then another would pop up in their neck.

I was a good firefighter.

I followed the standard advice, the protocols drilled into me in school and reinforced by the medical system.

But I was getting tired.

The endless alarms, the fires that never truly went out—they were taking a toll.

My passion, which had once burned so brightly, was flickering.

I was becoming emotionally exhausted, one of the classic hallmarks of professional burnout.¹

I felt overextended, my emotional resources drained by the constant cycle of temporary fixes and recurring despair.¹

The turning point, the moment the entire structure of my professional beliefs began to crumble, came in the form of a patient I’ll call Mark.

Mark was a kind, 45-year-old contractor with chronic low back pain that had stolen his livelihood and his joy.

He was the textbook case.

We had the MRI showing some disc degeneration—our supposed “fire.” We followed the playbook to the letter.

We did core strengthening exercises, used heat and TENS for temporary relief, and I performed meticulous manual therapy on his lumbar spine.

Yet, Mark wasn’t getting better.

In fact, he was getting worse.

His world was shrinking.

He became terrified of movement, convinced that any twinge was a sign of more damage.³

His pain, which had started as a physical problem, had metastasized into a constellation of fear, anxiety, and hopelessness.³

He was trapped in a vicious cycle where the fear of pain was creating more disability than the physical issue itself.⁴

And I was trapped with him.

Every session felt like a failure.

I was doing everything “right,” according to my training, but my patient was suffering more than ever.

I started to feel a sense of detachment, a depersonalization of care that scared me.¹

I saw Mark not as a person, but as a problem I couldn’t solve.

My sense of personal accomplishment, the very reason I entered this profession, was at an all-time low.²

This wasn’t just a tough case; it was a mirror reflecting the futility of my entire approach.

I was a firefighter trying to put out a forest fire with a garden hose, and we were both getting burned.

This experience forced me to confront a terrifying possibility: What if the map I was using was wrong? What if pain wasn’t a fire to be fought, but something else entirely? The burnout I was feeling wasn’t just a result of long hours or difficult patients; it was the psychological consequence of a failing philosophy.¹

The conventional biomedical model, which reduces the complex human experience of pain to a simple, localized tissue problem, was setting both me and my patients up for failure.⁶

It was a model designed for acute injuries, yet we were applying it to the fundamentally different challenge of chronic pain, where the problem often lies not in the body’s tissues, but in the nervous system itself.⁸

The opioid crisis, a catastrophe born from treating chronic pain with the sledgehammer of acute-pain medication, is perhaps the most tragic proof of this philosophical error.¹⁰

I knew I couldn’t keep fighting fires.

I had to find a new way, or I’d have nothing left to give.

Part 2: The Epiphany: A Walk in the Woods and a New Way of Seeing

My escape from the smoke and ashes of my professional burnout didn’t happen in a clinic or a classroom.

It happened on a quiet Saturday morning, on a trail winding through a local nature preserve.

I was reading a brochure I’d picked up at the trailhead, not about medicine, but about a topic that seemed worlds away: ecosystem restoration.

The pamphlet described how ecologists work to revive landscapes that have been damaged by things like clear-cutting, pollution, or prolonged drought.

The language leaped off the page, each phrase resonating with the struggles I faced every day in the clinic.

It spoke of not just planting new trees, but of “supporting natural recovery processes,” “addressing the root causes of degradation,” “improving resilience in a changing climate,” and understanding that restoration “gains cumulative value when applied at large scales”.¹²

It emphasized the need to “engage stakeholders” and draw on “many types of knowledge,” from hard science to local wisdom.¹²

And then, it hit me with the force of a physical blow.

A profound, paradigm-shifting epiphany.

Chronic pain is not a house fire. It is a degraded ecosystem.

The body, mind, and life of a person like Mark were not just a collection of parts with one “broken” piece.

They were a complex, interconnected ecosystem—a human ecosystem.

An ecosystem that, after months or years of persistent pain signals, stress, fear, and inactivity, had become like a clear-cut forest.

The soil (the body’s tissues) was depleted.

