Have you had the fun experience of being judged just because you have to take pain meds? It really is a different experience. So many people you don't know and who don't have a clue about your daily life make judgments about you when they learn you are taking pain medications.
Living with chronic pain changes your life. No matter what the cause is there are direct consequences to your lifestyle. For me it started well over a decade ago. I injured my back at work. The disc at L4 had herniated and as a result I needed surgery to clean it up and relieve the pain. That worked pretty well and I needed pain meds for about a year after as I recovered from surgery and changed my life. There wasn't much stigma back then before 2000 about taking pain medication. I went off of them and used ibuprofen for occasional pain from flare ups.
Then after I had gotten married in 2003 I started having new back pain. I was afraid I had done something new to my back. Nope it wasn't that. Turns out it was bladder cancer. Surgery took care of it and after a few months I was back off the pain meds. About a year later the pain was back as well as similar symptoms and I was scared the cancer had returned. I went back to the doctor and got a breath of relief. It was just kidney stones.
Okay any one out there that has had kidney stones knows just how painful these little buggers can be. Even real little ones hurt a heck of a lot. Believe me when I say the pain was horrible and it wasn't just in the back. It was back on pain meds, this time a little stronger to handle the extreme pain the stones caused. Truth was that even though they were stronger they didn't do much to knock down the pain when I was passing the stones. I rarely used all of my script during the bouts with them.
So for the next few years I had episodes of extreme pain from those horrible little stones. My doctor joked that I had more stones than a rock quarry. I had a couple of surgeries to remove and break up larger stones and as a result I was on and off pain meds.
Jump on down below the orange snow doodle for more.
Life was ok. I had a few people I knew who tried to get me to "Share" my pain meds but nothing bad. I was still making and passing the stones but it wasn't all the time. Then we get to just about 2010. Things changed. I started to see more and more stories in the paper about pill mills and doctors who prescribed pain meds with no exams and the people who would abuse them. I had a very bad flare up and wound up having surgery to have a 7mm stone removed. I got my script and noticed it didn't have any refills. When I asked my doctor said I could get a new one when that one was out so I didn't think anything of it.
The following year I thought I was in hell. The pain was back. Not only on both sides in the kidney area but around into the groin and down the left leg. I thought I had a bigger stone but it wasn't a stone. I wound up spending almost a month in bed with trips to the doctor being just about the only time I was out of the house. My Urologist had refilled my script while I tried to find out what was going on. I went to a neurosurgeon and he gave me the bad news. L4 was pretty bad and L5 was starting to collapse but he couldn't do anything for me. He referred me to pain management and I got an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon for a 2nd opinion. Pain management raised my medicine and I got my first taste of some new "rules" I had to live by.
If you have never been to pain management you can't imagine the stringent rules they have. I had to sign a contract that I wouldn't get pain medications from any other doctors. I had to use the same pharmacy for all of my drugs. My scripts were written so they could only be filled at that pharmacy. I didn't get "refills" I had to come in to get new scripts from the office. When I went to the dentist to have a tooth pulled I couldn't take the script they wrote. When I went to the ER for a bad bout of pain I was so afraid they would throw me out because I had gotten a couple of shots for pain relief. I called them the next day and told them I had been in the hospital and why and begged them not to throw me out. I bet they thought it was funny but to me it was life and death. No I wasn't hooked on the meds but without them I was in pain that was horrible. I couldn't do anything.
Meanwhile I had finally gotten my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. He had some more tests done, MRIs, X rays, and CT scans. I felt like I could glow in the dark because of all the radiation I had gotten. I dreamed of waking up with super powers from mutated genes. I had tests to see how far the nerve damaged had progressed. All this time I was still getting my pain meds from pain management. They seemed pretty helpful and eager to help me. (This changed over time more on that later. ) I got the bad news that I had a choice. I could go with the quick and easy surgery to clean up L4 and L5 or I could get a fusion from L3 down. The surgeon told me that honestly if I went with the quick and easy cleanup I would be back within a year for the fusion and then they would have to wait until the 2nd year before they could do the fusion for safety.
After a lot of thought I went with the fusion. I figured I had better go ahead and go with it because it would help stabilize my spine and slow down the damage that was ongoing from the degenerative disc disease and the collapse of L4. It was a newer fusion that didn't use a bone graft from the hip and 1 long rod but instead used short rods and screws directly into the wings of the disc. Pain management told me I would be getting my pain meds from my surgeon after surgery and that was okay. So we went ahead and had the surgery.
Nine hours plus on the table to fix the issues with L4 and L5 and install the 8 rods and screws. I went home the next morning, starving because the only thing I had eaten the day before was some chicken broth and jello. ( Man the hospital made out like bandits on that charged me for 3 meals and all I got was 1 cup of broth and 2 cups of jello) Of course I was in pain. I had a long incision on both sides of my spine and two smaller ones above them. I started PT about 1 week after surgery and followed the instructions of my therapists.
I started to see a change after surgery. I had switched my pharmacy to one close to my home instead of on the way to work. I started to get odd looks when I went in to pick up my meds. It was like they thought I was going to rob them or something. They couldn't see anything wrong with me. I could walk and I didn't limp. They couldn't see the 4 incisions in my back under my shirts. I shrugged it off. By December I was back at work and still in pain. My surgeon had transferred me back to pain management. He couldn't understand why I was still in pain.
They upped my meds but the nice and helpful workers at the desk were gone and the new ones had an attitude. They made everyone feel like addicts who just wanted to get high. I followed through with more PT but wasn't getting any pain relief. My co workers knew I had been off for surgery and some started to bug me for my pain meds. I heard all kinds of stories about how bad their pain was and why their doctor wouldn't write them a script. I refused to share. I didn't have extras. Even the stronger meds didn't stop the pain. They got nasty about it doing anything to try and get me to share. I couldn't even keep my bottle locked in my drawer.I learned to keep it with me after one of my bottles was stolen from my drawer. They didn't get anything good. Just some ibuprofen I kept to help my pain meds work better. I heard some co workers make snide remarks about how I didn't seem to need the medicine and was only using it to get high. I ignored it. They had no clue how much pain I was in.
I wound up missing too many days because of the pain and they wouldn't give me an accommodation to miss 4 days a month which my doctor authorized. I had to find a new job. I was still getting odd looks at the pharmacy and switched to one even closer to home and they also gave me the odd looks when I got my medicine filled. That finally stopped after I talked to the pharmacist and explained what I was going through but I found the same situation at my new job. Some people would do and say anything to try and get me to give them some of my medication. Others assumed I was faking and said as much to my face. I felt like a criminal all because I lived in pain and needed narcotic pain meds to get through my day.
See the whole thing is because of a small group of doctors and addicts that have made the news. We all have seen the stories of pill mills and addicts doing outrageous things to get the pills they want to get high from. The politicians are making a huge deal out of this and have enacted laws that have hurt those who live in pain. Thanks to those politicians and the news we are made out to be addicts and thugs. We have to jump through hoops to keep getting our medications, Doctors are afraid to write pain medication scripts and be labeled as pill mill doctors. Too bad the addicts will still be able to get their drugs. They just steal them from pharmacies and doctor's offices. They will find the doctors who write the scripts they need. So those who have to pay are those like me in legitimate pain.
How can we fight those who would use these medications for recreational use without hurting those who are truly in need of them ? I have no clue but there has to a better way than what we have now. We are making a whole class of people who are in need of help feel like criminals because of conditions they can not control.