Depending on narcotics
Seventeen pills of six different sorts, my 24-hour drug regimen.
I take six medications. Five of them — the antiepileptic, the antidepressant, the non-narcotic pain killer, the muscle relaxer, and the oral contraceptive — are covered through a mail-order service. I receive a 90-day supply in my mail box every three months. No hassle. If a prescription runs out, my doctor is notified electronically, he then sends the new script electronically, and everything proceeds as normal with absolutely no additional step required of me. The only thing I do is click on the check-out button on the web site every three months. That’s it. No calling. No physical piece of paper to pick up. No wait at a retail pharmacy. Just a click and several days’ wait.
There’s one other medication I take. That medication serves the exact same purpose as all five others: it relieves my pain so that I can get on with my daily functions. I take it regularly, just like all five others. I have been taking it regularly for over five years now for the same reason. But this medication is not covered by the mail order service, because it is not considered a “maintenance medication” — despite that it fills the exact same maintenance role all five others fill, just by a different mechanism.
So for this medication, I am only allowed a 30-day supply at a time, and no refills — a brand new script each fill, which requires my doctor’s input each time. I have to call my doctor no sooner than the exact day it was filled last month, unless it falls on a weekend in which case I might get away with calling up to 2 days early. Then I have to call back a couple days later to see if the script has been written. If it has, it is printed out, and I have to physically walk in to the office, stand in line to see a receptionist, have them take a copy of the script with my photo ID, sign and date the copy, and walk out with the script. Then I have to physically take it into a retail pharmacy, wait in line, hand it to the pharmacy technician, then wait the required time for it to be filled. If there are no problems with my insurance, I then must physically present myself and pay for the prescription. Then I can walk out the door with my medication.
(And this is the process with a doctor who’s relatively friendly about the matter.)
It is quite a different process and one overflowing with “veto points” — points at which any party involved can cause any sort of problem and stop the whole process up. Maybe my doctor is on vacation and won’t be back for two weeks. He is the only one in my clinic who will write this script. I can’t call earlier in anticipation of his absence; they will not write the script before the last runs out. In that case, I’m stuck until he comes back. Maybe the system spits out some sort of error, like the one I received today: I was told the script must be written by my original prescriber. Which is this doctor. So now they have to go back and ask for the script all over again, and he isn’t in til tomorrow, and it’s not guaranteed to go through smoothly then. There have been other errors.
Maybe the insurance says no. For any number of reasons; I’ve dealt with prior authorization errors, quantity limit errors, errors because my insurance has suddenly decided to list me as living in an assisted-living home and cannot fill a prescription if I am. Maybe the pharmacy hits a snag, like the time they would not fill a written prescription until 2 a.m. that night because the insurance company said so, even if we paid out of pocket without billing the insurance.
And I’m going to keep running into these issues, and I will run into new errors every few months. I may have solved the last problem, but there’s always something new to pop up. I can never rely on this medication being filled on-time. It simply does not happen the majority of the time. No matter how diligent I am, how patient I am, how clearly and politely I explain myself — or how despondent I get, how emotional I get when telling them but I cannot work without this medication, and I don’t have leave on this job, and I can’t afford to be fired for missing work. Or whatever other pickle I’m in at the moment. It doesn’t matter. I do everything right and there will still be regular problems in getting my medication filled on time.
I’m sure, by now, you’ve figured out that this particular medication is a narcotic pain killer — hydrocodone (generic for Vicodin). I take it for chronic pain. I have been taking it for over five years this way, with the doses varying between one-and-a-half per day and three per day. And the only medical trouble I have ever had on it is when there was an excessive delay in refill during a bad pain flare and I got to go through the withdrawal for two weeks. (And I can tell you from experience: hydrocodone withdrawal is nothing compared to Effexor withdrawal.)
