There *IS* a serious drug problem in the U.S...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

…it’s just too fucking easy to get some *serious * meds from doctors.

I just had back surgery to repair (well, remove) a severely herniated disc. It was pressing on a nerve and giving me constant hot, burning pain down my leg. I’ve dealt with the pain for 18 years, and when it intensified significantly following the birth of my son, it was time for something to be done. I run the gauntlet my HMO set before me: see my GP, get referral to physical therapy, get weeks of PT, get referral to pain specialist, get MRI, get xrays, get referral to neurosurgeon, get surgery (all this took months).

Now let’s back up to where I saw the pain specialist. I had seen one two years ago when the herniation was first identified, and like that time, this pain doctor wanted to load me up with opiates. Both times I had to fill out and sign umpteen different versions of paperwork saying that basically 1) I need to take my pain meds as prescribed, 2) they can be addictive, and 3) the doc isn’t responsible for addiction due to misuse. On all of those papers, I wrote “I am declining the use of pain meds.” The first PS didn’t seem to notice or care, and I walked out with three different prescriptions (immediately torn up).

The second time around, I wrote the same refusal of pain meds on all the forms and highlighted them. The PS seemed almost put off–like, “What am I supposed to do if I can’t medicate you?” I explained that if it’s something that can be fixed, I want it fixed–don’t mask the symptoms. I know from horses that masking an injury can be problematic as the horse can reinjure–or worsen–the damaged site unknowingly as the meds dull their sensation of pain. If it can be fixed, fix it, I reiterated. The PS said sometimes the pain is of an unknown origin and the meds are useful for helping life be manageable; I agreed, but stated I wasn’t at that point, and we didn’t know what was going on. When I’m in that much pain, I’ll tell you, I said. Meanwhile what else can we do?

He got me the MRI referral, and the images told it all–the L5/S1 disc was all but destroyed. My neurosurgeon cleaned up the mess, and now 5 days after surgery I’m doing better than the day before it. I took ibuprofen for a few days (and some Tylenol PM at night), but that’s it.

Then there’s today. In this thread, I was curious why I was trembling in my recovery. It’s not constant, only after something “strenuous” like, oh, a shower, and it lasts an hour or so following. The consensus: my body is recovering from the trauma of surgery and my metabolism is all whacky. Add that I’m breastfeeding my son, and my body has a lot of stress on it at the moment. As long as I eat and rest, I don’t get so shaky.

But, to be safe, I called my doctor JUST to “do the right thing” and let them know about this side-effect. The neurosurgeon was in surgery, so his receptionist suggest I call my GP. Mistake: I was sent to my doctor’s nurse’s voicemail–NOT the physician’s assistant I always see (I’ve seen my actual doc 3 times in 9 years)…he doesn’t know me hardly at all. Anyway, I leave a message about the trembling and leave it be.

His nurse calls and leaves a message on my voicemail that just pisses me off. She’s well-intended and sweet-spoken, but UGH. She explains they don’t know why I’m trembling if I have no other sign of infection and am on no pain meds, so the doc thought maybe I’m having anxiety problems. :rolleyes: That’s right folks, it’s all in my head. If that sounded like something I might be having problems with, she continued, call back and he’ll get me some anti-anxiety medication.

Seriously, people?? Is it THAT EASY to get mood-altering substances from doctors these days? Why not just have me come in and LOOK at me, LISTEN to me, OBSERVE me to see that’s a ridiculous assertion?

And is it THAT EASY to get highly addictive opiates from doctors these days?? Why not try just a LITTLE harder to find what the problem is, rather than drown it in medications that do nothing but muffle the screaming pain?

Sheeeeeeeeeeeez. I’m no granola-fruitcake-hippie type, at least I didn’t think I was, but I don’t want to put anything in my body I don’t need. It is SCARY to think how easily I could have multiple pain med prescriptions AND mood-altering medications…for problems that DON’T REQUIRE THEM.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeez. No wonder there’s a prescription drug problem in this country.

2

Ruffian, of course they’re throwing pain meds at you - you don’t want them! Now, if you asked them for something to take for your pain, that would be clear drug-seeking behaviour and grounds for denying you any prescription painkillers whatsoever. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m not entirely sure if I’m joking or not…

3

Not.

4

I’ve was give 500 mL tubs each of morphine and oxycodone during my last stint in the hosptial, which works out to something like a hundred doses each. They’re still in my bedroom. I used maybe three doses total.

At least when it comes to antidepressants, doctors will be required to perform genetic testing before prescribing them within the next decade or so so they can better predict how you’ll react to them.

