Posted on 03/22/2018 7:49:44 AM PDT by GailA
“What you don’t understand and what the country has forgotten is that 10 to 11 percent of America is in chronic pain,” he explained.
He says that group was dealt a blow in 2015 when the state legislature passed a bill that closed 308 certified pain clinics in one day.
“That put 120,000 people on the streets with nowhere to go because the law designated that only pain specialists could treat them, and there were only 63 of them living in Tennessee at the time, and their offices were full and not taking new patients,” according to Rudolph.
(Excerpt) Read more at wkrn.com ...
This was always going to happen - the addicts will get the pills, the ill will get the shaft. I’m sick of this opioid hysteria.
How did it come to pass that one out of every nine or ten Americans is afflicted with this problem to such a degree as to be dependent on painkillers? This is 30-40 million people we’re talking about.
FUDGING THE NUMBERS!
Dr Red Lawhern
http://www.wfaa.com/article/news/pain-meds-shortage-changing-how-north-texas-patients-are-treated/287-530782803
CDC Admits Rx Opioid Deaths ‘Significantly Inflated’
https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2018/3/21/cdc-admits-rx-opioid-deaths-significantly-inflated
Not just Texas EVERY STATE, my last 2 ER visits the Dilauded was the lowest dose available that wouldn’t even bring Osteoarthritis pain down. Pain meds shortage changing how North Texas patients are treated
http://www.wfaa.com/article/news/pain-meds-shortage-changing-how-north-texas-patients-are-treated/287-530782803
Getting Sick Can Be Really Expensive, Even for the Insured
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/upshot/getting-sick-is-really-expensive.html
Ban Tramadol https://cyclingtips.com/2018/03/time-finally-ban-tramadol-cycling-pharmacists-view/
I agree. This is what happens when gov’t get a wild hair up its a$$ about some issue or another. Lots of impassioned speeches, feigned anger and legislation that essentially throws the baby out with the bath water. I count myself lucky that whatever pain I have can be alleviated by two Ibuprofen.
I am tired fotr people making bad choiced. Put them in jails and they will sober up quick.
Try this again. I am tired of paying for others bad decisions. Put them in jail to sober up.
There is a highly gradated scale from straight up heroin injectors on the street to terminal cancer patients.
The country has not yet designed a good way to ensure the proper handling of cases so that a slippery slope is not in the design.
Rather than take one end of the spectrum or the other from which to argue an absolutist point, I recommend we consider that SOME pain management is well and good, and that OTHER “pain management” is an introduction to a slippery slope, and that we try to find better ways to distinguish between the two.
I know that when I point out my personal experience on the matter (lost my ex-wife to ever increasing opiates for 5 years, from which she never properly recovered) people jump on me as if I want to take pain meds away from cancer patients. Too, some folks want to argue that pain meds are so regularly diverted to the street market that they should be more strictly regulated.
I think we need to work on rational strategies that increase the likelihood that pain meds will be properly used and not abused. That is hard. So, rather than have another pissing match, can we focus on this difficult problem in a constructive way, please?
I’m doing physical therapy for a relatively minor shoulder problem. The pain goes from nothing serious to debilitating. My right arm is numb most of the time and I’m strongly right handed. (monodextrous)
I’ve got some pain pills but have been very judicious in taking them because I don’t like the way they make my head feel all loopy.
Our county is in the epicenter of the heroin/opiod epidemic. I have friends who have lost children to it and understand the different sort of pain they are enduring.
One of the challenges is that there’s no real medical way to diagnose “pain.” Therefore it’s easy to scam the system.
That said, I truly believe that the relatively low number of people who are truly in need of medical remediation should be allowed whatever they want, but there needs to be a way to regulate it. (not government regulation, something medical)
Same with experimental drugs for terminal patients. I love the Right to Try idea.
America is aging and pain is a fact of life for many. My veteran dad had 8 cracked vertebrae from osteoporosis and could not function without an opioid. People living with pain will commit suicide. Very few overdose and those that do fail to observe warnings or seek help.
In a sense, this is like everything today. The idiots out there abusing everything will dictate the future freedoms we will end up with. Government is only too happy to respond by curtailing personal liberty and freedom.
Take the gun control issue also for example.
I work as a nurse, and I say AMEN. I do not take, nor have I ever taken opiates. But to put everyone in the same stew is just what moronic pols do, b/c most voters do not understand the issues of chronic pain. Only the minority in severe pain comprehend the stakes.
You are not listening to what OP is saying.
I’m sure there are some that do have pain they can’t live without. But I know from personal experience that our bodies and minds will trick us into taking more opoids any way it can...our minds and bodies will convince us that we still have too much pain and so still need to take our drug of choice. Not all. But many who are on pain pills need to seriously evaluate their lives and honestly see if the primary reason they’re taking pain pills is because they’re addicted to them.
I think you had the ‘perfect storm’. You had various guys walking around with significant pains from high school and college sport injuries. You had people already in their 30’s who had work-place injuries or accident-situations. Their only real relief before....was alcohol, lots of it.
Opioids arrived and deadened the pain. Sadly, if you had any kind of liver issue prior to opioids...well, it just doubled up problems. I think the alcohol consumption crowd had already screwed around with their liver a bit, so opioids just took it to the final level.
Once they dumped the pain clinics....these folks just went to the local dealer and asked what came close enough, and got their dose from that guy. The rest is history.
People who are suffering shouldn’t have to pay fornthe stupidity of others.
They expect us in the nursing home to offer food and fluids, dim lighting and give back rubs before administering narcotics. Suggest these “treatments” to dad!!
Exactly!I knew a recently passed lady who was bent in half with scoliosis. She was in constant pain in her late 80’s. The poor soul should have been given morphine,IMO. I took her to her doctors who said they couldn’t help her. As it was she went through lots of different meds that didn’t help and the one that gave her SOME relief was severely restricted. How is it that people like her had to account for every pill( no early refills) and yet drug dealers are arrested with BAGS of opioid pain meds? Are clinics like this where they acquire them? If legitimate patients who need them can’t get such large quantities -and aren’t selling them, where are these troves of meds coming from?
They are going to heroin because of the pain. They are going because of the addiction.
I don’t agree.
I have seen opioid addicts reform, engage physical therapy and recover from “intractable pain”.
Studies have shown PT works better in 4 of 5 cases. Most people just want the easier solution because PT, too, is painful.
Now, for those with cancer pain that’s a different story all together.
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