Cord compression in every vertebra of my cervical. Missing disc at T11/T12. Cord compression every vertebra of my sacrum. I also am rare that I have an extra vertebra in my sacral area. Multiple lesions in my brain with Hx of falls, confusion and memory loss. Hx of EBV with 7 day hospital stay and a flare up in my 30’s. My pain started in my 30’s. I am on 10/325mg hydrocodone/acetaminophen 3x a day. They started decreasing my meds. I never ask for stronger meds because these allow me to do activities of daily living. I am 54 now and I am on disability. My pain is worse with activity. I can not do simple things like laundry, grocery shopping etc without pain management. Stop treating me like a drug addict. Allow our Dr.'s to make the informed decisions as to whether or not we are justified for needing pain management.
There is suppose to be a lifetime max of 3 shots. They are not FDA approved and will cause more damage. Dr Oz wants them banned. They are banned in other countries. It says eight on the label of kennelog or depo-metrol NOT for USE of the spine
Thank you for your post. That is amazing that you’re able to work and have a quality of life because of your pain medication and your fight. I have been on pain medication for over 15 years and about 3 years ago I was forced into a much lower dose of my pain medication. I couldn’t do all the things you could, but I was able to have a quality of life that I was at peace with. Since the forced titration I have been bedridden and my father who is elderly that I used to help take care of now has to take care of me. I only leave my bed for the bathroom and monthly doctors appointments. I am not “living”, but simply existing in horrible pain all the time. I am not “addicted” to my medication and haven’t turned to street drugs like so many pain patients have. I’m not judging them and I understand why they do it, but I will not become a statistic just because some dishonest pharmaceutical companies/people decided the medication that allows me a life is not making them enough money. I pray everyday that our fight will not be in vain and that mine and others forced titrations will end. I thank you for your story.
Thank you for your post. That is amazing that you’re able to work and have a quality of life because of your pain medication and your fight. I have been on pain medication for over 15 years and about 3 years ago I was forced into a much lower dose of my pain medication. I couldn’t do all the things you could, but I was able to have a quality of life that I was at peace with. Since the forced titration I have been bedridden and my father who is elderly that I used to help take care of now has to take care of me. I only leave my bed for the bathroom and monthly doctors appointments. I am not “living”, but simply existing in horrible pain all the time. I am not “addicted” to my medication and haven’t turned to street drugs like so many pain patients have. I’m not judging them and I understand why they do it, but I will not become a statistic just because some dishonest pharmaceutical companies/people decided the medication that allows me a life is not making them enough money. I pray everyday that our fight will not be in vain and that mine and others forced titrations will end. Thank you for your story.
I totally agree with this resolution, twenty Seven years ago I feel two stories and damaged my lower back and have gone through three back surgeries, with no relief. I am a Veteran and 42 yr retired Government worker and I’m treated like a dirty rag from doctors and pharmacies, it’s very sad that pain patients are treated like this!
The loss of access to my low dose opiate medication has impacted every part of my life. I have medical trauma the way drs suddenly started looking at all patients. I never miss used, sold, lost etc my meds. I now use an herb its better than nothing but not nearly as effective or give me the quantity of life i had. Also the stigma of multi controlled substances. Now i have anxiety med but its considered an issue if i were to try to get pain management again.