The biodiversity (the variety of movements and coping skills) was gone, replaced by a monoculture of pain and avoidance.

The climate (the psychological state) was one of constant drought and threat.

The natural waterways that connect it to the wider world (social connections) were drying up.

My old “firefighting” approach was doomed because it was focused on dousing a single smoldering stump while ignoring the soil erosion, the lack of water, the invasive species of fear, and the complete loss of biodiversity.

It was a fundamentally flawed strategy.

The goal, I realized, could never be to simply stop the pain.

That’s like trying to stop the wind from blowing in a barren landscape.

The true goal, the only goal that could ever lead to lasting change, was to restore the health, diversity, and resilience of the entire ecosystem.

It was a shift from being a reactive firefighter to becoming a patient, holistic ecosystem steward.

This single idea didn’t just give me a new set of tools; it gave me a whole new map of the territory.

It provided a tangible, intuitive framework for applying the complex science of modern pain care in a way that both I and my patients could finally understand and act upon.

Part 3: The Flawed Blueprint — Why the “Firefighting” Model Fails

To understand why the “ecosystem” approach is so transformative, we first have to fully dismantle the old “firefighting” model that dominates so much of healthcare.

This conventional approach is built on the foundation of the biomedical model, a framework that has been incredibly successful in treating infectious diseases and acute injuries, but which proves disastrously inadequate for chronic pain.⁶

The biomedical model operates like a fire map.

It assumes that pain is a direct, reliable, and proportional signal of tissue damage.¹⁵

Your back hurts? The map tells us to find the damaged structure—the bulging disc, the arthritic joint—and label it as the source of the fire.

The entire diagnostic process becomes a reductionist hunt for a single, physical culprit.⁷

This is why so much emphasis is placed on MRIs, X-rays, and other imaging.

The clinician’s task is to find the abnormality and then attack it.

This works beautifully when you break your A.M. The X-ray shows the fracture (the fire), and a cast immobilizes it so the body can heal.

The relationship between tissue damage and pain is clear and linear.

But for the vast majority of people with chronic pain—pain lasting more than three months—this model collapses.

Many patients have agonizing pain despite scans that show little to no structural damage, while others have “terrible” looking scans but feel perfectly fine.⁹

This is the central paradox the biomedical model cannot solve.

It’s because chronic pain is often not a problem

in the tissues, but a problem in the nervous system’s processing of information.

The brain and spinal cord have become over-protective, turning up the volume on danger signals until even normal sensations are interpreted as threatening.⁸

The “fire alarm” itself has become the problem, not the fire.

When you try to fight this kind of “sensitized alarm” problem with the tools of a firefighter, you end up doing more harm than good.

The conventional toolkit is filled with interventions that, while sometimes useful in the short term, fail to address the root cause and often create new problems in the long R.N.

The Ineffective Tools of the Firefighter

Pharmacological Fire Suppressants: A High-Cost, Low-Yield Strategy

The first tool a firefighter reaches for is often a chemical suppressant.

In pain management, this means medication.

While crucial in some contexts, a long-term strategy built on pharmacology is deeply flawed.

• Opioids: These are the most powerful fire suppressants in the arsenal, and for acute, severe pain (like after major surgery), they are invaluable. However, for chronic pain, their long-term use is a well-documented catastrophe.¹⁰ The body is an adaptive system. When you continually suppress pain signals with opioids, the nervous system fights back by becoming more sensitive, a phenomenon known as tolerance.¹¹ This means you need higher and higher doses to get the same relief, which dramatically increases the risk of side effects, dependence, addiction, and fatal overdose.¹⁹ Studies consistently show that for most chronic pain conditions, opioids are no more effective in the long run than safer alternatives like ibuprofen.¹⁰ Meanwhile, they wreak havoc on the body, causing severe constipation, cognitive fog, hormonal disruption (like decreased testosterone), a weakened immune system, and an increased risk of heart problems.²¹ They don’t fix the underlying problem; they create a new, often more dangerous one.
• NSAIDs and Other Drugs: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen and naproxen are the most common over-the-counter options. They can be effective for inflammatory pain, but they come with a “ceiling effect”—taking more than the recommended dose doesn’t provide more pain relief, it just dramatically increases the risk of serious side effects.¹⁸ Long-term use is associated with significant risks, including stomach ulcers and bleeding, kidney damage, and high blood pressure, with risks increasing with age.¹⁸ Other medications, like certain anti-seizure drugs or antidepressants used for nerve pain, also carry a burden of side effects like dizziness, drowsiness, and weight changes that can make them difficult for many to tolerate long-term.¹⁸

