Been up since 2am from the pain. Always a FUN night when that happens…..NOT ! Seems to be happening more and more too. My hips have joined the party and they seem to start to hurt and then spread the pain around to other parts. So much FUN ! Chronic pain will change your outlook and your whole life. Not for the better. This is not one of those experiences where you can overcome and adapt and make the best of it. Pain sucks and when it NEVER ends it screws with your mind. You can learn to live with it but the pain is always there. You can’t just put it out of your mind and go about your day. Your days and nights suddenly become all about making the pain less. At one point my good days were down to about a 3 which was awesome. The pain had become much less. But slowly it has crept back up till my good days are now a 6. That is not actually doubling my pain, more like tripling it.
Funny how pain changes your way of thinking too. Long ago before I became married to pain without being able to get a divorce, I would have said a broken bone was about a 5 or 6 on the scale. Heck I went head first over my bike’s handlebars when the front axle broke and my front wheel went down the street without me. I spent the rest of that 4th of July with my friends doing everything you would expect having fun. It was about a week later that I finally ended up at the hospital to find out I cracked my knee cap. So even broken bones or cartilage did not always even register as that bad. Cracked my skull on the bottom of a pool and did not even want to head to the hospital. I was having too much fun. Got thrown from a horse and stomped on my leg and knee and took aspirin for it. So I have always been insane or just your average kid. Heck we all probably did similar stuff as kids. But even looking back the pain never was that bad.
We each react to and feel pain differently. Some have high pain tolerances like I do. For others a hang nail is end of life, screaming in the ER pain. Once again I had been talking about this with my PM doc. ( He does listen and actually communicates. DAMN !!! Unheard of concept for some docs lol ) . There is no way to accurately measure pain in a person. Even BP and heart rate don’t always tell the story. I have been in 6 to 7 level pain and had a BP of 128/81 which for me is truly awesome. People’s bodies adjust to constant pain. What would have spiked the BP and heart rate 10 years ago won’t even show as a minor blip now. It frustrates the heck out of doctors and healthcare professionals. How can you tell when it is some drug addict playing to get a score and a person in real pain. Sure a guy comes in with an arm broken in 3 places he will be believed, but say someone with Fibro walks in. No major damage to the body is seen and all the scans etc will show Bupkiss. No tests will show how much pain they are in and it could be extremely severe. In fact it most likely is considering they sought help at the ER. They may not even have a diagnosis yet as Fibro and other similar disorders are hard to diagnose and require a decent specialist. ( Though I am hearing that there might be some test for Fibro ???? Saw something and can’t find article again so that may help some. ) It does not help that everyone and their brother is blaming doctor’s prescription practices for the “Opioid Epidemic” ! My take is this. Yes some addicts may have snuck through and gotten scripts they should not have. ( Not talking about true pill mills here but actual doctors seeing patients.) That will happen. Sorry folks we can’t fix that and we can’t stop it. We can take steps to curb it but they will never be 100% effective. Most docs KNOW when they are being played. The patients charts are noted with this so any doctor in the practice will know it yet some people will get away with it. Human Nature people. Just as prohibition did not produce a nation of alcohol free people we can’t stop those who want to partake of opioids for an illicit high. If they can’t get it from a doc they will get it on the street.
Now the CNN article I saw did contain this little nugget of astounding information: “11.5 million Americans misused a prescription opioid. The most common reason: pain relief “ ! Now I say astounding for 1 huge reason. Read that quote again. more than 50% of those 11.5 million abused a prescription opioid for 1 reason PAIN RELIEF ! Their pain is NOT being treated by the medical community for whatever reason. That is 5.75 MILLION people who are living with pain and not getting treated. Now add to that the people like me who live in pain and it is being under-treated. To me that says we have a National crisis of untreated and under treated PAIN. How the F is it acceptable to leave people in pain ? This is not just a couple of people being over looked by the system. This is a large number of people. That is more than the population of Alaska, Wyoming and Hawaii combined ! Heck we can throw in North and South Dakota and Vermont and we it would be just about at 5 million. ( Stats as of July 1 2016 Link for verification. It is 3922 people over 5 million for those who want to play math games :) BUT please notice I said ABOUT )
Think about that for just a minute. We have people turning to illegal narcotics to treat their pain. ( I say illegal because they did not get the script legally. They got pills from friends, bought them on the street etc.) Some may have no medical coverage even with the ACA ( Thanks GOP for not expanding Medicaid ! Assholes ! ) Some may have coverage but not be able to meet their out of pocket expenses and so don’t go to see the doctor. Last some were probably turned away at the doctors who believed they were faking or because they currently use illegal drugs and the doctors were not going to write a script to them. Any way you look at it this is a failure of our system. I know for a fact I will never be PAIN FREE, I accept this but I realize I could have a lot less pain if my meds were adjusted. That will not happen in this atmosphere of fear doctors are living under. One other thought on this. Notice above I said some docs will not write scripts for drug addicts. I can understand that to a point. What I can’t understand is our society has criminalized a medical and psychological disease in addiction. Instead of helping addicts re-enter society we toss them away like trash if they happen to be poor. If they happen to be rich and or famous they get treatment and forgiven by society. Here i a novel approach to it. Legalize marijuana and tax it like many states are doing but instead of all that new tax money hitting the general fund why not put some away and use it to treat addicts of all drugs ? Think about it ! 100% FREE treatment for addiction. Oh well that will never pass in this Republican Hell we have currently, not when the Keebler Elf head idiot believes marijuana is the “Devil Weed” ! I swear Sessions must have had a 30 hour, continuous screening of “Reefer Madness” as a kid, either that or he is a Racist asshole who will do anything to keep minorities in their so called rightful place of jail or slaving away at ridiculous wages for his rich buddies.
Sorry been all over the dang place today. Went from my pain to society’s pains. At least it helped me get my mind off MY pain for a bit. Speaking of that I have to say it does hep. Also helps get out those aggressive feelings spooling through my mind at times when I really want to punch something. So if you want to give it a try GO FOR IT. Click the link over there on the right for Add a publish group and choose Pain Patient Empowerment and we will publish it to our stream. Not a member ? Not a problem ! Click Here and it will take you to the profile page and you can send us an email saying you want to join ! Just click the Send Message link at the top ! Stick something like Add me as the subject and we will ! We want to hear from some new people. Don’t want to join but still want to write something and have it go out to our readers ? We can do that too. Click that link up there and send a message and include a link to your diary and we can republish it to our queue as well. Hope to see some of your writings soon ! Be safe all with this crazy Hurricane deluge going on !