Thank you so much for posting this message. I am so sorry for your experience. I hope you get your condition identified correctly and rectified. I also hope recovery isn't as bad as you're thinking it might be. I've been through so many surgeries, some recoveries worse than others. Some, that I thought would be horrible turned out to be a walk in the park. Some that I thought would be easy turned out to be the easiest to go through. You just can't tell until you live it.
My hot button is how the government and the world treats those of us who are living with chronic pain. We are being left behind in a world more concerned with drug addicts and purposeful and accidental overdoses. What they don't tell is most of those overdoses are of heavy drugs because they couldn't get the meds they had been prescribed and turned to anything that could give them a moment's relief from their pain! Not understanding, or not caring how this "new" drug would react in their body, they were careless with administration and ended up overdosing.
Because our pain is due to chronic conditions not overtly seen by people we are judged to either be moochers of the system, or drug addicts working the system for drugs. No one takes us seriously at our word that we're just looking for answers to our physical problems. How many of us would give up the drugs if our pain would go away?! I would in a flash instant! Imagine a world where I would no longer have to feel like I have to beg every 3 months for the pills that allow me to live a halfway normal life for most of a month at a time. I say most of the month because only I swear, only prescribed pain medication, taken as needed and prescribed, is the only medication that will not last the entire month it is prescribed. So, you're left on your own to your own devices for at least one week each month without any meds and in agonizing pain until your next script kicks in.
Of course, as anyone in constant chronic pain understands, it's important to keep pain levels at a consistent level. If the pain goes
too high above that level, it throws not only your pain levels but also your entire physiology off. Therefore, you spend at least the first week of your next pain med month trying to get your body back to a status quo. In an entire month, you may get 2 good weeks to be productive and happy if you're lucky. And they call this living. I call this bullsh*t. And yet, even THIS they want to take away from this.
As some of you might know from some of my other message around here, I live in KS. In this state, if you're smiling, someone will want to wipe it off your face. I swear, this will be the last state in the Union to ever legalize pot. I realize there are states where pot has been legal long enough to have had enough research done where there are actually strains created to treat pain successfully. I long to try some of these. But legislators around here would rather see you suffer in excruciating pain than take a chance you may catch a buzz with something that might alleviate some of that pain. Rather than punish us, I think they are the ones who should be ostracized for cruel and unusual punishment, and I keep voting them out, but to no avail. I am but one lone democrat in a sea of red around here.
In the not too distant past, the disabled gathered together as a political force and got the ADA passed. We're currently not in a favorable environment for anything like that. But if we can win more seats in the Senate and keep the House (and maybe even win more seats there!), I suggest we try to form a political force online (at first) and make our voices heard. I don't know about you, but I'm damned tired of being afraid they're going to strip me of my meds or make me jump through even more hoops than I have to jump through right now to get them. And I'm tired of the lack of human dignity with which I'm treated whenever I ask when my meds are due to be refilled, or when I have a question of any kind about them.
I'm a woman. I realize at this point I'm a 2nd class citizen. I also realize that this is NOT as important as the abortion/gender rights issue. But it is a piece of that same issue, as no white middle class male I've been acquainted with has ever been subjected to the same treatment I've received. It's like they treat me as default "hysteric"; he's "normal" and needy. It's disgraceful. Once the only way I got my meds was when my husband told the doc he needed to prescribe them for me so that he (my hubby) could finally get some sleep. (I was keeping him away with my crying, IOW)
Like I said, this is a hot button issue for me. If you read to here, thank you. If it was TL/DR, I understand. If you're in pain, you have a friend in me, and a shoulder and ear whenever you need one. Peace to all.
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