Passive “Watering Down”: The Illusion of a Fix

The other major category of firefighting tools involves passive modalities—treatments that are done to the patient.

These include things like heat packs, ice, TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation), ultrasound, and some forms of hands-on therapy.

These interventions can feel good.

They can provide temporary relief, which can be a crucial “bridge” to help someone start moving again.²⁶

The problem arises when they become the core of the treatment plan.

Research shows that when used in isolation, passive therapies are only about 30% effective at providing sustained relief from chronic pain.²⁷

Over-reliance on them fosters a sense of dependency and helplessness.

It reinforces the damaging belief that healing is something an external force (the therapist, the machine, the pill) provides, rather than something the patient’s own body and mind can achieve.²⁷

True, lasting recovery doesn’t come from being passively “fixed”; it comes from actively cultivating strength and resilience from within.

An active approach, centered on movement and self-management, is consistently shown to be more effective for long-term pain control.²⁷

The firefighter model, with its narrow focus and flawed tools, leaves patients feeling hopeless and practitioners like me feeling burned out. It’s a model that chases symptoms, ignores the whole person, and ultimately fails to restore what has been lost: a life of function, meaning, and resilience.

Part 4: The Reference Ecosystem — A New Blueprint for Health

The epiphany on that wooded trail wasn’t just about rejecting the old model; it was about embracing a new one.

If chronic pain is a degraded ecosystem, then our goal must shift from the impossible task of eliminating every “weed” of pain to the hopeful, achievable mission of cultivating a vibrant, resilient human ecosystem.

In ecology, resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbances—a storm, a fire, a drought—and then reorganize and adapt so that it maintains its essential structure and function.³⁰

A resilient forest isn’t one that never experiences fire; it’s one that can recover and thrive after a fire passes through.

This is our new goal in pain management.

It’s not a life free from any sensation of pain, but a life that is not defined or disabled by it.

A life where you have the capacity to handle flare-ups and life’s stressors without having your entire system collapse.

Fortunately, we have a scientifically validated blueprint for what a healthy human ecosystem looks like.

It’s called the Biopsychosocial (BPS) model.¹⁵

For decades, pain science has recognized that pain is not just a physical sensation.

It is a complex and dynamic experience that emerges from the constant interaction between three interconnected domains.³²

The problem is that the BPS model can feel abstract and academic.

But when we view it through the intuitive lens of our ecosystem analogy, it becomes a practical and powerful guide.

The Biopsychosocial Model as Your Ecosystem Blueprint

Imagine your overall health as a landscape.

The BPS model simply gives us the key elements of that landscape to pay attention to.

The “Bio” Domain: The Soil, Terrain, and Bedrock

This is the physical hardware of your body—the tangible, biological foundation of your ecosystem.³⁴

The old biomedical model

only looks here, and even then, it often looks at the wrong things.

The “Bio” domain includes:

• Tissue Health: The state of your muscles, bones, joints, and organs.
• Nerve Sensitivity: This is a critical piece. In chronic pain, the nervous system can become sensitized, like a car alarm that goes off if a leaf falls on it. This is a biological change, but it’s in the processing system, not just the tissues.
• Inflammation: Systemic, low-grade inflammation can act like a constant irritant, making the entire ecosystem more vulnerable to pain.
• Genetics, Hormones, and Gut Health: These deep biological factors set the stage for your body’s overall resilience and response to stress and pain.³⁵

The “Psycho” Domain: The Climate, Weather, and Biodiversity

This is the internal world of your mind—the atmosphere that shapes your experience of the physical landscape.³⁴

It includes:

