Here I am once again writing about pain management. This is a system set up in Hell with no exit. Patients in the system put up with all kinds of rules and regulations just so that they can continue to try and get some relief from chronic pain. They willingly jump through hoops and put up with humiliation and being treated like crap.
So how did I get here ? What did I do in some past life to be condemned to this hell ? If this is Karma, I must have been one rotten son of a bitch in my past life. It sure can't be from something in this life. Heck I was an altar boy as a kid. It started with 1 herniated disc back in 1999. I had surgery and everything was pretty good for a while. Then the pain came back and I finally broke down and saw a doctor after was basically bed ridden for a month. I found out the the disc had herniated was destroying itself and as a result the discs above and below were being damaged because of that. I had a fusion from L3 down and after surgery I moved on to pain management.
Let's jump on down past the orange snow doodle to take a closer look at this Labyrinthine system that has no outlet.
This was supposed to be published yesterday but I learned a nice little lesson. Always save your work frequently. I hit the wrong button and bam by by long discourse.
So there I was back where I had started. Going off to pain management to get some relief from my pain. ow when you start pain management you get to sign your life away. Well okay not quite but close. Most of them have a contract that states you will not go to another doctor for narcotic pain medications. Doesn't matter the reason behind it. Break a tooth, better not take that prescription for Vicodin. Kidney stones ? Don't bother to get a prescription for Loritab. Not allowed. Mine also insists that you get all of your scripts at one pharmacy, at least those you get from them. They ask you which pharmacy you use then write your scripts so they are only good at that pharmacy. You also get to agree to repeated drug tests to make sure you aren't mixing your pain meds with street drugs or even other pain medications. I remember the one time I gave my sample when I was passing some kidney stones. I left about 6 or 7 stones on the bottom of the cup. The lab lady freaked out. Well more because it looked like cherry koolaid than the stones. I had to tell her that was completely normal for me when I was passing stones.
So even without passing kidney stones it is pretty humiliating. Combine that with the fact that the only time I have ever seen an actual doctor is when I get my shots. More on those shots later. So every visit is pretty much the same. I complain my medications are not working as well as they want them too. They ask me a bunch of questions and don't listen to my answers. then I either get my scripts refilled or go off for the pee test then get my scripts refilled.
That is all done by PAs or if they happen to be there a NP. Never a doctor. Oh and we all hate to get seen by the wife of the doctor who owns the practice. She is a Holy Terror. I have seen her ban patients for complaining because their scripts were not refilled even though they had given them 2 weeks notice. When this happens and it used to happen all the time the front desk staff basically called you a liar saying you didn't call when you said you did. Didn't matter if you had proof. They were right you were wrong. See when you call for a refill or an appointment etc you don't get the office. You leave a message with the answering service and then you either get a call back in a few days or you get a call saying your script is ready. This is a real pain. I had a bad reaction to my new medication one time. It was literally causing me extreme pain. It was one of the rarer side effects. I called an hour after I had gotten home from getting the script filled telling them that I was having extreme pain from my script and what should I do. I got a call 3 days later from one of the PAs telling me I should have stopped taking the medication. I told her it said in huge print on the package DO NOT STOP WITHOUT DOCTORS ORDERS. She laughed again and said don't pay attention to that. So I suffered for 3 days because I was following the directions on the drug they prescribed for me and they couldn't be bothered to call me back quicker than the 72 hour time limit they have in place. That has changed some. They finally got a new answering service that actually sends over the messages that day as they come in not at the end of the day all at once if then. There were a couple of times where the answering service didn't send over my message for 3 days for some stupid reason. This really sucks when you are calling for refills. They refuse to call in any. Even for common stuff like muscle relaxers. They require 72 hours notice to refill your script and that doesn't start when you call but when ever they get it. Weekends and Holidays don't count.. Once they do get the request it really is 3 days before you can go pick it up. You have to make sure you call early if you need a refill near a 3 day weekend or something.
So there you have even more fun and frustration with pain management. To top it off there used to be a couple of ladies working the front desk who made sure every single patient knew that they were an addict who didn't need the drugs but wanted to just get high. These 2 wonderful ladies had a horrible attitude to be in healthcare. I tried to complain to the practice manager who also happens to be the wife of the doctor who owned the clinic and a PA in the practice. I almost got banned from the practice but I shut up before she did that. She didn't want to hear anything bad about the practice. I can kind of understand that. She was protecting her husband and her lively hood. No matter how much evidence you had that you were telling the truth she always took the side of the 2 girls at the desk. These 2 habitually cussed out the customers who tried to complain but they were always careful to do it when they were the only 2 at the desk. They finally got fired when quite a few of us said we were going to report the clinic to the state board. We had recordings of the girls cussing us out calling us liars and treating us like crap. Hell it is bad enough we get treated like crap by the general public because we need to be on pain meds. We shouldn't have to take it at the place we went for treatment. They have 2 wonderful ladies now who really know what they are doing and are very sympathetic. They treat each patient as if they are a king or queen.
Through all of that bad treatment not too many actually left the practice. See what happens when you do is that the new clinic thinks you are just doctor shopping to try and get drugs. They look at you with distrust. Besides it can be a couple of months just to get a new patient appointment unless you are being referred by a surgeon for after surgery care. I really don't want to have another surgery just to change pain clinics. If you get dismissed from one clinic you will not get into another. It really doesn't matter what your reason is for changing you still get the looks and distrust. It is pretty understandable if you think about it. These clinics walk a fine line between trying to serve their patients and being labeled a pill mill by politicians or the DEA. Our elected idiots want to be seen as doing something against all of those pain medication addicts out there and the public wants them too as well.
That is a whole other issue with pain management. Your average person has an injury and winds up being referred to pain management after the doctor fixes whatever was wrong. They most likely were already on pain meds when they were referred. These drugs are horribly addictive. The drug companies know this. The doctors know this. The public knows this as well. So through no fault of their own they become addicted to these drugs. Then comes the nice kick in the gonads to them. Instead of being treated as a patient who has an illness they are suddenly treated as criminals. The public has this huge misconception of who are pain medication addicts. They picture this skinny guy, badly dressed shaking as he tries to get his next fix. They don't think of grandma who fell down and broke her hip. They don't think of the soccer mom who had a car wreck and broke her leg. They don't think of the father of 2 who worked two jobs to provide for his family. Yet these are the real faces of the pain medication addicts. They did what they were supposed to and followed the doctors orders and now they are hooked. They are now demonize by the public and abandoned b y the medical professionals who got them hooked in the first place. That just aint right. These people were not out looking for a quick high. They didn't break any laws. They simply got hurt and as a result now have an addiction that marks them as pariahs in society. I am lucky in a sense. My injury is not going to get any better. I will never have to worry about addiction as I will never be pain free again. I am condemned to a life of pain that will get worse unless there is some miracle of modern science in the field of spine repair. But these people have to suffer with their addiction on their own. Most insurance companies are finally covering addiction but the stigma of being an addict causes these people to suffer in the shadows. That really needs to change. That is completely F'd up when you think about it. These people need help not scorn. They need compassion not condemnation. The politicians need to understand this is not something these people chose but rather have stumbled into through no fault of their own. Sure there are some who abuse the medications without ever having been prescribed them legally but the majority have never done anything wrong. Maybe something can be done. I am not an expert in addiction. I do know the public perception has to change and so does the political perception for anything to be done. Hopefully it will be soon. The drug companies are making stronger and more addictive drugs to treat pain. Now something needs to be done to fix the people who have become addicted to these drugs.