Narcotic pain killers can be a valid option for chronic pain patients. They fill a void left by other treatments which still aren’t effective enough to address our symptoms, which can easily be disabling. As you can see, I take plenty of other medications. But if I want to be able to get up and do something, I still need the pain relief the hydrocodone provides. So I take it. Because I like to be able to get up and do things. Like make the bed in the morning and feed the cats and make myself lunch and possibly run errands. Or — you know — work. Those silly sorts of things.
Here’s the thing, though. In both common culture and the medical industry, chronic pain patients who take these medications to be able to perform everyday, ordinary tasks that currently-able people take for granted — like bathing or showering or washing dishes or dropping their kids off at school — are still constructed as an addict just looking to get high.
You could almost kind of expect that for the narcotics. Most people do not understand the distinction between addiction and dependence. (Which is, basically, the distinction between taking a medication for a medical purpose so that you can go on living your everyday life, vs. taking a medication when you have no medical need so that you can escape from your everyday life.) This distinction exists for a reason; developing a tolerance for a medication is not a bad thing in and of itself, and must be weighed against the benefits that medications brings to the person.
Addiction calls to mind, though, a life being torn down. Addiction calls to mind a person who is seeing the detriment of a drug outweighing the benefit. A person whose life is falling apart because of the drug.
A chronic pain patient taking a narcotic pain killer under the close supervision and guidance of a knowledgeable doctor is exactly the opposite: sie is a person whose life is coming back together because of the drug.
But this image is not easily shaken in people’s minds. And so the chronic pain patient is reimagined as the addict. Hir behaviors are twisted to fit the common conception of the addict. If sie ever lets out a drop of disappointment at having problems with accessing this medication which is helping to put hir life back together — that is seen as drug-seeking behavior. And if sie lets out any sort of relief at the feeling sie experiences after taking the pill and having the crushing weight lifted from hir muscles — that is seen as “getting a high.” Heaven forbid sie show any emotion beyond just relief — like perhaps pleasure or happiness — at being able to perform everyday functions again. And any moodiness or other undesirable behavior can be easily attributed to hir “addiction.”
What’s strange, I notice, is that this reimagining is applied not only to chronic pain patients who take narcotics — but to any chronic pain patients who takes any pain relieving drug.
Take, for example, the anti-epileptic I take. It is not a narcotic. It cannot be abused — that is, if you do not have a neurological pain disorder, it will not do anything for you. You can’t use it to get high, get low, or get anything — except a couple hundred dollars poorer every month.
The only way this pill does anything for you is if you have some sort of nerve problem. And even then, the effect isn’t a “high.” Rather, it levels your pain threshhold — brings it closer to “normal.” No artificial mood effects, no giddiness, no lift. Just level.
And I still see this medication treated very similarly. Patients who take it are described in the same terms you would describe a drug addict.
And it’s just one of many. Any drug that relieves pain for a person with chronic pain will be painted in the same strokes.
At issue, here, is the conventional wisdom that our pain is imagined, that it has no real basis, or even then that it isn’t as bad as we make it out to be. That is the belief that feeds this twisted construction.
Because if you are imagining your pain, there is nothing legitimate you could be getting out of that drug. And if you aren’t getting anything legitimate out of it, but you’re still taking it — and getting upset when you don’t have it — well, that’s classic addict behavior, isn’t it?
If our pain were recognized as real and legitimate — if those messed-up-in-so-many-ways Lyrica commercials didn’t start out with “My fibromyalgia pain is real!” — this wouldn’t happen as much. Because if our pain is real and legitimate, then it is real and legitimate to seek relief for it.
(Of course, that assumes that pharmaceuticals are accepted as a real and legitimate way to relieve that pain.)
But people are going to have trouble with that. They don’t want to accept our pain. They don’t want to admit that it is real. They want to keep believing that it must be imagined. Because then, they can comfort themselves, in that murky area beneath our conscious thought, that they would never end up in our situation. They could never end up with any sort of medical condition. And if they did, well, they know how to do everything right, so they would never be affected by it.