• Thoughts and Beliefs: What you believe about your pain has a powerful biological effect. If you believe “pain equals harm,” you will fear movement, which leads to weakness and more pain.⁴ This is known as catastrophizing, and it’s a major predictor of disability.¹⁵
• Emotions: Fear, anxiety, frustration, and depression are not just reactions to pain; they can actively amplify the pain signals in your brain and spinal cord.³ A state of fear creates a different biological reality than a state of safety.
• Coping Strategies and Self-Efficacy: This is the “biodiversity” of your ecosystem. In nature, a diverse ecosystem with many different types of plants and animals is far more resilient to disease or disturbance than a monoculture crop.³⁰ Similarly, a person with a rich “biodiversity” of coping skills—movement, mindfulness, social connection, problem-solving, creative expression—is far more resilient than someone who relies on only one strategy (e.g., resting and taking a pill). Self-efficacy, the belief in your own ability to manage challenges, is a cornerstone of this psychological resilience.⁴

The “Social” Domain: The Waterways, Sunlight, and Connections

This is your external world—the environment that nourishes or depletes your internal ecosystem.³⁴

It includes:

• Relationships and Support: A strong network of supportive family and friends acts like a steady source of water and sunlight, providing nourishment and fostering resilience. Isolation, in contrast, can be as detrimental as a drought.⁴
• Work and Finances: A stressful job or financial instability can act like a constant source of pollution, taxing your system’s resources and leaving you more vulnerable.
• Access to Care and Culture: Your ability to access quality healthcare and the cultural messages you receive about pain and disability profoundly shape your experience and recovery path.³⁵

The BPS model shows us that these three domains are not separate.

They are woven together.

A stressful work situation (Social) leads to anxiety and poor sleep (Psycho), which increases inflammation and nerve sensitivity (Bio), resulting in more pain.

To truly heal, you cannot just address one part.

You must tend to the entire ecosystem.

Part 5: The Principles of Restoration — Your Guide to Becoming an Ecosystem Steward

Understanding the blueprint is the first step.

Now comes the real work: the patient, practical process of restoration.

This is where you shift from being a passive victim of your pain to becoming the active, empowered steward of your own human ecosystem.

The best guide for this work comes directly from the principles of ecological restoration, adapted for the landscape of your own life.

To make this shift clear, let’s start with a direct comparison of the old and new ways of thinking.

Feature	The Old Way: “Firefighting” (Biomedical Model)	The New Way: “Ecosystem Restoration” (BPS Model)
Core Goal	Eliminate pain; find and fix the broken part.	Cultivate resilience; restore whole-person function.
View of Pain	A signal of tissue damage; a symptom to be silenced.	A complex experience influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors.
Primary Tools	Passive treatments: Medications, injections, surgery, modalities.	Active treatments: Therapeutic exercise, education, mind-body skills, nutrition.
Role of Patient	Passive recipient of treatment.	Active steward of their own recovery.
Measure of Success	Reduction in pain score (e.g., 0-10 scale).	Improvement in function, quality of life, and participation in valued activities.

This table represents a fundamental revolution in how we approach pain.

It’s a move away from a futile war on a symptom and toward the holistic cultivation of a thriving life.

Here’s how you can apply these principles.

Principle 1: Engage Stakeholders (You Are the Chief Steward of Your Ecosystem)

In ecology, a restoration project that ignores the needs and knowledge of the local community is doomed to fail.¹²

The same is true for your health.

The single most important stakeholder in your recovery is

you.

This principle marks the essential transition from being a passive patient—someone who shows up to have things done to them—to an active steward who leads their own recovery team.²⁷

How to Apply It:

• Become the Expert on You: Start a simple journal. Track not just your pain levels, but also your sleep, mood, stress levels, activities, and nutrition.³⁹ You will begin to see patterns that no doctor can see on a scan. You are gathering the essential “local knowledge” of your ecosystem.
• Lead Your Healthcare Team: You are the CEO of your health. Your doctors, therapists, and other providers are your expert consultants. Come to appointments with your data (your journal), clear questions, and collaborative goals. If a provider isn’t willing to be a partner in your stewardship, they may not be the right fit for your team.
• Take Ownership: This is the most empowering, and sometimes the hardest, step. It means accepting that while you are not to blame for your pain, you are responsible for the daily choices that will lead to your recovery.²⁹

Principle 2: Support Natural Recovery Processes (Choose Active Cultivation Over Passive Suppression)

Ecologists know that the most effective restoration supports the ecosystem’s innate ability to heal itself.¹³

You don’t “make” a forest grow; you create the conditions for it to thrive.

