You all have been reading my diaries for a while now. You know I have been treated like crap from PM. You also know that I have been fed up with our treatment. Not just mine but everyone who has been through a similar experience with pain management or any doctor really. In fact I helped to start this group with 2 wonderful ladies who all feel the pain and suffering of all pain patients who have been left undertreated or untreated at all. The 3 of us have this dream. It is a powerful dream. We share it because it affects not just us but our loved ones. It affects millions more across the country. Our daily lives are affected by this. We dream that one day soon every single state will have a Pain Patients Bill of Rights. Every single state will force doctors who run pain clinics to treat us as Humans. They will treat us adequately so we can get on with our lives. They will work to manage our pain and prescribe the drugs we need to actually return to our lives. We dream that no longer will we hear of anyone ever having to do the "Pharmacy Crawl" again. Sure it is a huge dream. We feel the pain of people across the US who are not being served by their pain management doctors.
So what can we do about it ? We can sit here in our little group and come up with wonderful ideas. But these ideas will go nowhere if we don't start to advocate for change. We can have the greatest ideas in history and they will not get outside of our group unless we push them outside of our group. We can not change anything within our group. We need to step outside and become a voice for our rights. We need to become visible. We need to become the squeaky wheel. It is uncomfortable to step outside. Yes we know that. We are afraid of the ridicule society will heap on us. We are afraid of societies bias against pain medications. People will call you a Junkie, and addict. Yes that can happen. That is why we need to educate people. We need to educate society as a whole. We need society on our side. Without society WE CAN NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ! We need to have society behind us. We need to voice our problems loud and clear to anyone who will listen.
We sit here in our little bubble and call it life. The world goes by outside of our bubble. We are only concerned with what impacts us. This isn't being selfish, it is normal. Until you yourself experience something it remains unknown. Society does not know how we live our lives. They picture us a group of addicted junkies living off of SSI disability. They need to know not just who we are but why we are here. They need to know we are not being treated correctly by the medical profession. The big problem is that they can't here us unless we speak up. We have to stop sitting quietly on the sidelines and become that lone voice in the wilderness calling for change. Soon that lone voice will be joined by others. Then more will come and listen and add their voices to the growing chorus. There is so much work to be done. One person will never be heard but a crowd of voices will carry further. A crowd of voices will carry into the state legislatures where Bills are written and laws take shape.
We need to start that voice crying into the wilderness. We need to have a voice screaming to all who will hear at our poor treatment. We need to be shouting from the mountain top and singing from the valleys. We need to put our plight before the American people and start the change NOW. Why do we need to start it ? Because who else will ? Society is sitting behind it's own little bubble believing everything is Hunky Dory ! They are unaware of the problem unless it has hit someone in their family. While we may be 100 million plus strong, we have been suffering in silence. No one is standing up and saying "Hey this sucks and we need to change it !" instead we sit here behind our computers and bitch to each other. We already know the system sucks and is broken. We are preaching to the choir while the church is empty ! So it is time to get up off our aching backsides and start to preach to those who have no clue why we are still hurting. We have to let everyone know there are crappy doctors out there. We need to get the public involved and educated about our issues. We need to let the politicians know we are not going to sit back in silence anymore and take this crap. We need to let them know the system is broken and the current laws suck. All of our great ideas are for nothing if we don't put them before the people that matter. We could have the greatest Pain Patient Bill of Rights in the world but if we don't put it out there it is exactly like it doesn't exist. The time has come to become vocal. The time has come for us to stand up and tell the world we are fed up and we want this fixed NOW.