Not just about Health Insurance anymore-Legalities from State to State and the DEA steps in HARD

From VERY TOUGH EXPERIENCE, I wish to inform others dealing with chronic pain and all the other "mental health" issues that come with this horrible ordeal...The health insurance issues were bad enough-I thought-during a move from Montana where I have resided and have been being treated for acute as well as chronic pain(constant surgeries are neccessary at this point), to Massachusetts-where my husband and I have just inherited property when his mother passed away from Cancer in late July,08-I went to Mass. to help w/my dear mother-in law during what was to be the last weeks of her life.  We then held a wake and funeral(of course) and I was to run out of my pain medicine Methadone at the end of July. I had no health insurance in Mass.(as I did not reside there) and my "pain management specialist" thru Workmans' Compensation in Montana refused to write and mail a prescription to me for my Methadone while I was in Mass. citing some problem with his malpractice insurance.

This is the point where the story (and my life) go seriously wrong. I am a recovering Alchoholic.  Which means (to me) that I do not have the option of using alchohol to numb ANY kind of pain-physical and documented or not.  I also was not given the option of ANY kind of "pain management" in Mass. as the medical community there considers me an "addict" as in Mass. Methadone is only given to Heroin addicts to bring them off the stuff. 

SO...when the withdrawals (AND THEY ARE SEVERE) from Methadone are within a day or so away- I freak out-and promptly get "sectioned" or forced lock up in a "Mental Health Hospital"-where there are locked doors,guards,chain-link fences with barbed wire tops and even -yes-"quiet rooms"- for "clients" who don't follow the program exactly as they are told and might "tip the apple cart" so to speak.

After leaving that institution A.M.A.(against medical advice) with NO pain management set up and NO pain meds in my system(yes I was a VERY HAPPY CAMPER-NOT) I got my first very lucky break...my older brother agreed to pay for my plane ticket BACK TO MONTANA ASAP so that I might be able to figure out a way to get the medicine I NEED(which remember is legal here for "pain management"-IF I could get a referral to another pain management specialist RIGHT AWAY hahaha.

Well as it turns out my Primary Care Physician here in Montana WAS able to write the pain med. prescription, but would only give me half my previous dosage for 2 weeks.  There is no other pain specialist available to me for another month from the last dose I have which ends Sept. 9, 2008 @ 10pm MST. Today is August 30, 2008 @ 5:16 pm MST on Labor Day Weekend.

So...once again the countdown to insanity in my world begins...the pain WILL NOT ALLOW ME TO SLEEP which does not help when you are trying to act sane either.  But truth be told, the pain itself which will very quickly hit a 9+ on the 1-10 10 being worst pain scale, will make me crazy anyway and THEN WHAT? I ask you?