I know a fair number of pain physicians read this site. If any can help this woman out, send me an email and I’ll give you her address. She’s on the brink of suicide and/or starving.

This is not just a war on doctors. It’s a war on hurting people, too.

Click “more” for her email.

I am a chronic pain sufferer and have been since 1991. Your article entitled Bush Should Feel Doctor’s Pain interests me, concerns me and frightens me. You see, I suffer from severe abdominal pain that is truly life threatening. When my pain reaches a #9 or #10, I cannot eat. When at a #10, I have trouble breathing, as I cannot expand my diaphragm, thus leaving me with shallow breaths. Just recently, my condition has worsened. I’ve seen a multitude of doctors, have had many studies (CT-Scans, MRI’s, colonoscopies, endoscopic exams, small bowel follow through, nuclear octreo scan, plus many more and each one of these studies has been performed many times over the years). All studies have been negative. I’ve also had two failed abdominal exploratory surgeries and 4 celiac plexus blocks. I truly have a long well documented medical history and in 1996 I was told I was the most studied human on this planet by a high ranking doctor at a prominent teaching hospital in North Florida.

I am being seen by a pain specialist in my area since August, 2002. She has prescribed at different times Oxycontin, Duragesic Patch, Methadone, trials of Avinza and MS Contin and now back on to Oxycontin. Twice earlier on she has mentioned her concern about treating me because she is afraid of the DEA, even though I have an excellent history of following my doctors instructions and have never abused medicine. I’ve never even seen what an illegal drug looks like, I’m just not very street-savvy. However, as long as I would consent to having nerve blocks, specifically celiac plexus blocks, this pain doctor would continue to treat me with opiates sparingly as needed should these blocks fail to give relief. Then, she requested a second opinion from Mayo Clinic Pain Mgt. Mayo has only a skeleton pain mgt center, staffed by 3 part time, very young doctors. Virtually the first words out of this doctor was “we don’t prescribe pain medications here.” Certainly, the concerns of the DEA are there also. Unfortunately, their suggestion was to discontinue the celiac plexus blocks and they left me with no other alternative to treat pain. My pain doctor totally disagrees with Mayo’s decision but now refuses to do further blocks because of their decision. Thus, the higher dosage of Oxycontin which she prescribed today (only because I haven’t been able to eat anything for the past 6 days) and which she will continue to prescribe, but refuses any higher doses or different medicines to treat my life threatening pain in the future. She will actually dismiss me as a patient should I ask. As she told me today, you need to find help elsewhere. Twice in the past 3 years I have been rushed to two different ER’s and both tell me they don’t treat patients with pain as it is a symptom, not a disease. I was told a pain mgt specialist treats pain.

Unfortunately for me, today was my death sentence. The 60 mg of Oxycontin daily prescribed has not halted my pain and I can only wonder if the meal I ate today, the first in 6 days, would already be my last. With my pain elevating and my medications placed at a set dose, I know it is just a matter of time. I know I am not welcome at the local ER’s as they don’t treat pain, and trying at this late stage to find a new pain doctor, one who prescribes opiates just really seems a taunting task because of the very reasons you wrote about. Thus this leaves me the decision of a slow and agonizing starvation death, or suicide. Perhaps a small miracle will happen and I will continue on for a while, but no matter what, at age 56 I am looking at a very very short lifespan.

Most pain sufferers today live with the agony of suffering pain in an arm, leg, neck or back. Unfortunately for me, I live with the additional agony of it affecting the my abdomen and thus my gut and thus my ability to eat. It is truly a horrible way to live and a certain death sentence. I can only hope that the future of this country is more compassionate and understanding to the millions living with pain. I hope you continue to bring the message about the millions suffering needlessly in this country at the expense of Washington, the courts and most certainly the very dreaded DEA.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 11th, 2005 at 10:47 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Pain Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.