Talk About ~ 1 Nov '11

Fortunately, I've not had any doctors raise concern about my meds, except the interventional PM I am now seeing. She seems quite cynical and does not prescribe any narcotics. So she seem to look down on the fact that I am taking opioids. But there is something clearly wrong with her judgment: as I am there to find relief from something other than opioids, and am willing to go through the pain and expense of injections, she should not be insinuating any impropriety for what I do take. From her comments, I get the impression that routine opioid use is addiction driven, regardless of pain levels.

Of course, I don't agree with her.

The issue of strength that plays the largest role for me concerns the balance between one's BT pain meds and one's pain levels. Most of us have to temper our med use for one reason or another, forgo relief and have to accept the untreated pain.

PMs give us a ration of BT meds and we have to heed those limits, making our meds last. Or, we say no, accepting the pain for the sake of the long-term efficacy of the opioid. If I were to take a BT med whenever I was in pain, I would take one daily, or even 2x per day. But tolerance would then undermine the meds. So I time and again, "say no to drugs" and have to cut out hours of work and stay in bed with ice.

It takes a lot of strength to know that a drug could bring pain from a 6 down to a 2, and not take something in order to help extend the drug's efficacy farther into the future.

Additionally, one big thing that most do not understand is the toll that long-term pain takes mentally. Most people are familiar with a pain that recedes in a very short time: a few minutes, or hours. Now and then, they have something for a few days. But to be in pain daily, every day for years, for the rest of our lives -- there's not just pain there, but suffering. It is a mental anguish that runs us down and has to be fought. To keep on going through a life lived in pain....they have no clue.

I best not get going on this, because I'm not sure there is enough bandwidth to support it all. Suffice it to say,the crap spewed to my daughter, who has chronic pain issues when her two newly dx'd auto-immune issues flare, is enough to make me violent.

Not being able to get permanent relief and having everyone, especially the docs, kick me to the curb is giving me depression. I'm starting to read that forum now.

If this myth were true then there sure is a lot of weak people in our society, lol. I have always felt that people that suffer with CP are some of the strongest people walking this earth. It takes an extremely strong person to get up and function 24/7 sometimes in incredible pain, but yet they push on. Most people would have just cratered trying to make it one day, let alone dealing with it 24/7.

I think most of us could go on for days about this subject.