This is why they scoff at our assertions that our experiences are real. This is why our conditions are jokes to a great many people. This is why “fibromyalgia is bullshit” has been the leading search term to my blog. This is why they seek so desperately to deny that these drugs — any drug — could be having a legitimate effect on us. This is why they treat us like addicts. Because they can see how we might reasonably be having real pain, and they can see how these drugs might reasonably be legitimately relieving it, and they can see how we might reasonably be upset if we are consistently denied access to the one thing that allows us to live our lives the way we want to.
And if all that is reasonable, then — shit — they could wind up in the same place someday. And none of their can-do bootstrap individual determination could magically get them out of it.
Addicts we are, then.
SarahMC
| Monday, July 20, 2009 | 9:00 pmI know what you’re going through. I often joke about the pharmacy I run out of my nightstand. I also take an anti-epileptic and a narcotic. The process of getting that narcotic every 30 days can be mentally (and sometimes physically) exhausting and can cause so much anxiety – which exacerbates my pain.
Peace to you.
Gossamer
| Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 1:08 amYes, I think you’re right about so much of the attitude regarding narcotics for pain relief. I wasn’t really aware that there was much stigma attached to non-narcotic pain relievers, but I guess it’s not particularly surprising. Puritanical thinking, you know, pain is purifying, there’s virtue in suffering. Maybe for someone, somewhere, it is. For me it’s just soul-sucking, and I think that might be a more common reaction. Also the notion that if for you pain is not something you heroically endure, whilst gaining all sorts of insight and wisdom, whereupon after sufficient “growth” it magically evaporates into nothing, then clearly, you’re just weak. And flawed, and maybe you get something out of being sick. Whatever. I failed to get healed or have any sort of epiphany, despite the prayers of some family members. In fact, all pain ever got me was cranky. They still haven’t forgiven me. LOL
I’m kind of surprised you have to go through so much for a hydrocodone prescription. I hope this is not too intrusive, but I was on hydrocodone for many years (switched to something else a year ago) and I would only need to see my doctor for a new script every five or six months. He’d write me a script for 120 pills with five refills. Just wondering if it’s a state thing or something else that prevents your doctor from doing the same. It’s really not my business and I’m just curious, so feel free to ignore the question if it’s out of line.
SarahMC
| Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 9:30 amGossamer, in my case at least, my insurance will only pay for 30 days at a time.
Tony O'Neill
| Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 9:35 amI really hear you on this. Unfortunately this is just another symptom of the stupid war on drugs. It stigmatizes everyone. You know, in France you can walk into a pharmacy and buy codeine without a prescription. Ditto Britain and most of Europe. They have a lower rate of narcotic abuse there, as well. The War On Drugs was just another profit making scheme, using the weakest members of society (drug addicts) a scapegoat to boost the law enforcement industry, the prison industry, and the pharamceutical industry (and lets not forget the alcohol and tobacco industry who also have a huge vested interest in our schitzophrenic attitudes towards intoxication).
And pain patients like yourself, who really shouldn’t be involved in this, are left to pass a kidney stone in a hospital waiting room because the doctor is afraid that the patient might be an addict faking the pain for meds. Yet of course, this is America, if you were a millionaire doctors would be lining up to throw pain medications at you whether you had pain issues or not.
Land of the free…. yeah right.
Tori
| Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 1:32 pmAt issue, here, is the conventional wisdom that our pain is imagined, that it has no real basis, or even then that it isn’t as bad as we make it out to be. That is the belief that feeds this twisted construction.
God. This. Times, like, eleventy billion.
Last week, I called my doctor to set up a consultation appointment for severe dysmenorrhea. I’d previously been told to wait 3 months from my Mirena IUD insertion to make this call, to give my body time to adjust to the IUD. So I waited, as instructed, like a good little girl, and dealt with the pain by taking rather more than the recommended doses of OTC pain relievers. But because it still hurt “I can’t stand upright” amounts each cycle, I did call back.
And was told, “Why don’t you give it another 3 months before you come in? Even if it’s not the IUD, that will be fine.”
Um, for pain I’ve had for 14 years? No, really, 3 more months of this will *not* be “fine.”