5

(snipping mine)

You sure? :wink:

6

Most people can’t tolerate the pain the way you do. And many people are afraid of surgery, so relieving pain is preferable to going under the knife (which can be dangerous in itself). It’s easy for some people to get meds, but they make it extremely difficult for many people to get the correct level of pain relief.

7

Wow. There comes a time every night, usually around two or three am, after which I can’t be held responsible for what comes out of my brain. I was well past that point when I typed that.

8

You’re damn lucky. In most medical situations I’ve seen, the patient IS in agonizing pain, there ISN’T an available fix, and the physcians WON’T prescribe sufficient medication to allow a reasonable degree of function for the patient.

Ditto for anxiety disorders - I had a friend who was had a severe panic attack for A WEEK STRAIGHT and could neither eat nor drink because putting anything in his mouth scared him too badly - his psychiatrist insisted on waiting for the antidepressants to kick in (which would have been a couple more weeks). When we finally took this guy to the ER due to dehydration, he had to be transported by ambulance because he couldn’t walk. His RESTING heart rate was 200bpm, but the doctors there weren’t too keen on giving him antianxiety meds, either.

I guess what I’m saying is, in most cases (antibiotics aside, that’s a whole different rant) having a doctor willing to give you something you might not necessarily need is much better than the alternative.

mischievous

9

In my experience, the biggest problem in the US is that acute pain (from fresh injury or recent surgery) is undertreated with narcotic pain-killers, and chronic non-malignant pain is overtreated with narcotic pain-killers. On average. Individual mileage will vary.

10

Most persons I know have had very hard times getting medications for pain. I was to the point where after almost an entire year of increasing pain. I was at a breaking point. I was ready to do something desperate. I have no desire to take opiates or other pain medicines since the extreme pain from an out of control immune system is gone. I did run accross a retired doctor that was offering me perscriptions without seeing me. He seemed to be turning senile, and I’m sure some people would have taken advantage of him. Why don’t they require a doctor to be a practicing physician to write prescriptions?

I’ve known a lot of seriously ill people, and they doctors give out way to many antidepressants with inadaqute precautions. They always try high dosses of antidepressants, to manage pain, because they’re afraid to write prescriptions for pain medicines. Even new mood altering drugs approved for a single narrow medical use are being given out to manage pain to almost anybody I know that had a lot of pain. You have leukemia, take some Nuerontine. You have severe fibermiliga, take some Nuerontine. It’s approved for seizures, and studies for all other uses have not been done. I had a nasty reaction on the first dose. It didn’t manage pain in anybody I know.

11

I’ve been on pain meds (Ultram and various muscle relaxants) for about four years now. I don’t take it as often as the directions say to do on the bottle because I’m worried about chemically cooking my liver. I take only as much as I must to be able to work.

I injured my back in a car accident. I really wish there was a surgical option, but mine is that vague diagnosis of “soft tissue damage.”

I never had any trouble getting my pain medication, but I always feel a little squicked when it comes time to ask for a refill. I don’t know why, especially since my medication is pretty “light” as pain meds go. Still, I always feel vaguely uncomfortable, like someone might think I’m a pill-head.

12

I got a nice prescription of percocet recently for after surgery on two broken bones in my ankle. It was my best friend for a couple of weeks. I seriously don’t care if all it was doing was “masking” the pain; I was told to stay ahead of the pain and damn glad to do so. (Except the nurse who discharged me told me not to bother with it and just use ibuprofen. I decided to go with the anaesthesiologist’s advice instead.)

I was also given the morphine pump thing in the hospital. Again, didn’t really care if it was just masking the pain, rather happy to have pain masked.

No complaints here about how easy it was to walk out with a prescription. And I’m happy to say the doctor and PT following up are always concerned about the pain management aspect of recovery as well as everything else. I stopped the percocet as soon as I felt I could manage the pain without it, but damn was I glad of it at the time.

I’ve always been a tough-it-outer but honestly after reading stuff on these here boards about the importance of acute pain management I decided to go with the flow and take care of it now in the hopes I’ll knock a risk of chronic pain on the head.

13

It’s very bad before I request pain medicine. The doctor commented on how I didn’t flinch or cringe, when they were inserting wires into my muscles to check for problems. I told him that in comparasion to the constant pain I had all over, I barely felt the wires. Other’s that had the test done for checking their carpal tunnel damage said it was extremely painful. I didn’t have any problems and they checked out all my muscle groups. I used concentration to dull the pain, and it works, but month after month final gets to be too much. I had to learn to control my body to manage Sydenhams Chorea a bit better. My best control was as a teen. I could block the pain of someone hitting me if I prepared. It didn’t stop the bruises though.

