One short letter's huge impact on the opioid epidemic

[thecrow]

34. I'll say that I would rather have the meds and not need them

than need them and not have them.
I have degenerative disc disease in my neck and lumbar spine, with stenosis in my spine.
I had this doctor who was sending me through the hoops trying to find out why I was having so much pain... in the middle of all this, he cut off my pain meds. He made me go to a "pain clinic" where we were taught to think the pain away through meditating. As if I hadn't already tried many variations of that. Plus prayer! The leader of the group was the regional pain management big cheese and so we had this discussion with her.

Where my doctor had described me as a drug seeker, she checked my pain med prescriptions and use for the last two years and said I was incredibly modest in my use. I told her how I would only take half a pill then wait about 45 minutes and if it didn't relieve the pain, I'd take the other half. She said I should have been on Oxycontin! I said no no no I wasn't ready for that and besides, my pain was chronic, not constant. She called my doctor and gave him a piece of her mind about how he was treating me! This was at a time when opioids were bad and doctors were having their licenses taken away from over prescribing. He said he didn't want me to get addicted... so he'd rather I suffered??? Geez.

Long story short, I changed doctors and talked about the pain quite openly and said that I really would like it if I NEVER had to take another pain pill again. The side effects of opioids are really not that pleasant, after all. Nausea, drowsiness, constipation... who needs that when you're in pain? Now I have been taking cortisone shots to help with the back pain, but I have come to the cutoff point where I have to wait six months to get another series. I asked my doctor (who looks SO young to me) what I'm supposed to do in the meantime.
He said "Take your pain meds".

I think the thing is to find a doctor who has been on terrible personal physical pain. I know my doctor has had a lot of pain himself, so he is fine with my prescriptions so far. I'm just praying that remains the case.

Medical schools don't teach people to deal with chronic pain. Even when they can see the cause on an MRI or CAT scan, they seem to think it should go away in a week or so. All of us who need ongoing prescriptions know that isn't the case. They are not going to heal us and make us "new" again. Chronic pain is pain that keeps coming back. Very few doctors know how to deal with it or medicate it.

There are some weeks or when the weather's bad (I have a lot of arthritis) when I rely on those meds to make life ok but then there are times when everything's pretty good and I can do without the big guns. Then maybe some ibuprofen will work or best of all, there are days (or a week or more!) that I need nothing. But I would like to be able to make that choice, and I guarantee you I am not addicted.

I get so mad at the pill mill docs and the irresponsible people who abuse *my* prescription meds !!! What to do?