And this was to discuss *any* additional pain management options the doctor was willing to put on the table — not just pharmaceuticals (though this would have been a likely next step) and not just medications with a higher potential for physical dependence. In my particular scenario, the likelihood that any given medication will cause me serious physical harm is low, and the likelihood that it will help make my life better is higher.
So I feel like there’s no argument to be made here that this doctor is “looking out for my best interests” or whatever. I can only speculate that the motivation is pretty much what you suggested — that I’m imagining or exaggerating my pain.
amandaw
| Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 1:54 pmGossamer — I can’t imagine anyone ever giving me a six month supply of this! At one time I had a script that had refills on it, but that doctor decided to suddenly require me to come in for a visit for every refill. I switched doctors. My new doctor knows why I take the narcotics, is ok with it, because he knows we are working on every other avenue of pain relief too, and he knows I am honest and responsible about it.
But I still go through these steps. Because it protects *them.* Honestly, it protects me too. That way, we never have him end up getting audited and my chart looking “suspicious.” We make sure everything is documented clearly.
But it’s still bullshit, because if we didn’t have this pain-denying culture we would not need that “protection.” It’s bullshit that even though this medication does the exact same thing those five others do, I have to jump through a hundred times more hoops to get my treatment, and I can never count on it being there the next month – ever. It is always looming over me, knowing I might suddenly be denied or delayed.
I used to go through that with every medication – all six of them – before I got on my husband’s insurance. He works for the state. His benefits are good. Really good, compared to most citizen’s (not the gold-plated stuff rich people get, but still good). And even with this “good” insurance, I go through this bullshit every month.
I’m not sure if you read the thread linked on the proposed ban on Vicodin and Percocet. I’ve been to plenty of doctors in my time, and had a variety of treatment from them. This is the best GP I’ve ever had, and it’s still a convoluted mess. And I go through it because I know *he* is being honest and responsible about things and that’s why we have to do it this way. He’s earned my trust, so I cooperate. And so it goes.
–
SarahMC – yes. Exactly. It’s just fucking exhausting keeping up with it. Feels like a second job, the invisible one that nobody else can see me working, but I can feel its weight on my shoulders every moment. It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t had to do that fight day after day, year after year — not just for a short time, but for years at a time, knowing it will likely never end. It weighs on you. And that doesn’t exactly help your physical or mental state. Second shift for the sick.
–
Tori — ugh, that’s bullshit. I had doctors dismissing and ignoring my menstrual pain my whole life too. One doctor even agreed my problem was most likely endometriosis, but felt it would be useless to do the laparoscopy to diagnose it, so she just wrote me a prescription for the birth control. Which, you know, helped some, but it was still frustrating, feeling like the gravity of my pain was being denied and dismissed.
If it’s an option for you… try a new doctor. It can take some hopping, which takes time and energy and money you shouldn’t have to pay, but there are some good doctors out there who will *listen* to you and *work* with you and try and make sure you are taken care of. This dr certainly sounds like s/he has no interest in helping you at all.
This and this post might be relevant, or search for “endometriosis” here. Not necessarily your diagnosis, but the matter of “woman part pain” is treated similarly across the board in the medical world… we have a long way to go yet.
And thanks all for the comments.
Gossamer
| Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 4:48 pmSarahMC, thanks, hadn’t considered insurance. Makes sense.
Amandaw, ah, thanks for explaining. It’s frustrating that doctors have to put more burdens on patients who are already suffering in order to avoid censure. Healthcare should be between provider and patient. Everyone else can kindly butt the f*ck out. You’re absolutely right, it is bullshit. I’m glad the arrangement you’ve got with your GP is working for you. It’s hard to find.
