Tell your story of living with chronic pain, by leaving a reply at the bottom of the page. Do not mention specific medications or dosages. Stories do not appear right away.
Official Site
Tell your story of living with chronic pain, by leaving a reply at the bottom of the page. Do not mention specific medications or dosages. Stories do not appear right away.
Hi, My name is Jeffrey Sellers. I live in St. James Missouri. I have had four back surgeris, new fusion on my hips, three car accidents. I had very bad accident at work. I been on morphine for 25 years. The doctors started me out with [a certain dosage schedule]. Then [a lower dosage schedule]. Did that for 15 years.
Now the doctors are taking my morphine from me because DEA and CDC said so. I am 67 years old, plus I have to show my driver’s license to get my pain medicine. The doctors are so scared they will lose their licenses if they don’t listen to the DEA or CDC. Sounds like the Nazi Party is controlling me, the doctors, and I am living in NAZI Germany … history coming alive again. How about the Trail of Tears and 1885 Wounded Knee – where were the Indians’ rights at? Nobody tell what to do, I’m 67 years old.
The DEA took 300 million dollars to start a marijuana farm in New Mexico this week. Taking a higher dose of morphine helped to work out at the gym 4 hours 4 days a week. DEA going to give the marijuana to taxpayers FREE.
I was on an opioid pain med for 18 years, then all of a sudden opioids were no good because people making meth were using them. So we who needed the meds for pain were cut off cold turkey – that really hurt. I have severe neuropathy and the doctor said he can’t prescribe any meds for chronic pain. I have been asking him for over a year now to send me to the pain management clinic; he is with the VA and the VA has a pain management clinic. I have a home health nurse and she suggested hospice, but the VA won’t agree to that. I am 74 and I would like to live out the rest of my life as pain free as possible … retire and go fishing my ass.
My name is Rachel Watkins and I’m 73 years old. I have been taking pain meds since 2009. One clinic I was at for five years. I think it was a pill mill. It was closed down, with nowhere to go for help. I jumped through hoops until my new family doctor gave me meds for pain. He found me a new pain doctor who I’ve been with for about five years. My meds have not changed, and I am having a hard time functioning.
I’m my 81 year old husband’s caregiver. I bathe him, shave, cut his hair, do all the food shopping, cooking, and house cleaning. Thank goodness we do have pets. My husband was told by the Veterans’ Hospital in Asheville NC in September 2018 he would be lucky if he lived two years. We think our pets help him enjoy his life. I have Osteo arthritis, severe bone density, fibro-myalgia, torn rotor cuff, sciatic nerve that’s giving me extreme severe pain from my right butt all the way in the back of my leg to my right heel. The pain gets so horrific it makes my life miserable, and my husband’s. I think my doctor is more interested in procedures. He admits that I’ve developed a tolerance to this medication I’ve been on for five years, but I can’t get him to change it.
I’m not asking for stronger, I’m asking for a different type. I don’t know if that would help, but I think it should be tried. I’ve done a lot of research on pain and I did find out one of my primary doctors told me that there is no real pain teaching in America’s medical universities. I have asked several other doctors in my research, and the only two countries that do have classes in medical schools on pain management are Australia and China.
I need help and I don’t know where to go. I’m not having any more needles put in my back. Now my pain management doctor that’s an anesthesiologist, and I’m sure he’s had some courses in pain management, now he wants to go and insert a device between L4 and L5 – they’re touching in my spine. I have 9 bulging discs, my feet have hammertoes, piggyback toes, my hands hurt, and fingers lock up. Most of the pain I can deal with, but the heel and buttocks pain have made my life not functioning. I don’t want to get high, never drank alcohol, I just want to be able to live with dignity, care for my husband, clean my house, shop for food, work in my flowerbeds, and take care of our living pets.
Thank you this is a much-needed program that you’re running. I hope I can become a part of it to fight for myself and others living with chronic pain. This Dr. K has never had physical pain. He’s making money for himself, and he knows nothing about chronic pain. I Hope you can understand my text; I’m using this microphone to tell you this. Thank you, Rachel Watkins
I am 69 years old. I have chronic pain 24 hours a day. I was born with M.D. and have Lupus, one kidney and I am constantly battling open wounds. My pain level on a daily basis would be 7. Right now I have been forced to go to a pain clinic for the past three years to get my medicines. At this pain clinic they make us do a variety of things. I have been asked to do floor yoga, dance, and many other humiliating “dog tricks” in an effort to stop me using pain medications. I am in an electric scooter and even sitting on the floor would cause great pain and it would take at least three people to place me back into the scooter. So, if I stop using pain medications and do yoga my pain will go away? At this point I am making arrangements to kill myself if need be. I am o.k. with this. I used to run my own catering business. Yes, I had to take a variety of pain meds to carry on, but I did. Now, there is no hope, no quality of life. My husband retired from the Fire Department and now has become my caregiver. We had hoped for so much more…
I am a 36 yr old mom to two amazing teens. My 16 year old got early acceptance to college two entire years early. The last three years have been a nightmare for my family. I began having pain everywhere but specifically my legs feet and nearly all of my joints. I began bruising, itching, and was beyond exhausted. My PCP IGNORED me the four times I went to see him and begged for a simple LFT (liver blood tests) to be done. I KNEW something was wrong. Well after three years I got the tests done and it turns out I have a VERY rare chronic progressive autoimmune liver disease. It is killing my liver slowly which is killing me and the life I once had.
