My Story: What About Our Rights?
nationalpainreport.com/my-story-what-about-our-rights-8830709.html
By Douglas Marsh
I believe that one of the worst things that our wonderful government has done is target a group like the chronic pain community. For the most part, we are a group of people who at one time in our lives were active and very productive members of society, then one day our lives as we knew them all ended. Now we sit at home blogging and talking on social media about all the injustices we are experiencing. Their outright blatant attacks against all of us and the doctors who treat us with opiates have created an entire demographic of people who are been openly and publicly discriminated against by pharmacies, doctors, nurses, public interest groups, politicians, government agencies and the national news media. This has all been an unforgivable violation of our human and civil rights by our government and the news networks media icons like Anderson Cooper.
It’s our duty as the oppressed to stand up for ourselves and make our voices heard. Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King opened the door for everyone’s civil rights and then others like Harvey Milk extended the fight for other groups. Every single one of these people fought against not only the odds, but also public opinion.
The Civil Rights movement of the late 50s through the mid to late 60s ended up becoming the Rainbow Coalition under the leadership of Reverend Jesse Jackson. This group became a very important player in the nation’s elections.
These are just a couple of examples how an oppressed and discriminated against group can become very important in the election process. This is why and how we should make our points to the elected officials and those campaigning for their offices.
The day will come when the Chronic Pain Community will be a deciding factor in the election process of State and Federal government officials. It has become our responsibility to create our own future by not just casting our votes, but by becoming a force to be reckoned with. I am putting a call out to all my pain riddled brothers and sisters to contact every candidate running for offices in your area, both new and incumbents. Ask them the questions that are important to us as a community like the legalization of Marijuana and the fair treatment and humane treatment of pain suffers with the use of opiates. Find out and share the answers to these questions on social media and the National Pain Report to let our fellow pain suffers know who should be our candidates.
Believe it or not, a day will come when our actions and influence will become huge in determining who will be elected. A day will come when our opinions will be asked on the National News on who the Chronic Pain Community is going to endorse in elections. Finally, the day will come when real funds are given for proper research and development of safe drugs and therapies for treating and eradicating Chronic and Disabling pain.
This movement could decide a new mindset and also change a lot of ways that business in the United States is conducted, just as the Rainbow Movement did with AIDS research and the Civil Rights Movement did with corprate hiring and voting rights among minorities. Just maybe we could change work place safety procedures to avoid accidents and injuries along with more in-depth medical training to further avoid errors and failed medical procedures.
I am truly sorry to make this a history lesson, and I do know that I can be very long winded at times. But I honestly believe that if all this is done in the same ways that these other movements were done, our cause just may open the nation’s eyes to the discrimination that every single one of us has experienced.
Douglas Marsh is a 50 years old pain patient who lives in southwest Louisiana. He and his wife Pam recently celebrated their 11th anniversary. He just joined the US Pain Foundation and is looking to become a much active advocate for pain patients.
Filed under: General Problems
sorry, but what the heck is so wonderful about our government these days??
Senator Pat Toomey (PA) seems to have at least, a better idea of what is driving overdoses and wants to introduce legislation to impose sanctions against countries that don’t do enough to keep manufactured carfentanil from leaving their country and showing up here. I’ll find out more on Monday, hopefully.
I have tried to reach people from Maria Cantwell office she is just unreachable , Gov Jay Inslee office is so easy to approach. People always contact you back. But Cantwell office I don’t know about her.
It’s back and forth on Democrat or Republic who really supports us ? Hey Steve our Pharmacist what do you think ? He is our Pain Whisper guy.
Everything we hear in the news about chronic pain is always, always one sided. All negative remarks about people in pain telling public we are all drug addicts. The public has no idea what is going on . When you try to tell them they honestly believe they are really just talking about drug addicts. The public does not know what is happening to people in pain. They just can’t believe it. Yes we need to be all over billboards each person in an area can put money in a bill board along a nice road. I would like to have a billboard. Put up a site of the owners of the billboard with names if they want. Ask them. College news they love to help. We can sell bracelets for a small amount money so we can sell more , pull a WalMart. Yes we can do it.
