Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Saturday, November 20, 2010
A Post I Wrote About Chronic Pain Recently
[According to my doctor, every person on opiates is addicted after a week or two.] - this is someone’s else line, to which I was responding.
That’s one of the problems right there. If our doctors don’t even know the difference between dependence and addiction, it’s no small wonder that the general public is so misinformed. Not only are people NOT addicted after a week or two of opiates, most people aren’t even DEPENDENT after that short a period of time. It’s not like anyone starts off with a dose of 60mg of Oxycodone. I started off with a 5mg Lortab and then moved to a 10mg Combunox, and then gradually increased my dose over years.
If we can get people to quit worrying about addiction with pain patients (I think the percentage is like 2-5% or something like that) and get them to treat the pain, everyone would be a whole lot better off. Frankly, even if people are addicted, wouldn’t it be better for them to pay for their meds and be seen by a doctor once a month than get cut off and go looking for street drugs to replace their pain meds. Also, many of the addicts are also pain patients, so I’d rather their pain was managed and then when they decided their addiction was affecting their life, then they took it upon themselves to get help.
I’ve never had a single sign of addiction (never “lost” a prescription, never run out early, never look wasted, never driven while impaired, etc.), yet my stupid ******-**-*** accused me of being a drug addict, then got my ******** involved, and then I was accused of faking being ill and drug seeking. Yeah, I sure faked that herniated disk so well that the MRI had every single doctor who saw it exclaiming, “Wow, that’s big!” Yeah, I’m a big ol’ faker alright. Ugh. It turns out my ***-**-***l was arrested for drunk driving shortly after accusing ME of abusing drugs. So, yeah, I’m pretty sick of these addiction accusations…for all of us. Oh yeah, and I’ve never addressed this point publicly - Leigh-Ann and I were both accused of being “high” because someone said we had red-rimmed eyes. That’s not a sign of presciption medication use, red eyes. That would be a sign of maybe pot use (Leigh-Ann has never tried ANY illegal drugs…I’m not quite that innocent), allergies, or perhaps crying. I have never driven under the influence of anything (okay, ONCE, when I was 17…and I drove very slowly through side streets - it never happened again), so if someone ever sees me out somewhere and thinks I’m high, they’re tottally and utterly wrong. I take my safety and the safety of my passengers and fellow drivers seriously. I spent my twenties being horrified at friends driving drunk (one totalled multiple cars) and trying to stop them. More than once, our friends banded together to drive the drunk person’s car home for them, while one of us followed to give the sober driver a ride home. Now that I’m even older (and wiser, heh), there is no way I would be even more reckless than I was in my youth, when I didn’t, even then, drive impaired.
I think doctors need to treat our pain, while making sure our dosage is appropriate for us. For us, not for the DEA or our relatives or our friends. Some of us have a huge tolerance for meds, some of us don’t. There isn’t a pat answer for what will help each pain patient. We’re all different. For instance, I can’t take any morphine based meds. They do nothing for me. It’s like I’m taking water pills. MSContin, Dilaudid, et al., don’t work. I suppose it might be different if they were IV meds, but the pills don’t work at all for me. Other people, I know they’re knocked out by those meds. Flexeril is my Kryptonite - it puts me to sleep for days. One teeny little pill knocks me out. It works like a super powerful sleeping pill. I’ve only taken two or three in my whole life because the reaction was so awful.
P.S. I used asterisks to protect the “reputations” of the guilty. They know who they are, but I don’t need strangers coming across my blog to know who they are.
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