I have been writing about pain management since I started with DK. Before this I used to piss and moan on FB. Through all of this I have found that I am not alone. I didn't just make a crappy choice in my pain management clinic. It is the same across the country. While the different states may have different laws the experience is the same. Regular doctors are afraid to treat patients in chronic pain. They don't want to be labeled a "Pill Mill". They are afraid of running afoul of the DEA and being prosecuted. So they foist us off to pain clinics.
Hey this sounds good right ? A branch of medicine devoted to helping those of us who have for one reason or another have chronic pain. This is like a cancer specialist or a Urologist or whatever. They get special training and are experts in the field. Please don't make me laugh. There may be a few specialists in this field who have extra training. Who have specialized classes beyond the 9 to 10 hours in medical school. Who really care about relieving chronic pain in a humane way that doesn't humiliate the patient. Big problem is most of those who have specialized in pain management are doing it for the cash. They don't really care about their patients. How the hell can they ? They have thousands of patients. Some of them may be addicts who are seeking drugs to get high but most are like me. In daily pain beyond what we are willing to live with. Stop right there. We are not seeking the complete relief of our pain. We are not wimps. We live with more pain on a daily basis than most people have in a lifetime. We want to get our pain down so we can have a life. We just want to do stuff you all take for granted. To do that we will put up with pain because our bodies have failed us. For me a good day is when the pain is down to a level of 5 or 6. That is right in the middle of the pain scale. It runs from 1 which is no pain, time to go golfing or whatever all the way to 10 which is curled into a ball screaming while you are in the ER. I know I will never have another day without pain.
Those of us who live with chronic pain are all in the same boat. It doesn't matter if it was a failed surgery, a car wreck, or just a body that has decided to go to hell. Their are thousands of causes but the result is the exact same. We spend our days hoping to get it down to a level we can live with. We live with depression. We live with truncated lives. We carefully plan our lives so we can do some things that seem normal. We plan our trips to the grocery store. We plan our trips to family functions. We rest up so we can cut our grass or work in the garden or do just about anything. But guess what. All that planning can go right out the window if our pain flares up that day. Instead of going to the family reunion we are curled into a ball crying because the pain is so bad that day. When we are able to do something we end up having to plan for the recuperation time as well. The 2 or 3 days or even longer that we will need to recover from it. The days following that will have extra pain as a result. That is our lives. Think it is fun because a lot of us are considered disabled and don't have to work ? We don't spend our lives laughing it up. Just yesterday I went to the store with my wife for our biweekly shopping trip. She usually goes alone because I can't do it. But I went this time on both Friday and Saturday. Yeah that was a mistake. We headed out to Walmart and then Kroger on Friday. By the time we got to Kroger I was ready to cry. I was having wonderful pain flashes stabbing in my back. By the time we got home I was barely able to get inside the house. I spent the rest of Friday in bed. Oh what freaking fun. By Saturday morning I was a little better. I knew I shouldn't go to the store again but I felt I had to because I hated the fact that my wife has had to do it all by herself so much. So I took my meds and added a few extra ibuprofen, well actually about 20 of them and off we went. This was a quick trip to Aldi. It's a much smaller store so I knew it wasn't going to be too much walking. Well by the time we got done I was ready to lay down. Too bad I couldn't. I had some cooking to do for our family party on Sunday. I had to lay down for a couple of hours in the middle of the cooking. Actually I past out basically. My loving wife had a bit of trouble waking me back up. The pain had subsided a bit but I gritted my teeth and finished the cooking.
All that I managed to do over the 2 days gave me nothing but more pain. By the time I was done with the cooking my pain level was about at 8 and so I didn't eat much for dinner. When I fell asleep about 8 it was a relief but that didn't last long as I was up about midnight with sharp pains in my back. I took some more medication and fell back to sleep. Doesn't that sound like a really fun day ? How about it want to trade places for a couple of days ?
So our lives suck. In my case I feel like a lot less than a real guy. I mean come on, what kind of guy let's his wife do all the work ? I have very real depression. This actually causes pain to go up and the depression to get worse. Great cycle. Pain eats serotonin, the substance the body makes to help us feel good. This causes us to be more depressed and thus the pain goes up. Now let's throw in the humiliation we put up with to be treated for chronic pain. The doctors who believe we are only drug addicts after a high. The public sentiment that those on narcotic pan medication are useless addicts. The politicians who set up laws that make it harder to find doctors who are willing to treat us. The doctors who do treat pain who are in it for the bucks and want to force all of us into a system and when the system doesn't work for us they try to get rid of us because w don't bring in the bucks by agreeing to the treatments that are the bread and butter.