I see the same rheumatologist who diagnosed me as a kid, so we’ve got a 13 year history and I think that’s part of why he’s so accommodating about scripts. He knows I vary between mostly and completely housebound, so his office has been incredibly flexible. Moreso than I have any right to expect, really. He’s been seeing me free of charge since I lost my insurance, even. I know that I’ve been really, really lucky. This is part of why I get so steamed when I hear about chronic pain patients being denied care/pain control. That could so easily be me. Hell, that should be me. The only reason it’s not is because I was privileged enough to form a connection with a compassionate, generous physician before I landed in the uninsured/uninsurable gutter.
NTE
| Tuesday, July 21, 2009 | 11:37 pmOh, so perfectly put! I canNOT function without my pain meds – which come in a variety pack similar to yours (from all over the drug spectrum). I can barely function with them. If I am going to be able to get out of the bed at all today, it is going to take a lot of help – pharmaceutical and otherwise – and I can’t understand why trying to find that help makes me a bad person. Why asking about narcotics (when so many other drugs have failed) singles me out as a person who abuses drugs, who’s just looking to get high. I’m really just looking for WHATEVER WORKS. Whatever allows me to participate in my frickin life, and I really don’t think that it’s outrageous for me to do that. And I really don’t think that it’s your place – insurance company, government, close-minded physician – to tell me I can’t have it.
What a fabulous, fabulous post.
aerie
| Wednesday, July 22, 2009 | 4:48 pmI have migraines, severe, sometimes twice a month, that last at least 72 hrs. I’ve given up even hoping for Vicodin when the Maxalt doesn’t work. However,I take Adderall. OMG. It’s the same insanity. And then my psych tells me, “feds are cracking down and would prefer docs to see Adderall patients once a month”. So I had to RE-TAKE an extensive ADD test so that it’s “documented”. I’ve been taking this med over 10 yrs and ADD is well documented in my chart!
My doc is from Australia and is equally disgusted. He’s not making me come in once a month, YET, until the “feds” require it.
HOW much more can they crack down!? Prescription day is already a once a month all day long ordeal. I feel like so many of you in that I don’t think it’s the government’s (or anyone else) business telling me what I can or can’t put in my body. I’m an adult. I don’t need a government nanny.
Jen in Ohio
| Thursday, July 23, 2009 | 10:20 amEverything you said, yes, yes, yes.
I’m one of those who is more harmed than helped by the drugs, so I get to experience the other side of this nasty little catch 22, which is that people are just as suspicious of patients who won’t take the drugs as they are of the patients who need them. I have to go around all the time about the intolerable side effects I get from the rx pain relievers (which don’t work to kill my pain anyway) and the fact that the anti-depressants, pretty much any kind or any combination thereof, make me suicidal. Apparently the prevailing assumption is that either I’m not really sick, or else I must not really want to get better, because otherwise I’d “just tough out” the suicidal ideation and the 24/7 anorexic/puking zombieism. And and and! Here’s the biggest irony: my drug intolerance is a symptom of the damn disabling condition, b/c before I got it, I could take any drug without issue, and now there are even antibiotics I cannot tolerate. Pfft, assholes.
Anyway, I was actually stopping by to thank you, sorry for the digression. I still can’t hardly have any conversation about any of it without ranting. I’m sure you understand, lol.
I posted in one of your recent threads at Feministe about my trouble with meds, and I was dropping by here to tell you that because of one of your other posts, I just ordered myself a TENS unit. I actually got it for free because I had gift certificates laying around so it’s a no-risk trial in that sense and if it doesn’t work for me I can pass it along to someone who needs one but can’t afford it. I know that it is a crapshoot, but I am hopeful that it will offer me some relief, any little bit of help will go a very long way. But really, I am just so grateful to you simply for making me aware of a drug-free option to explore — something which none of my team of highly paid medical professionals has done in the past 2 years — that I have been singing your praises to my housemate for a week, so I wanted to say more directly, THANK YOU. :)
amandaw
| Thursday, July 23, 2009 | 2:30 pmJen — yes, ultimately I think it comes down to a lack of agency for PWD. We aren’t allowed to make our own choices; people have problems seeing us as informed and responsible agents in our own damn lives. There is instead an impulse to explain to the PWD what sie is doing wrong. Because obviously if sie is still disabled, sie is doing SOMETHING wrong! It doesn’t matter what it is you’re doing/not doing — people, to comfort themselves on that below-the-conscious level, will try to find something wrong with it so they can attribute your disability to that — so that they can believe that they’d never end up like you because they know how to do it right. So your disability becomes, not a problem with your body or a problem with societal access, but a problem with your actions and decisions. Individualism at work.
