Pain and the Search for Relief

            I was exhausted....Pain and PsA  fatigue had flattened me.  I crawled slowly into my bed where my 6" mattress topper lie waiting for me. Struggling to get my legs off the floor and onto the bed, I finally managed to get to a place where I would not fall off the bed from being too close to the edge.  My shoulders and elbows were all useless. Try, if you can, to imagine the difficulty of moving around in bed or worse yet: trying to get out of it, without using your arms at all--and multiple hip surgeries had reduced my mobility as well.

            The words of my internet pal, Vicki, came to mind as well as the sounds of her muffled tears.  "Cyn please take a pain pill. You need them ....you will never sleep tonight with that pain."  I felt badly for being the cause of her tears. Maybe I would take one, but no, I didn't want to become dependent on them.  What would happen the next time I'm in the hospital and seeing doctors who do not know me, who would make it their mission to get me off of them?

            I fell asleep considering all this. I slept for one half hour.  Pain was shrieking at me. My neck my shoulders, my spine, my ankles. I needed to stand up NOW.  My body just cannot stay in one position for that long.   I struggled to stand falling back into the bed each time I tried to use just my core muscles to sit up. Finally groaning,  I managed to stand.   I could not put any weight on my feet..yet had to somehow stagger the three feet span of floor to make it to my recliner.    Pain medication, regardless of how necessary it is, was not an option at the moment...I couldn't make it to the other side of my tiny room to pull the bottle out.  I flipped on my laptop....would she still be there?  There she was....a green ball of light next to her name.
“Vicki?  Are you here?" 

"Yes," came the reply. "I knew you would be back.  You can't reach the meds can you?  Why don't you keep one on your desk for times like these?  Go and get one. I'll wait."I tried to remonstrate but she just would not hear my justifications.  "You know you will be up the whole night in pain. Please, Cynthia, take one, for me"

"Okay." I did not want to make her tender heart cry.

            This went on regularly.  I was in pain from the moment ....well, I was just in pain every moment. Finally, in the hospital stay following my final hip surgery , they handed out those morphine pills  right on schedule for the whole two weeks I spent in rehab, and  sure enough...when I got home, I found that my body now needed them.   This both enraged and worried me.  But as my Pain Management doctor said "At least you no longer look like something the cat dragged in."  Nice.  But true.

 I hurt more than I can explain to you.  Words fail to communicate the type of pain that I have.    Pain meds are not considered these days to be legitimate medications. It is the only field where they attempt to pass the buck to Naturopathy or to non-traditional forms of treatment.  My question in response to that is..."Would you attempt open heart surgery with only hypnosis as a method of pain relief?  No, of course not.  That is absurd. 

These witch hunters who oppose opiates and cite a high rate of overdose death also include in those statistics, deaths from heroin overdosing.  Heroin is officially an opiate as well. Now let me ask you a question.  If opioids are criminalized, people who have unbearable pain must seek for relief elsewhere due to the impossibility of legally receiving opioids such as oxycodone, while safely being monitored and cared for by legitimate, licensed doctors.  Yes, there are people who become dependent on them.  Their body adjusts to them and comes to expect them…this is a normal situation.  But it is NOT drug addiction. They do not keep increasing their dose…they do not attempt to buy them illegally. They do not enjoy the effects of the medication except for the fact that it does grant relief from inexorable pain.

But let me ask you.  What will these people do once the only proven method of obtaining relief is suddenly made illegal?   Their pain will still be unbearable and their body still will expect these meds…Their only option will be to resort to illegal, un-monitored drugs such as heroin. And now, away from the care and wisdom of their doctors, more people will die.  Their only other hope for obtaining relief will be God miraculously healing them  or suicide .  And sadly, you can expect the latter of those two options having heartbreaking increases in numbers as well.  For myself, I rely on God's minute by minute allotment of Grace to get me from one moment to the next....but what about people who do not have His strength to depend on?

Does there need to be some kind of solution or way of reducing the number of illicit use of prescription pain medications? Yes…make the standards tougher. Make it necessary for pain management doctors to keep up with current MRIs and other tests to determine true need.  Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Make it harder for illegitimate opiod users to obtain their drugs and stop compromising the care given to the legitimately ill or wounded.  Pain specialist doctors should not be in fear of losing their license if they are doing what needs to be done to help those who truly need help and to send packing the seekers who cannot substantiate their claims of needing opiods to make their pain tolerable.