Let's jump down below the orange snow doodle and find out what we can do about it.
It is now the time for a very real pain patients bill of rights. We sign contracts when we enter pain management that force us to abide by their rules. We need for the doctors to realize that we are freaking humans. We are all different and our treatment can not be put into any system. We want the doctors to be trained in pain management. There are so many causes but the end result is the same. We live in pain. We need the doctors to realize that drugs don't work the same way for everyone. Some of us have higher tolerances and some of us lower. There are hundreds of different therapies and treatments that might work for each of us but not all of us. There are pain pumps and electrical stimulation devices that may give us relief. There are shots and more shots but these shouldn't be pushed like an upgrade to your cable services as they are now.
I am tired of being treated like a dollar sign. Your PAs, who have even less training in pain management than you, push these shots one after the other because they make you money. They go down the list, A then B then C and so on hoping to hit the magic one that will work. These make you money but waste ours as time after time we get no freaking relief. Now I will admit I really like shot day. This is because I know I will get to really get some good sleep. That wonderful propofol shot will knock me out when I get home and I will sleep great that night. But that is the extent of the relief that most shots provide. That having been said I really don't think it is fair or right that you can ban someone from your practice because they refuse to get shots. this has happened and I have been threatened with this.
I am tired of putting up with your crap. The snarky comments from staff when you come in to get refills. The fact that at times it takes longer than 2 weeks to get a refill prescription and it is still not ready when you come into the office and are forced to wait an hour or more to get it. The fact that we can wait for over 2 hours for our appointment when we get there 15 minutes or more early. You have some really great employees but some should be fired last week. The fact that when you complain because your messages take 3 or more days to get answers even when they deal with bad reactions to our prescriptions is not a good thing. Calling patients and saying sorry we can not give you a refill until you come in and then saying it will be 2 weeks or more before they can get an appointment leaving them without the medicine that they need to get through each day. All of these piss us off. But you have us by the proverbial balls. You know how hard it is to change pain clinics. You know that it can take 2 or more months to get in and we can't go 2 days let alone 2 months without our prescriptions.
So we really need a pain patients bill of rights. It is past time. Just as we have to sign a contract to abide by our rules, we want you to sign a contract with us. We want to be treated like human beings. Just because we are not high paid doctors doesn't mean we can be treated like crap. We want you to work with us to manage our pain. That is the field you chose to specialize in. Now start to actually practice it. We understand you want to make money. We all do. But money should not come before actual treatments. Money should not be your main motive for getting into the field. Think of it this way. We are long term patients. You have the chance to keep us for years. Keep up with what you are doing and we will leave. We will find someone who treats us humanely. The way it is now I wouldn't recommend you to an ISIS fighter. Quit trying to fit us into a system. That doesn't work. realize you will have to spend some time finding out the perfect treatment options for us. This can't be done when you never see your patients and really on NPs and PAs for the main interaction with your patients. Realize also that a lot of us suffer from depression. This is not just mind over matter BS. It is very real. A lot of us have thought about suicide just to end the pain. This doesn't make us wimps. This doesn't mean we are nuts. It is completely natural. So give us options to get this treated as well. Just don't ask the questions and leave it freaking hanging. I have come into the office and put it on the questionnaire and told your PA and they just ignored it. I'm sure it has happened to others. You really don't know how close you came to losing a patent that day. Another big thing is listen to us. We don't want more drugs. We don't want miracles. We want to be involved in our treatment. We know there is no freaking miracle cure that will relieve us of all pain.
It is past time that we stood up for our rights and stopped dealing with these idiots who shuffle us in and out of the office in an assembly line. We desperately need this. It is only right and fair. We are humans. We are moms and dads. We are husbands, wives, brothers and sisters. We are in pain but we are not the dregs f society so stop treating us like we are.
4:23 PM PT: Well The freaking Pain management clinic I go tojust found out a new way to up their profit while screwing the patient. They have started to do their own urine testing in house. Then they make sure they are out of network for everyone and soak the patient for huge chrages. I just got slammed with a $1500.00 bill for lab tests. Since they are out of network my insurance didn't pay a dime and I am on the hook forthe whole thing. Good news I have an appointment with them tomorrow. Want to bet on whether they pee test me again ? I am saying hell yes they will.
Anything for a buck and screw the patients.