Femmostroppo Reader – July 25, 2009 — Hoyden About Town
| Saturday, July 25, 2009 | 8:06 am[...] Depending on narcotics [...]
attack_laurel
| Monday, July 27, 2009 | 7:09 amYou said it all. Thank you.
In the US, it’s really insane. And I take 6 Vicoprofen a day, and have for over six years now. Every time I see a new doctor (nerve pain), I go through the litany of other drugs I’ve tried, none of which worked as well as the narcotics to allow me to function, and none of which came with as few side effects (my experience with Lyrica was particularly horrifying, and the withdrawal was agonizing).
But I’m an addict, you’re an addict, we’re all addicts, because pain is good for you, tight? (/sarcasm)
ahsi
| Monday, July 27, 2009 | 11:49 pmmy fibro pain started just a few years ago so this year, when I was put on lyrica + some other meds, it wasn’t as potent, but it still made me go through college fairly normally instead of being stuck in bed, postponing grooming even to after a few days, etc.! It looked like I was low all the time, but I was satisfied by it because atleast I could get on with my day.
What really ticks me off is that people who need these drugs get bad rep because of those addicts who take it for fun when their bodies are healthy. They ruin their families and eat up state dollars in convictions, and we have to pay for the stigma. I hid my condition from everyone but professors and some immediate family members just because of that. I had to appear normal all the time to everyone else–my friends, everyone because they aren’t understanding.
I got off all my meds as per a personal decision I made, and am now spending my summer looking for an alternative. I hate that my cognitive abilities are not as they were before starting the meds, but atleast I have something to rely on just in case I need them for my pain in the following years.
stlthy
| Tuesday, August 4, 2009 | 2:46 amHell yes. I have chronic pain from hypermobility syndrome, fibromyalgia and endometriosis, and I had a huge argument with my GP a few weeks ago. The pain in my muscles and joints was so bad I could barely walk, plus the endo pain was terrible…I’d never asked my GP for any kind of narcotic pain relief before, although one of the other doctors had given me oxycodone scripts for the endo in the past…so anyway, I was sobbing; I hurt *so* much, and my GP told me to take a warm bath and some naproxen. He said he doesn’t prescribe narcotics at all, ever. His telling me to take naproxen for the endo pain was particularly insulting…I’m 31 years old and have been dealing with this for 15 years, and he seriously thought I’d never thought of that?
So I got an emergency appointment with my rheumatologist and am in hospital now, and have had to book another laparoscopy, because my pain just wasn’t ‘real’ enough, or whatever. I’ve known this GP for 15 years; he is a fantastic guy, but this whole moral panic about narcotics is just a miserable fail.
/sorry for rant. But yeah, I relate.
mzbitca
| Sunday, August 9, 2009 | 5:34 pmAs a disclaimer, I work with people who have addictions.
In my experience, the people who are often given the hardest time to make sure that they don’t have an addiction and aren’t trying to “get on over” on the pharmacist/doctor do’nt hae any sort of addiction problems, the one that do have already found a doctor that doesn’t follow those rules, or a pharmacy that is lenient about refills. Everyone is so worried about letting someone “get away” with conning them about pain meds that they often don’t realize that they are hurting the wrong people.
Drs. have a quick system called “inspect” that allos them to see how many prescriptions of pain medication someone is getting and how often they are refilling them and from who that takes five minutes. That would quickly show if someone is doctor shopping vs. someone who really did lose script and needs another one. Unfortunately, must drs. don’t do this or will only after they’ve given a patient a hard time and treated them like a criminal.