This is the core argument for prioritizing

active therapies that build your body’s own capacity for resilience over passive therapies that provide only temporary suppression.

How to Apply It:

• Embrace Movement as Medicine: This is the single most important active therapy. A well-designed exercise program doesn’t just strengthen muscles; it improves circulation, reduces systemic inflammation, releases the body’s own natural painkillers (endorphins), and, most importantly, retrains the brain to understand that movement is safe.⁴¹ The goal is not to push through severe pain, but to find a “safe entry point”—gentle, controlled movements that gradually expand your tolerance and confidence. This is something a skilled physical therapist can guide you through.⁴⁰
• Use Passive Therapies Strategically: Passive treatments like heat, massage, or manual therapy aren’t “bad.” They can be incredibly helpful as a short-term tool to reduce a flare-up enough to allow you to engage in your active program.²⁶ Think of them as clearing away some initial brush so you can get in and start planting. They are a means to an end, not the end itself. Long-term reliance on them, however, undermines your ecosystem’s natural resilience.²⁷

Principle 3: Restore the Whole System (A Practical BPS Toolkit)

A thriving ecosystem depends on the health of its soil, climate, and waterways.

A thriving human depends on the health of their body, mind, and social life.

You cannot restore one without tending to the others.¹³

This is where you apply the BPS blueprint with a practical toolkit.

Nourishing the Terrain (The “Bio” Domain)

• Anti-Inflammatory Nutrition: What you eat can either fuel inflammation or fight it. A diet rich in processed foods, sugar, and unhealthy fats is like pouring gasoline on the embers of pain. Conversely, a diet centered on whole foods—vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, healthy fats, and whole grains—provides the nutrients your body needs to calm inflammation and support tissue health.³⁶ You don’t need a perfect diet; start with small shifts, like adding one more serving of vegetables each day.
• Prioritize Restorative Sleep: Sleep is when your ecosystem does its most important repair work. Your brain cleanses itself of metabolic waste, your tissues heal, and your nervous system down-regulates. Chronic pain disrupts sleep, and poor sleep worsens pain, creating a vicious cycle.³⁸ Establishing a consistent sleep hygiene routine—a cool, dark, quiet room; no screens before bed; a regular bedtime—is non-negotiable for recovery.

Cultivating Mental Biodiversity (The “Psycho” Domain)

• Rewire Your Thoughts: Your brain is not a passive observer of pain; it is an active interpreter. Mind-body therapies like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are evidence-based methods for changing your relationship with your thoughts and emotions.⁴⁹ CBT helps you identify and challenge catastrophic thoughts (e.g., “This pain will never end”), while ACT helps you accept uncomfortable sensations without letting them control your life, allowing you to focus on what you value.⁵⁰
• Calm the Nervous System: Practices like mindfulness meditation, diaphragmatic (belly) breathing, yoga, and tai chi are powerful tools for shifting your nervous system out of a constant “fight or flight” state and into a “rest and digest” state.⁵² This directly reduces muscle tension, lowers stress hormones, and can change how the brain processes pain signals over time.⁵⁴ Just five minutes of slow, deep breathing can begin to calm a sensitized system.

Re-establishing Healthy Flow (The “Social” Domain)

• Seek Connection: Pain can be incredibly isolating. It makes you want to withdraw from the world. But social connection is a fundamental human need and a powerful buffer against stress.⁴ Make a conscious effort to connect with supportive friends and family, even when you don’t feel like it. Joining a support group, either in person or online, can connect you with others who truly understand what you’re going through.
• Find Your Purpose: Chronic pain can shrink your world until the pain is all you are. Re-engaging with meaningful activities—hobbies, volunteering, work, or creative pursuits—is essential for reminding yourself that you are more than your pain.⁴⁸ It gives your brain something else to focus on and restores a sense of identity and value.

