[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Pain Management...

Well, I'm thinking there's going to be a pretty good chance I will wind up in the emergency room this weekend.

Don't worry. It's nothing tremendously wrong or overly life threatening. It's just that my doctor seems to have a pain management philosophy roughly akin to that of your garden variety school nurse.

So, let's see... What exactly am I taking for pain?

First, I was prescribed 50 to 100 mg of Tramadol three times a day as need for pain. It's a fair medication (it's what did in Ol' Dirty Bastard), and it helps with the little joints such as those at the ends of my fingers and toes. It really doesn't do much for anything else such as the knees, neck, elbows, ankles, wrists, lower back, and most of the tendons in my hands and feet which keep me from straightening my fingers and toes (that's actually a recent thing, and, oh my god, it hurts like freakin' hell. If you've ever taken a misstep and tweaked that tendon that runs along the bottom of your foot roughly where the arch is, you know what I'm talking about. That's what I'm wrestling with every hour of every day, and it's maddening).

Anyway, when those don't work well enough, I boost them up a bit with a side-car of Tylenol 3... I gun down two of those as well, and instead of the prescribed "every four hours," I've had days where taking two every hour still wasn't enough.

Advil. I take a lot of Advil. They're like Skittles, and I eat so many of those that I wish they came in different flavors. Sour cherry would be my favorite. I'm a huge fan of sour candy.

So, yesterday, I got the ball rolling on the begging and pleading for my Enbrel. I called one foundation after another to see if they could do anything, and I think I managed to find one to help.

That's a good thing.

No... That's a very good thing.

However, I don't expect any answers until after the New Year (leave it to me to have this odd collapse of health during the freakin' holidays), and so, to get me through the ever-increasing aches and pains I, once again, asked my doctor if she could prescribe something to maybe keep me from succumbing to the urge of driving my Jeep into a bridge abutment at top speed until the Enbrel idiots come through for me.

So, what did she prescribe?

Anyone?

She prescribed Aleve and Pepcid.

Seriously...

Now, at first, I thought she was pretty dense for doing such. I mean, I'm not a doctor, but I don't believe an OTC anti-inflammatory is going to work any better than a prescription opiate such as Tylenol 3. And, as for the Pepcid, well... My stomach is pretty much the only thing that doesn't hurt.

However, after thinking a little more about it, I realized that the only time I'd ever taken that combination previously was the morning after an unholy binge-drinking bender of beer, whiskey and Jagermeister at the end of Hell Week in college when I slaughtered a semester's worth brain cells over the course of one evening.

So, maybe she's expecting me to just drink myself stupid for the next several weeks, and though I don't really have a big problem with this course of treatment, it's going to be a pain in the ass because, since I've been on all these pain meds, I've not had so much as a single beer in months (I think it was the first Packer game of this year's football season).

Yup. It's going to be one of those kinds of holidays. On the plus side, though, with the Pepcid, I think I may actually be able to finally try my brother's Christmas clam dip of death and abdominal distress without too much trouble. It's nasty, and I think it's made with a combination of old, canned clams, pepper-spray and battery acid.

So, we'll see what happens. So far, things aren't terribly bad, but I do know that once the sun sets and the cold, damp dread of winter seeps in, things are going to start hurting more and more.

Now, as I am writing this, the news is broadcasting a story about how Cigna Health Care essentially murdered a 17 year old girl just in time for Christmas (more and more). I hope someone makes a massive example of these inhuman bastards at Cigna, and hopefully they'll hemorrhage stockholders as a result. I have zero tolerance for these sorts of criminals, and no one should decide whether a person lives and dies in such an arbitrary manner as this.

The sad thing is, I could probably find at least one story a day about this sort of thing. In America. Where people are supposedly treated with equality. But, it's clear health care is immune to the notions of equality, and it has gotten to the point where it's less about saving lives and considerably more about extorting what they can out of the sick and dying.

I wonder what would happen if everyone in America just stopped paying their premiums. I'd rather be taxed and have my money go toward not only my own health care, but the care of others, rather than fork over gobs of cash to a corrupt and greedy industry which may or may not use that money to help you.

Something to think about, I guess. And, I wonder how much worse it has to become before people are held accountable for these sorts of things.


-DP

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 12/21/2007 11:40:00 AM