I am in pain 24/7. This disease causes your liver to rob all vitamins and calcium from other parts of the body, bones being the first and worst. My bones are becoming so weak and painful, I cannot do the simplest of tasks such as walk on most days. I’ve had to crawl to use the bathroom in my home. I cannot take any Tylenol and only sparingly with ibuprofen. Even that is not good for my liver. My rheumatologist said Percocet with no Tylenol would be perfect but instead tried another medication used for neuropathy. It barely takes the edge off and I am on a higher dose of it.
I understand the tough position I am in given the disease I was dealt, but at what point does quality of life come into play when dealing with a rare liver disease? I don’t believe these physicians are taught pain management at all. I also believe they are heavily regulated by the CDC, FDA, and more importantly, the DEA. When did the DEA start employing MDs that are pain medication specialists? I don’t believe the DEA, CDC, or FDA should be given complete control and a say in my care as a patient in pain. That should be between my doctor and myself and nobody else. If that’s how they want to conduct themselves, I guess I can have a say in how they parent their children as I was a social worker? I don’t think so! This is such an unethical breach of so many people’s rights to live. This pain… isn’t living, it’s death slowly creeping in to remind me that it’s going to take my ability to work, parent, hike, go to the gym, etc.
I’ve already mourned the life I’ve now lost due to the unbearable pain I constantly have. Before I know it, I won’t be the only one to have to mourn… my loved ones will soon be mourning me. That isn’t fair to them, nor is it fair to myself to be forced to suffer this pain. The government has ABSOLUTELY ZERO place in my medical care yet there they are… threatening the physicians. Threatening to TAKE their livelihood if they are “too empathetic” of their patients’ pain and give them some kind of relief in the form of medication. This type of strong arming of these MDs is unethical and is not okay in any capacity! Things NEED to change and they need to change NOW before it’s too late.
I was in an accident that crushed my vertebrae in 2006. Since then, I have been on mostly the same dose of opioids daily, able to go to work with my managed pain, and support me and my three children. I was able to be present for their sports games and activities. Now, I just sit on the couch and cry. I have fibromyalgia, which my original doctor that retired diagnosed me with, saying that it may have been brought on by being so sedentary after I was cut cold turkey off of 15 years of daily opiate regimen. I never asked for a higher dose, or took more than prescribed. The only thing I did was, in 2015, switch to a fentanyl patch for more pain coverage and to lessen the pills I have to take. I still had endocet for breakthrough pain, but barely had to use them, because the fentanyl patch covered my pain. Sometimes I would need to take it on the third day wearing my patch, or if I sweat and it came off. This was working fine for three years.
Suddenly on July 26 2018, my primary doctor, who was prescribing, said he was flagged by the DEA, who paid him a threatening visit, so he had to make this month’s script my last. No weaning off – I was dependent on these pills, NOT addicted! I am not, and never have been a drug addict! However, this is what I was treated like with every pain management doctor I tried to get an appointment with.
When I went to the ER with excruciating pain due to no more meds, I was labeled as a drug seeker. They would give me a shot of morphine via IV and send me on my way. No plan or referral to pain management, just a temporary relief … it does me no good to seek care at the hospital. These hospitals don’t care if you are in pain, they will accuse you of seeking drugs.
I can say that I have never once felt high on my medication. I never took more than was prescribed. My doctor used to ask me in my appointments, how I was doing on the meds, asking if I needed an increase. I always said fine, I don’t need an increase. Now, I am some “drug seeker” because I have chronic pain.
The worst part is that my family has to see me in pain all day, every day, I’m broke because I can’t work, I have no aid of any kind, living off savings that’s running out. I hate America – what it has done to the pain community is abhorrent. I would rather die than live in 24/7 pain, I think most chronic pain patients would agree.
We are on five YEARS with these CDC guidelines, and no one has even tried to fix the damage done to millions of chronic pain sufferers that must go UNTREATED. If you don’t want medical marijuana, which doesn’t work for me, I also don’t like the feeling of being high! It did nothing for my pain. If you don’t take MMJ or useless injections that make bones brittle and pain worse, there are NO OPTIONS for you. Listen to “soft music”, one doctor says. Is that what he went to medical school for? To be a puppet for the government? They are so scared of losing their livelihood that they forget all about the Hippocratic Oath they took on becoming a doctor. They do not care about patients, can you blame them?
