Frustration turns to anger

click to enlarge. (it's worth it)

My frustration has been replaced with anger. After losing six hours to this latest seizure and finally getting out to work I find the wind blowing so hard that it’s a sandstorm. Can’t keep my hat on and can’t keep sand out of my eyes. Looked all over for the hoe and couldn’t find it. Every minute I looked I got angrier. Hate it when I get this way. Cherie just came home. She knows how to deal with this, just give me room till it goes away. It always does but I feel… frustrated?...can’t find the word. It just sends my self esteem plummeting. Nothing I can be proud of when this happens. It will go away but every little thing sets me off. I want to go hide. Don’t even want the dogs around when I’m like this.

Called my friend Allen in Toledo. What he told me started the anger. Allen has suffered severe chronic pain for years and, unable to get medical attention, was buying pain killers on the street just to be able to function. You can read about him in the earlier entries of this blog. I would go over and help him do many basic tasks such as cleaning on his bad days. Allen is, or was, a member of the pyrotechnics guile, which is a professional fireworks organization. At a yearly convention in North Dakota (or maybe south, I’m not sure now) a ten inch shell exploded just feet away, launching him over his pickup truck and shoving it over four feet. I helped pull gravel from his wounds and dressed them. Then I got Allen to the hospital despite his protests. I got him enrolled for food stamps other social services to insure he was cared for. After being on a waiting list for a year he finally was able to see a doctor who treated chronic pain. This was a godsend. Allen was finally able to get the treatment and medication he needed. This enabled him to start having a life again after spending years in the basement he lives in and not being able to work.

When Allen answered his phone I could tell he wasn’t feeling well. Asking if he was sick he told me “This is the first day without my pain meds”. Come to find out our wonderful government put his doctor out of business. The DEA had put him and his whole family under surveillance and would follow them everywhere they went. Every other agency connected with the medical and pharmaceutical profession were pushed to pressure this doctor as well. Finally he gave up.

This is happening all over the country. I get a regular newsletter from the American Pain Foundation and read about it all the time. Now with the Michael Jackson thing it will only get worse. The f-ing (pardon the French but I’m pissed) numb nuts at the DEA and FDA can’t seem to understand that there are people who have a legitimate need for pain medication. I’m one of them. It enables me to work, to function. Doesn’t make the pain go away, just makes it tolerable. So here’s a doctor who has a waiting list a year long because all the other doctors are afraid to practice their medicine due to this government pressure. Now he’s been run out of business. He was able to prescribe medication to help Allen with the withdrawals he is now suffering.

There is a difference between being dependant or addicted to a drug. I must take my medication almost daily. Over the years that will increase as my beat up body ages. It’s unfortunate that the opiates do create a physical dependence but they work where others don’t. Fact is many other medicines are the same way. You can’t just stop taking insulin if you are diabetic. Many anti depressants must be slowly weaned off of when it’s time. And I’m sure there are many others as well. This doctor’s favorite movie is “Patch Adams”, the one with Robin Williams in it. He plays a doctor who’s main concern is to help patients have some kind of quality of life and he must go against the mainstream of medical opinion to accomplish it. Allen would talk with this doctor extensively and they discussed all kinds of things like this. The doc was proud that he was able to help so many people, who were unable to get help otherwise.

Now all his patients are abandoned and without help or hope. Just forcibly cut loose by our loving bureaucratic government. I asked Allen if his doc was able to give him a referral and he said it didn’t matter. The pain clinics stopped helping long ago because of government pressure and all the doctors are afraid to prescribe anything stronger than an aspirin. So my friend is looking at a dark time. If you read my posts about him you will see that he was suicidal because of the pain he suffered. He would talk of putting a gun in his mouth to end it all. I was so glad to hear how he had his life and hope renewed when he was able to see this doctor, to hear joy once again in his voice. Now it’s going to get tough again. He wasn’t too bad when I talked to him today but time will not help. I fear things will revert back to the way they were.