Amazed at the Dropping of pain patients!!

Dear Dr.,

When I read your article, I was struck by the horrid way in which you describe some of the ways that the "Pain Doctors" chose to take final care of their patients.  Give them a 30 day supply and a goodbye?  Treat them like common criminals, and we all know why it is like this; those common criminals really did mess this up for us and the docs.  The responsible and prudent people who treat taking their meds the same way, are the people/patients that get stuck in the middle.  We have our side of responsibility to ourselves also, regarding our medications. 

A lot of letter writing and talking to the higher-ups, is a great way to get things moving; but when we can't move (literally also), because we don't have our medications that allow us to LIVE and have some quality of life, what happens to us?  Lose our jobs because we couldn't walk that day, or the next, or....?  The migraine that has you over the toilet and crying does nothing good for anyone.  Or is it real good now for the doctor that fired you so he has one less "Medication patient"?  

I am a Chronic Pain sufferer, and also a nurse.  Hospice is the job that stole my heart away and I will never allow my patients to be in pain, for whatever reason.  My mom and dad both died at their homes, on Hospice; I was working as a Hospice Nurse and going to school, when my dad's colon CA had metastized to his liver, and I quit everything so I could be his primary caregiver.  I saw firsthand how the patient actually dies in front of my eyes, day by day I watched a Triathalon Senior Division Winner and champion Bodysurfer reduced to a small, weak patient.  I would not allow him to be in pain.  Unless he was lying to me, (and his S&S showed he was not in pain), he did not require Morphine until the day before he died.  He only took Vicodin.  Everyone is different.  But, not to steer off course, there is NO reason for anyone to experience pain.

After my 2nd back surgery, second day after surgery, I was told that I was becoming incoherent.  Of course the Morphine was blamed, and out it came.  I awoke to the most horrid pain, this was the "Big Sugery"; the Costotransversectomy with Fusion from the rib head.  I can see the concern when a patient has a change in their LOC and the morphine is suspended until the patient becomes coherent again, assess the pain, and decide on another med, or, reduce the dose of morphine.  In looking back, and with today being a 9/10 pain I remember that pain well.  I was just lying there, curled up in pain, and the doctor did not write anything else but Toradol.  No Demerol?  I came to him an opiod tolerant patient and he basically did the opposite of what I was told about him by a nurse who works a lot with my Dr. there during phone check-in, "You will not need to be worried about pain when you have Dr. A, nope, no worries, he is tough on pain."