Bonnie
| Sunday, September 27, 2009 | 7:56 pmThis doesn’t make any sense. What state are you in? I am a pharmacy technician, and hydrocodone (usually in combination with acetaminophen, or APAP) is officially designated as a Class III drug, which means you can get refills for up to six months. This is in contrast to the true narcotics, the Class II’s, which include such drugs as morphine, Oxycontin, Oxycodone, Adderall, and Ritalin. These drugs do require a new prescription every 30 days.
Is it just your doctor requiring this? Because it isn’t the law, at least in my state, and I was always of the understanding that the DEA classes apply nationwide. Therefore you should be able to find a doctor who will give you a six-month script.
lauredhel
| Monday, September 28, 2009 | 1:26 pmBonnie: A pharmacy tech calling amphetamines “narcotics”? That’s a legal fiction, not a pharmacological reality.
amandaw
| Monday, September 28, 2009 | 1:28 pmIt is my doctor’s requirements. I don’t believe I said it was law. Social model of disability: any barrier to access is a barrier, doesn’t matter if it’s de jure or de facto, it’s STILL a barrier to the person.
Do you not realize how problematic it would be for me, a chronic pain patient, to basically leave a doctor who has been a huge help to go shopping around for the one who will give me the most pain meds with the least hassle? How that would look? What it would do to my credibility with every other medical professional, case worker, insurance worker I have to deal with in the future?
I already live with incredible white and class privilege which allows me easier access to these things than people without that privilege. And I have this much trouble. (This doctor, again, has been the EASIEST to obtain meds from.) I do everything right, I play it straight, I have never in my life used recreational drugs (including a single drop of alcohol or a cigarette), I don’t even drink caffeine for goodness’ sake. And I still have this trouble.
If I didn’t have the credibility I do — BECAUSE of these things, like the fact that I DON’T go doctor-shopping for more pain meds — I’d never have gotten the holdover medication I needed from the ER last year, they would have laughed me right out, or sent me to rehab for addiction.
So no, it’s not as easy as throwing out a well-meaning suggestion to shop around. It might be that easy for you, but it does NOT work that way for PWD.
amandaw
| Monday, September 28, 2009 | 1:33 pmI think my doctor’s requirements are completely reasonable given the circumstances, btw. They are covering their asses by making me jump through these hoops. And the fact that I jump through them without raising trouble adds to my credibility with other professionals, which is something I don’t mind getting out of the deal.
Ideally, this medical culture and social construction of “addiction” and stupid restrictions because we can’t be bothered to treat patients as PEOPLE and not just textbook model checklists — that wouldn’t exist, and the contract I signed with my clinic wouldn’t have to happen, and I could get refills without all these hoops. But the fact that I have to jump through these hoops exists BECAUSE OF that exact culture — where lazy doctors throw out scripts without actually taking the time to understand what the patients needs are and trying to actually address their problems — and the rest of us (doctors and patients alike) suffer for it.
But that’s why I don’t direct my bitching at my doctor. Because he isn’t the one to blame for all these barriers to access. He’s the only one who has worked hard with me to actually improve my condition — rather than treating me as another textbook question. I don’t fault him for doing a little CYA.
annaham
| Monday, September 28, 2009 | 4:01 pmThis doesn’t make any sense.
Maybe not to you, but for those of us who have chronic pain, it absolutely does. This sort of thing is pretty common; you would be surprised.
three rivers fog » Yes, this shit DOES make a difference
| Thursday, October 22, 2009 | 9:06 pm[...] that have no effect on people who do not have a specific type of pain disorder. And I take medications that people who are not in pain popularly take to get high. (I do not, for the record, take [...]
three rivers fog » Why I don’t think it’s funny to use Limbaugh’s drug abuse as a punchline.
| Thursday, January 7, 2010 | 6:05 am[...] You are feeding, growing, reinforcing the same narrative that codes me as an abuser, that makes me out to be a good-for-nothing low-life, that makes it difficult for me to access the medication I need to be able to live my normal daily life. [...]