I’m a chronically ill/chronic pain patient & have been since 1998 & I’ve been going to pain management since 98. I live in AL and have been diagnosed with these conditions:
- Scoliosis 1990
- TMJ 1992
- C-Diff. 1992
- IBS. 1997
- Trigeminal Neuralgia. 1998
- Endometriosis. 1999
- PCOS. 1999
- Chronic back pain. 2000
- ADHD. 2001
- Kidney stones. 2002
- Stenosis. 2003
- Sciatica. 2003
- Bulging discs. 2003
- DDD Degenerative disc disease. 2003
- Lordosis. 2004
- Spondylosis. 2004
- Kyphosis. 2004
- SI Joint dysfunction. 2004
- Osteophytes. 2004
- Anemia. 2004
- High triglycerides. 2004
- High cholesterol. 2004
- Low HDL. 2004
- High LDL. 2004
- Osteoarthritis. 2005
- RLS. 2006
- Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. 2006
- Insomnia- due to pain. 2006
- Adhesive Arachnoiditis 2008
- Ankylosing Spondylitis. 2008
- Chronic migraines. 2010
- Torn stomach lining. 2014
- GERD. 2014
- Scapulalgia. 2014
- Peptic ulcers. 2016
- Polyps. 2016
- Myositis. 2016
- Myalgia. 2017
- Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. 2017
- Reynaud’s Syndrome. 2017
- Pancreatitis-beginning stage. 2017
- Fibromyalgia. 2018
- Sleep apnea. 2021
- Endomytritis. 2021
- Esophageal stricture. 2021
- Gallstones. 2022
- Deviated septum. 2022
- Enlarged spleen. 2022
- Fatty liver. 2022
- CRPS Chronic Regional Pain Sy 2022
- Vasomotor rhinitis 2022
- Gastro-esophageal reflux disease with esophagitis 2023
- Dysautonomia 2024
- POTS 2024
- Osteopenia Femur 2024
- Osteoporosis. Spine. 2024
I was deemed permanently disabled in 2003 but back dated to 1998, I’ve been in constant debilitating pain for as long as I can remember, I used to get halfway decent medical care. Now chronic pain patients cannot find a doctor to prescribe real pain medication, they will only prescribe Buprenorphine or any of its derivatives such as Suboxone, Subutex and/or Butrans patch which is not intended to help chronic pain but will help people with a heroin addiction, true chronic pain patients are not addicts & they don’t have addictive behaviors. With the way things have gone for the last 10 years it’s nearly impossible to find doctors who treat patients pain properly so when a chronic pain patient receives proper care the last thing they want to do is jeopardize what little quality of life meds they receive so they don’t misuse the opioids. I tried Suboxone in 2010 & it almost killed me, so the ER put it on my severely allergic list. The way the government has basically outlawed proven methods for treating pain has had a very negative consequence on pain patients, cancer patients, palliative care patients, hospice patients, patients with painful inpatient surgeries that hospitals are no longer using pain meds to help patients recover from surgeries when they’ve been used for thousands of years & worked well. The PROP (physicians for responsible opioid prescribing which is funded by the company INDIVIOR which makes Buprenorphine) anti opioid initiative took over studies starting in 2010 & those who participated in the studies had no business being the ones to conduct these studies. PROP lumped all the heroin overdoses with, cocaine, crack, hallucinogenics, illicit fentanyl, meth, alcohol and/or prescription drugs. That overinflated number was used to represent the prescription opioid patient overdoses written by doctors when in reality it was all of the illicit drugs overdoses , polypharmacy (illicit & prescription meds) overdoses and prescription only overdoses lumped together so the number that was presented to Congress & the Senate was a gross overstatement of what the prescription opioid overdoses really were in order to help fund the Opioid War beginning with the treatment of Suboxone leading the way to fix all the addicts. Now INDIVIOR has changed the DSM code to include all pain patients that take their prescription opioid medications properly to be diagnosed with OUD so that those pain patients will get put on suboxone and make INDIVIOR even more millions of dollars, because isn’t that’s what it’s all about.