Both political parties are pushing this. I think the real major problem is more at the state level. Some of the ideas the Federal government I have no problem with but some states have taken the CDC suggestions and not only made it law but went even much stricter. For example if you live in Oregon and on Medicaid and have back problems you are limited to 7 days of opiates no matter what the problem is. I think it is in Illinois where the max number of pills that can be written by your primary is 60 pills a month and can only get 10 days at a time. Meaning you have to pick up your script every 10 days and fill it at the pharmacy. Of those doctor who are prescribing now will cut chronic pain patients off because of all the extra work to continue to prescribe to them. With the Presidential election there also so many other things to consider but my quess the Democrats will be more likely to pull back from these super strict policies once they start seeing the damage it is doing to the Chronic pain patient. But what each person who cares about this subject needs to do is write those politicians who are running for office especially at the state level and find out what there views are. Meanwhile we need to some how get our voices louder and to be heard. My question is what are these national non profit group doing other then write there own articles and have a Web site. Why is the medical community so silent, disabilities groups, VA group, the media? Why there no ads on TV about the truth or chronic pain and opiate investigation on how this is effecting the chronic pain patient. If we could get some one like Lisa Ling to do a show with following 3 to 4 different chronic pain patients and the crap they have to go though I think it would bring our side to the story to the public and would be a great helped. No one likes to see someone suffer unnecessarily. What have these groups done in getting the media involved other then putting there own articles on their own website. In fact would expect these non profit groups be the ones reaching out to more then chronic pain patient but to those who can make the difference. Why do they not put out there to have writing campaign that are advertised so everyone knows who to write and when. By having large group write at once is much better then a letter or 2 that shows up once a week at some politician office to be lost with the other 100 letters they got that day. Instead you have people like myself who are writing and informing people I meet about what is going on. I know there many others but there is no direction. With almost 30 % of Americans suffering from chronic pain with probably 10 % in severe pain daily why is it like we do not even exist? How do we get organzied so we can use our most important best resource (the chronic pain patient) in getting those who are making these laws to slow down to see this is not the answer. I just don’t get it.
Thank you Connie and I do understand about low energy levels myself. I know that getting out and protesting or marching on Washington DC is not going to be an option for our masses but making our votes in November count is a must. With social media these days protesting electronically can be just as effective as the civil rights marches in the sixties. After all it was all about votes back then too. Prior to the civil rights movement and JFK, the south was primarily Democratic and considered to be the racist party and the Republican party, or the party of Lincoln was the political party for civil rights and equality. All it took was a dedicated group of people protesting and refusing to give up, and politicians who knew they needed this groups votes in order win their elections to change the face of politics and reverse political party beliefs.
This all changed the course of actual rights in the black community and by the chronic pain community showing these politicians that without our votes they will loose, that will make what we have to say important, and how we are treated, critical. Our representatives in government need us, or our votes a hell of a lot more then we need them. I can guarantee that if we don’t allow those who are hurting us to be re-elected, it will be headline news everywhere and these media outlets will want to know why.
Thanks again for your input connie and thank you Steve for posting this.
Doug, my plan is to vote against anyone already holding office in November!
Connie
We need a list of them to provide to everyone . That would work then we need to call them or write a letter , or both, to let them know. Thank you for your comment
There is a list on my resource page https://www.pharmaciststeve.com/?page_id=13937
I hope you are right Douglas, but in order to reach those kinds of goals it will take thousands of people with a lot more energy than most of those of us in pain have to expend. It takes being a vocal as well as a physical and financial presence to get the attention of the people in power. It’s all I can do most days to read and respond to emails on my phone, I don’t even have what it takes to get out my laptop.