PHARMACIST STEVE

This showed up on a closed chronic painer Face Book page..  I guess that this will show up under “suicide by gun” column on CDC’s published stats. It would appear that the doctor(s) involved in the DENIAL OF CARE of this patient will have no consequences for their actions and lack of actions.  Of course, if this pt had of OD’d on opiates prescribed by the same doctors… the “authorities/judicial system” would be coming after him/her for contributing to her death.  Amazing how the invisible diseases of mental health and chronic pain are dealt with under two different standards when  pts die.

“My sisters and I have been suffering from chronic pain for decades. My older sister and I were given proper pain control but my younger sister was denied that basic medicine. They would only give her one type of pain medication but that did not work sufficiently. Compounding the problem was she didn’t want to be a ‘druggie’. She bought into the doctor’s belief that biofeedback could control her pain and that people in long term pain should never take opioids. Her condition was horribly painful, imagine your whole body in a severe muscle spasm slowly forcing your body to fold in half and be stuck that way. These muscle spasms would constantly tighten and shift several times a day. Eventually, she turned to alcohol for pain relief since she was not given sufficient pain control. The heavy drinking caused her IBS like issues to flare up and we almost lost her to malnourishment in 2014. She gradually put on weight, my older sister and I came in and started caring for her and going to her doctor appointments with her. She was doing a little better (the doctors changed her medications – finally off clonazepam and on neurontin instead). They also started working with a new physical therapist and a visiting nurse who was replaced by a sister in law as she progressed. Since it was painful for her to use a phone or laptop, my older sister got her an E-reader with internet access. She would post on facebook and chat with me often. I was looking forward to visiting her this fall, to catch up in person. A few days ago, I realized I hadn’t seen a post from her in a couple of weeks, though she did like a post of mine recently. Like me, during her bad pain spells, she wasn’t too talkative – we’d catch up when she or I was doing better. Friday evening, I was contacted by my niece that my sister had been drinking heavily again. We were trying to plan an intervention, for this weekend or monday, to get her hospitalized for alcoholism but more importantly to find a proper pain control measure so she wouldn’t turn to alcohol out of desperation again. She rarely drank before she discovered alcohol would kill the pain. Saturday morning her sister in law found her….. We don’t know who gave her the gun – they had taken the one she had for protection (from a former spouse) years ago. I don’t know how her crippled hands, shaky hands were able to load the gun and successfully pull the trigger, but she was determined to stop the pain. Now she’s gone. Will never know if proper pain control could have reversed her debilitating disease now – it was most likely too late. I blame her doctors unwillingness to treat her pain for her death.”

Filed under: General Problems