I moved back to Alabama in 2012 due to a messy divorce and I could not find a doctor to take over my medical care because I am what you call a very complicated patient. I was on 23 medications I had to go off of cold turkey & I had zero pain meds to help with my chronic illnesses so I took over the counter meds, 1,000MG of Tylenol as a I woke up, 4 hours later I took 800MG of Ibuprofen & rotated said combo 12-16 hours a day. A year later I wound up in the ER throwing up bright red blood, the ER said I had torn my stomach lining & done some pretty nasty damage to my liver but guess what I got a pain clinic appointment within 3 days and it only cost me my stomach. So in 2013 I started on the pain clinic Merry Go Round. I would start off strong and build my way up to meds that worked & every single time the doctors would always there’s nothing more I can do for you so I got referred to a different clinic. Each year it got harder & harder to find doctors to treat me like an actual human being & not a criminal just for needing pain meds to get out of bed on a daily basis, permanently disabled people shouldn’t have to prove to doctors over and above their records that they deserve to be treated properly. My last pain doctor fired me because I received a bone density scan (I kept telling her I felt like my bones were aching so bad, she would never order A DEXA scam so my PCP did) I found out at age 49 I have osteopenia in my femur 1 point away from being osteoporosis and my spine has osteoporosis. My rheumatologist told me it was due to pain clinics making me get epidural steroid injections 3 times a year since 1998 (108) & they’re not FDA approved, she said for me not to get anymore injections or I would end up making the holes in my bones even worse. I told my pain doctor I could receive anymore injections and her response was “no injections no meds” and she fired me. I interviewed 5 different pain clinics and none of them wanted to treat me with real pain meds and only offered the medication I am deathly allergic to, I reminded them I’m allergic and can’t take it, all of them said that’s the only medication we offer so we can’t help you. I had to go to a methadone clinic for a couple of months because I was on 110MME’s a day when I got fired and my PCP could only offer 45MME a day but I could not keep going because I had to get to a clinic that was an hour drive one way every single day & my chronically ill body would not let me continue to do that every day so I was to go to my PCP so overnight I went from 110 to 45 (4hydrocodone a day & 25mg tramdol a day) I just received my January fill and only received 3 hydrocodone a day and was told by the doctor that it was a mandatory opioid reduction for their hospital. There’s no pain clinic willing to actually treat me so I’m going to have to go back to the methadone clinic and I’m not even an addict, this is what the government & doctors terrified of prescribing pain meds because they don’t want to end up in prison for treating their patients, I’ll have to find an addiction doctor and tell him I’m a pain refugee and he’ll probably diagnose me with OUD just cover his butt with the state medical board and the DEA, buy illegal drugs off the streets, just naturally withdraw from the pain meds I’m on which has been causing super high blood pressures (221/148) due to untreated pain and I’ll probably have a stroke or a heart attack or I could put myself out of the misery of being gaslit by every doctor I go to (PCP & 9 specialists) and none of them have an answer for me when I ask what is the solution. This is the chaos pain patients go through on a daily basis trying to figure how to get by on an hourly, weekly, monthly basis when doctors really don’t care if you live or die because the government has pushed them into a corner.
Ive been suffering from Chronic pain for many years, Ive now been diagnosed with Autoimmune disease, I have liver disease amongst other excruciating diagnosis that have destroyed my quality of life. I nolonger live i only exist. Im tired of going to doctors telling them what im dealing with, trying to explain i can not function due to pain. Its caused me depression, it takes everything i have to get out of the pain to do what little i can to feel lile i contribute to the household, im on disability due to these diseases, and every doctor i go to tells me no we can not prescribe pain medication, they send me to pain management, pain management says we need to try other options, epidural for the back, i tell them ive had 3 of those done, my backs worse then before, they tell me i need to go to therapy where they work your back, i need to lose weight, i need to work out but refuse to prescribe medication. If i cant hardly get out of the bed, if im in so much pain its hard for me to walk, loft my arms, my legs hurt so bad it feels like its in my bones which i know sounds ridiculous, how am i supposed to work out. Most importantly i have liver disease do not hardly eat because of the swelling from fluids in my abdomen and these doctors are telling me to lose weight because of the fluods from the liver. Im tired im so done with it all. Im tired of being looked at like im out for pain pills, that im lying when all my diagnosis are in my health portals, the abnormalities from scans, blood work, mri, i uffer every single day im just to the point to give up its too much for me. I went to the hospital last saturday with severe chest pain and pain down my left arm, my blood pressure was 182/80 i sat in the waiting area for 5 hours my husband going up telling them the pain was getting worse finally they put me in a room immediately someone took me for a scan took a few minutes brought me back to the room. Some guy came in very aggressively, grabbed my left hand yanked it to my right side i screamed in pain and jumped. This guy was so mad asked me my problem i told him dude im here with chest and severe arm pain he told me i guess i shouldve taken a couple steps around to that side and told you what i was gonna do. The bruise he left on my hand ridiculous. When he left no one ever returned for 2 1/2 hrs to recheck blood pressure to see if i were still okay and not had a heart attack. I told nurse to get my papers and left
Im tired of the abuse from the health care profession, chronic pain, Autoimmune disease being left to suffer without medication to relive the pain is bad enough i suffer enough why do i want to continue putting myself through this constant abuse.