Principle 4: Assess Against Clear Goals (Redefining a “Good Day”)

Ecologists don’t just throw seeds on the ground and hope for the best.

They measure success against clear, pre-defined indicators of ecosystem health.¹²

As a steward of your own health, you must do the same.

This means abandoning the 0-10 pain scale as your sole measure of success.

How to Apply It:

• Focus on Function, Not Just Feeling: Your primary goal is not a pain score of zero. Your primary goal is to live a fuller life. Instead of “I want my pain to be a 2/10,” set functional goals.⁴⁸ For example:

• “I want to be able to walk my dog around the block without having to stop.”
• “I want to be able to sit through a movie with my partner.”
• “I want to get back to my gardening for 30 minutes on a Saturday.”
• Celebrate Incremental Gains: Restoration is a slow process. You won’t go from a barren landscape to a lush forest overnight. Learn to recognize and celebrate small victories. Maybe you slept an hour longer. Maybe you walked for five minutes instead of three. Maybe you had a moment of joy that wasn’t overshadowed by pain. These are the signs that your ecosystem is beginning to heal. Success is measured by the gradual expansion of your life, not the complete eradication of a sensation.

Part 6: From a Barren Landscape to a Thriving Life

The shift from firefighter to ecosystem steward changed everything for me and for my patients.

It replaced the frantic, exhausting battle against a symptom with the patient, hopeful cultivation of a whole person.

It’s a process, not a magic bullet, but it’s a process that leads to real, sustainable recovery.

I think back to Mark, my patient whose suffering catalyzed my own professional crisis.

His story, in that old model, ended in frustration and disability.

But I now have countless new stories, stories that follow a different path.

I think of a woman I’ll call Sarah, who came to me with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, a condition that often leaves people feeling hopeless within the conventional system.⁵⁷

For years, she had been bounced between specialists, her life shrinking under a blanket of widespread pain, fatigue, and brain fog.

She was a degraded ecosystem.

Instead of chasing her pain points, we started by mapping her landscape.

We used a journal to track the interplay between her sleep, her stress at work, her diet, and her pain flares.

She became the lead stakeholder.

We set a functional goal: to be able to work in her garden for 20 minutes, a passion she had long abandoned.

We started with active cultivation.

Her “exercise” at first was simply five minutes of gentle, mindful stretching each morning.

We didn’t push into pain; we explored the edges of safe movement.

We worked on her “mental biodiversity,” using deep breathing techniques to calm her nervous system when she felt a flare coming on.

She learned, through our conversations, to challenge the catastrophic thought that “a flare-up means I’m getting worse,” and replace it with “a flare-up is a signal from my ecosystem that it needs more support today.” She made small changes to her diet, cutting back on sugar and adding more leafy greens.

She made a non-negotiable pact with herself to go for a short walk with a friend twice a week, restoring that crucial social waterway.

The progress was slow, with ups and downs, just like the restoration of a real landscape.

But after several months, something remarkable had happened.

Her pain wasn’t gone, but it no longer dominated her life.

She was gardening for 30 minutes at a time.

She was sleeping better.

She told me, with tears in her eyes, that she had laughed without reservation for the first time in years.

She wasn’t “cured.” She was resilient.

Her ecosystem, once barren, was becoming vibrant again.

She was no longer a patient being passively treated; she was the proud, knowledgeable steward of her own thriving life.⁵⁸

This is the promise of a new paradigm in pain management.

It asks more of you than the old model did.

It asks for your participation, your patience, and your courage.

But in return, it offers something the old model never could: not the false promise of a life without any pain, but the real, achievable hope of a life full of function, joy, and resilience, regardless of the sensations your body may produce.

The path to recovery is not a war to be won, but a landscape to be cultivated.

You have the blueprint.

You have the tools.

It’s time to begin the beautiful, life-giving work of restoration.

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