There’s a doctor who got forty years in prison for prescribing opioids. Ridiculous! A family man with young children! Dr. Joe Smithers. Sad, this government has waged genocide on millions, and what are we doing about it? Ten people showing up to a rally?! Come on! That doesn’t represent the problem in America. Every chronic pain patient should be at the steps of Washington DC, demanding that laws get changed for chronic pain patients! Where is everyone???
Since equity groups have bought out hospitals and doctors’ offices they don’t want big pharmaceutical companies making money they can control by forcing patients off opiates. They know chronic pain patients will be suggested surgeries and physiatry which increases profits.
We the people didn’t push for additional coverage for physiatry. Also president and senators have millions in big pharmaceutical companies … Tubi has a documentary. The Slacker family didn’t get hurt in court. But all part of the fake narrative. When put on opiates for chronic pain doctors’ only choice is to put opiate use disorder. Physicians / nurses start padding character accusations against you. Has PROP or any of these people realized the guidelines they construct will someday hurt them or their loved ones or family, generations in the future, or they’re so psychological/psycho they don’t care.
No studies have been done for long term use of opiates or studies to ask people if their pain has been untreated or treated at all. Or studies done on physicians who treat pain – how they manipulate / lie about character assinations against their own patients to prepare to eliminate care for patients. Ask Google for common top-ten surgeries – it only comes up between 2003 to 2012, with 4.9 increases for ten years. Number 3 and number 5 are spine surgeries and spine fusion. Where are the years after 2012?
CDC says they don’t track all overdose deaths, so how can they make this guidelines? Haven’t heard anything about the meth crisis in the news. Why aren’t physicians regularly tested for alcohol abuse? I think including myself, if all people who had chronic pain just stopped seeing all doctors if possible for a year, it would hurt the medical and equity groups’ wallets. Maybe then they would realize they need us too.
Four years ago I moved from Miami to North Carolina and started seeing [a doctor] in Conover North Carolina. He took me out of all of my pain medicine and all of the other medication, and then I was on cold turkey. I was very sick and in the bed for six solid months. I lost 35 pounds and had to have my gallbladder removed. I have a lot of health issues as I have osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, degenerative disc disease, also have neuropathy and rheumatoid arthritis.
I was in severe pain. I asked for something to sleep such as Ambien. He told me it was a narcotic and he could not give it to me. I didn’t feel that he had the right to take everything away from me cold turkey, not caring that I could go into seizures or have something else happen to me such as sudden death. He had no caring whatsoever for his patients. He is only there for the dollar that he makes. These doctors [are supposed] to do no harm, but they do not realize the harm that they are causing all their patients that live every day with chronic pain.
I would like to know how to get in touch with the medical board in North Carolina or with my representative of North Carolina to make a complaint against this doctor. I want to join the fight Don’t Punish Pain because there are a lot of good God-fearing people out here in this world suffering because of the CDC and because of doctors that are too spineless to do their jobs.
I have psoriatic arthritis, degenerative disc disease, osteoarthritis and Gerd. I live in Arkansas and was taking 30mg 6 times a day for over a decade. Now I can’t find a pain clinic who will treat my pain. My initial doctor got out of pain treatment completely. My most recent doctor actually got onto me for taking CBD when I first got to him and I was on a bridge script and seeing him for the first time! When I told him the dosage I need to control my pain, because duh I ought to know, he argued with me.
I really wanted to move to Springfield Missouri but my attempts to find a doctor there flat-out failed. One doctor put me on Baclofen. All it does is put me in a good mood. Only to have the new doctor say that my blood pressure problem are mood-related and have nothing to do with pain. But not until after three weeks of excruciating knee injections!!! Of course he didn’t share that detail with me before hand. Now I am facing eight days without pain medicine when I’ve already been under-treated grossly for over two months.
By the way the CDC lied about the number of people dying of overdoses. Cut their number in half – and even that is suspect. They lied completely and they stepped into the FDA’s regulatory shoes. There is no excuse for this. Folks this is where [capture and corruption of] regulatory agencies [and non-government entities like CDC] has brought us. Time to clean house in congress, state and national. I’m in serious trouble and need help.
I am 59 years old. I have had pudendal nerve pain for approximately 8 years. I have found in my search for relief that there are a handful of doctors in USA that are even aware of this horrifying ‘thing’. Please do not punish my very life-altering chronic (meaning every day of my life) pain. Please change laws for folks like me who are not (and don’t want to be) addicts. Please hear our pleas for help.