I've been "taking aspirin and gutting it out" for near thirty years.
That's not a solution for people with chronic pain.
I'm not on, and do not seek opioids for my pain. I've never liked they way they make me feel, and that feeling is worse than the pain to me.
But I know people where being free of the pain, even briefly, is worth the side effects of the meds.
From my experience in trying to get treatment for pain where the side effects aren't worse than the pain, I've noticed there's three kinds of doctors.
Doctors who are overly generous and prescribe far too much.
Doctors who prescribe almost enough to stop the pain.
Doctors who don't prescribe anything that actually helps the pain, and think that anyone complaining of pain is "drug seeking".
Notice that we don't have a doctor who will figure out why it hurts, treat that and thus end the pain?
In my case, there doesn't look to be a cure. Mine's nueropathy stemming from the breaks. I just hurt were my legs were broken and until they cure neuropathy, I will have pain.
I've tried narcotics. Don't like the "high" when I've got too much, don't like how I feel when I don't have enough, don't care for how "out of it" I feel if there's the right dose.
I've tried lots of over the counter stuff. It does take the edge off, but still the pain persists.
I've tried self medicating with alcohol. Get drunk enough and you don't CARE if your legs hurt!
No solution is particularly good for my liver. It's a choice of bad choices.
But just because my situation doesn't have a solution I am not advocating that others be forced to endure like I must.
Opiates are working for you? I want you to have them.
People are overdosing on prescriptions? That's a doctor problem. Maybe the answer is in getting government out of the way so the patient can be seen more often? So that doses can be adjusted? It doesn't help that tolerance for opiates builds quickly and the dosage to affect the pain can cross the OD threshold before you notice.
I suspect that no small percentage of overdose on prescription is actually suicide. Constant unending pain is maddening. You can't sleep, you can't get comfortable. But you can escape forever!
I do notice that we didn't end up with an opioid crisis/epidemic until we had a war on some drugs.
We didn't have this problem when doctors were more regulated by their own professional organizations than by Law and insurance mandates.
Is there no problem so large that Government cannot make it worse?
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In the old days before the government decided to make everybody Good(tm), you could buy patent medicines loaded with opiates and alcohol over-the-counter. While these were sometimes "abused," there was very little problem with drug addiction per se. The vast majority of users used them and got on with their lives, even if they were theoretically "addicts" or "alcoholics." Then both alcohol and "drugs" were illegalized, and Problems Appeared---seems that people who need these substances, whether the need is for real pain or just because they got hooked, won't give them up because Nanny Government says to.
ReplyDeleteWhile I, as you know all too well, am not the most compassionate individual in the world (biggest understatement ever), I have nothing but contempt for the way our government goes out of its way to keep people in chronic pain from obtaining the substances that would help them function. Instead, they're expected to "just tough it out," like they were all John Wayne. If Karma really existed, the legislators responsible for these laws, and the regulators who make doctors afraid to prescribe "too many" pain killers, would get to find out what chronic unending pain feels like---first hand!
Do some research into low voltage electric current patches place by the afflicted areas, it works for some folks with back pain, is non-invasive and non-narcotic.
ReplyDeleteWorth a shot.
DeleteI'm also pursuing the VA to increase my disability rating. If I have to put up with this for the rest of my life in a "take aspirin and gut it out mode" then more money would make it easier to bear.
https://www.target.com/p/omron-electrotherapy-tens-pain-relief-device/-/A-14898718
ReplyDeleteNo clue if this actually will work, but it is a low cost experiment.
I've run into doctors who prescribed opioids in the manners you've described. I also don't like to take them unless absolutely necessary or for any longer than necessary. Because I like to be in control. One of the times when I ran into the non-prescribing types was when I seriously cut myself and needed a bunch of stitches. It hurt like hell. It was pretty obvious I wasn't faking. It wouldn't be the kind of injury someone would claim to try to seek drugs. I asked the doctor after he got done stitching if he was going to give me a prescription. I wasn't even thinking of pain killers, I was thinking amoxicillin. The answer was "we don't prescribe pain killers to _people like you_". Really? Just because I was under 25 and had long hair and a beard I'm automatically some kind of drug fiend? And people wonder why I generally shun doctors...
ReplyDelete