Cheerfulpuppies,
Thank you, I needed that. Once again I lost track of somebody’s primary issue. My experience has been very much like yours, especially your simple plea for some pain free time. On one hand it is unconscionable to cause suffering by omitting an essential analgesic, narcotic or otherwise. As a nurse, as an adult you know the perilous road once doctor and patient have agreed on a habit forming pain medicine. A significant number of people have addictive tendencies, I believe to be genetic, but the combination of the propensity toward addiction and genuine unresolved pain often becomes a tug-of-war at the least.
This is where doctors who specialize in pain management come in. I had an exceptional GP for fifteen years when he became so fed up with insurance, he quit practicing. He was sending me off to various specialists that he had been working with and recommended a pain management practice for my chronic back pain. He also suggested I go to Spalding Spine Clinic in Colorado, which included pain management doctors.
I was sent from the pain management doctor to what they called, “Back School”, a service of the spine center. Back School as they do it involves several disciplines. Bio-feedback was one that I already alluded to. I won’t go into everything but in includes back exercise classes, occupational therapy and a host of non-drug ways of dealing with back pain on your own. The pedigree of the doctors included crack neurologists to osteos and coconut specialists and of course pain management doctors. The theory being most people acquire back pain and if anything postural or otherwise correctable without surgery should be addressed first. In truth, it was a world of good for me. It confirmed the places I did have postural back pain and eliminated everything they knew from the rest. This made understanding referred pain a lot easier. Had I not gone through the spine center’s hoo-ha, I might still be doubting the source of certain back pain.
As for your frustration over pain treatment, you are not just speaking to the choir, I direct a small one. The absolute capricious politics of pain management is something I have watched for most of my sixty-three years. Last year the alarm went out after the popular press got wind of the morbidity/mortality statistics involving prescription overdosing. The numbers that came out were saying doctors once again had too many reckless patients, or sometimes the other way around.
The result of this alarm was a systematic evaluation of every patient’s medications, most often the involving the PCP. The new statistics on prescription overdoses include all CII and CIII class drugs in the U.S. Although narcotics mostly fall in these two areas, nearly all medications used in treating mental health issues fall into these groups as well and account for a large portion of the statistics. This is important, but oddly a PCP may have no problem with Xanax, a very habit forming drug but suspend or reduce a little Norco. You won’t suffer anxiety over your pain I guess would be the philosophy. Psychiatrists saw their specialty drugs like Xanax got a going over as well but it hasn’t been so coldly taken away like pain medications.
This is some of the mind set behind your PCP in all probability. Situations like this are exasperating and untenable. If a person is in pain and doesn’t need a bone set or wound sutured, they have to enter into a stupid game now. Doctors are trained to look for drug seeking behavior, something medicine still considers a character weakness. You NEED to seek a drug or treatment for your medical issues and pain can be debilitating. You almost need to seduce the doctor like some predatory spider waiting to spring your trap. Do it wrong and you lose.
LL