14

I’ve got some permanent nerve damage in my foot and lower leg from complications from surgery followed by repair surgery followed by everything in my foot getting pretty permanently hosed. I do take Neurontin for a lot of the hypersensitivity of the nerves – that and Lidoderm patch applied to the worst area make it possible for me to wear socks, allow a sheet to touch my foot during the night, etc. – but the constant cramping pain that comes along with it all was a source of real misery for several years. And if I don’t take pain meds for 24-36 hours, I literally cannot walk on my foot, it’s so spasmed up.

It took a long time before I finally found a doctor willing to work with me to provide the medication I need for pain relief – which is such a small dosage that they can’t believe it’s effective for me, but it’s all I need, and I don’t even take that if I don’t need it – because for some reason everyone thinks if you ask for pain meds, you must be abusing them. Never mind that I have a track record now of several years using the same small dosage that provides exactly the relief I need and no more. My current doctor’s office is quite happy with me and provides the meds with no problems, but I dread moving somewhere else and having to go through the whole thing again.

Chronic pain that cannot be relieved by surgical means or physical therapy (it lessens it somewhat, briefly, but going through three months of PT out of every six gets really old as well as really expensive when it clearly does no permanent good) is a really, really miserable way to live. I don’t ask for meds to drug me up; all I want is enough to reduce my pain to tolerable levels.

So it’s really aggravating to hear about all you folks being offered all these meds who don’t need them when there are so many people like me who do need them and have to struggle with pain for years before finding a doctor who actually believes that the pain is real and I’m not just drug-seeking.

15

Mama Tiger, I’m sorry you have a hard time with doctors, but there isn’t really an “all you people” in this thread so far who have been given pain meds but didn’t need them. There’s the OP, and possibly Smeghead. The rest of us have either commented on being able to get pain relief when we did/do need it, or lack of availability of pain medication. So no need to be terribly aggravated on that account, though it sounds horrid for you to have to jump through hoops to manage chronic pain, and I really wish it weren’t the case.

16

Sounds to me from reading the stories here that perhaps the ultimate problem is doctors who don’t listen to their patients…overeager to give meds to someone who doesn’t need them (with a fixable problem), and overly resistant to give them to people who DO need them (like what many of you have described). If I’d followed the plan of the PS, I’d be on pain meds right now and for some ridiculous length of time…and the ruptured disc would only further deteriorate, further increasing my pain and perhaps increasing my need and dosage of pain meds. Meanwhile, others in incredible pain are ignored or questioned. sigh

What pisses me off most is the nearly instant willingness to give me anti-anxiety meds based off of a voicemail that didn’t describe any unusual feelings or moods…just trembling and weakness if I did too much. This tells me the doc wasn’t interested in actually seeing and listening to me (or more likely, didn’t have time to listen to me)–quick, give her this medicinal band-aid, and move on.

I am grateful so many of you have shared your experiences from the other end of the spectrum–they are sobering stories, and have helped me appreciate my life (and doctors). I hope you all get the pain relief you need, in whatever form it may come.

17

My mother’s been sick since forever. I once asked her doctor whether her liver was shot (my “wet finger up in the air” analysis said it did); he thought about whether I had the right to know for a bit, then said yes. Being her only female daughter I count as her “primary caretaker by default”, plus there’s been a couple instances where I’ve gotten the right diagnose before Doc did (I’m not an MD but I have biochemistry training and I’ve been taking care of Mom for a long time).

One of the causes for her current, chronic digestive problems is mismedication. The wrong painkiller at the wrong time; not enough of the one that worked; insisting that she had to take a med that made her throw up every time…

Between whatever started being wrong with her, self-pity, a husband who made fun of her (half-hearted) attempts at dieting, bad diets, and mis-medication - I really don’t know which one has caused her (and me) more pain.

I’m currently waiting for a neurologist’s appointment. I’ve got a series of “little things” that have happened to me for over 20 years and which always end up being chalked up to “it’s just something that happens to you”; in other words, “no idea” - a couple times, after throwing some medication my way “to see whether it does anything”. After the ‘trial and error’ meds made me sick twice, I started refusing to take them. I know that my ideas about the possible diagnosis may or may not be accurate; after all, my reason to go to a specialist is to get checked. But I do know for sure that I’m not going to take some medicine “to see if it works, while we run the actual tests”. NO WAY!