This series of articles would benefit from the balance of including the human rights angle of pain pts. Under this anti-opioid/anti-pain regime, if you present to ER with pain you’ll be automatically considered a drug seeker instead of a person with an emerging health crisis.
This happened to me in 2003: presented more than a dozen times, and ignored by ERs until I had a full-blown spinal infection and sepsis. I’ve endured more than 20 years in untreated chronic pain and honestly couldn’t care less if I died tomorrow.
There is a lot to learn about all the corruption on the side of abandoned pts, jailed MDs, Suboxone lobby, and insane deaths of despair—including hospice pts who’re denied opioid pain medication. What sense does that make? The anti-opioid panic has become an anti-pain panic, and there’s something extra-cruel about never hearing from us. Here’s a source for more information, or hmu https://nationalpain.org
I’ve seen this often. It’s pretty much the standard. I was speaking with an orthopedic surgeon who said he now gives only ibuprofen after surgery. I encouraged him to do the same if he ever has surgery.
These trends begin after doctors attend large medical conferences. Surprisingly, educated people, like physicians, hear the latest trends at these prestigious meetings and instantly buy into the treatment du jour.
Doctors can be lazy so they don’t check facts or follow up with their own research.
This is one reason why millions are now vax injured. Only rare physicians are not sheep.
there’s a core group of anti-pain crusaders led by Andrew Kolodny of Brandeis University, who are funded by the Suboxone lobby (anti-addiction med; $$$) and other compounds like it.
they’re responsible for new “care” such as amputating limbs to “treat” neuropathy. it’s ghastly.
It’s absurd. This type of physician should be shamed out of business. But doctors are too meek to say anything. I’ve seen this my whole life. I’m so tired of it that I now have contempt for most physicians.
i have quite the medical PTSD as well. i have stories that’d curl your toenails. it’s not even on my short list of essays to write b/c i’m tired of being triggered by it.
Eighty-one percent of the patients were satisfied with the amputation and would decide to undergo an amputation again under the same conditions. Sixty-nine percent of the patients reported an improvement in pain, 69% an improvement in mobility, 75% in daily living activities, and 56% an improvement in sleep. Seventy-five percent of the patients used their prosthesis on a daily basis.
Conclusion
Most patients who underwent an amputation in our hospitals for chronic pain and/or functional impairment of a lower limb were satisfied and reported an improvement in function and pain.
LAY ABSTRACT
Therapeutic decision-making for chronic pain and/or functional loss in a lower limb is a complex problem. Many articles have been devoted to chronic pain, and current guidelines mention a lot of treatment options. However, patients can still experience a lot of pain and/or functional loss after having tried many treatments. Some of these patients request an amputation. Most physicians refrain from this treatment, since it is very drastic, irreversible, and there is a lack of evidence regarding the outcome. To our knowledge only a few case reports and a select number of case series have been published to date about amputation for chronic pain and/or functional loss in a lower limb, and these show variable results. This study followed a small group of patients in University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium, who underwent a lower limb amputation for this complex problem. Most of these patients were satisfied with their amputation. They reported an improvement in function and pain, and would decide to undergo an amputation again under the same conditions.
I had a dear friend whose left arm was crushed in a machine when he was young. The doctors saved the limb, but the bone was as brittle as balsa wood. A slight bump against something would break it...and it would hurt as much as any broken bone.
He asked to have it amputated and the doctors refused. The limb was not functional and he wore it in a sling.
In his case I see amputation as a viable treatment since the presence of the limb and it's condition leaves him vulnerable. But that is a rare situation.
May Kolodny burn in hell. Better yet, may he suffer from severe chronic pain and be refused necessary pain meds. He tells half truths and says they are the entire truth. The vast majority of chronic pain patients using opiates do NOT abuse their prescriptions. But he is part of a movement to block their use.
You're mixing medical bureaucrats and normal practitioners. Medical bureaucrats are like all other bureaucrats; practitioners are interested in improving patients' lives.
I can't agree with that. In my experience, most practitioners are people with a day job. That tendency has increased with the perception that medical care is a big business field with reliable job prospects; people go into medicine just to have a decent middle class life, or possibly even upper middle class/luxury life.
The whole reason the government's anti-painkiller push was so effective in terms of getting doctors to just submit and never prescribe powerful painkillers is because they value their job prospects more than their patients. That's just human nature.
It's a real phenomenon. As someone who does not have chronic pain, but had reasons to get painkillers before... here's my comparison: back in the early 2010's, I had my wisdom teeth out. Without asking for them, I was given a whole bottle worth of hydrocodone; like 50 pills. I didn't use most of them and ended up forgetting about them and throwing them out years later. More recently I went in to have dental implant done. For the uninitiated, this involves ripping out a tooth and all its roots, then jamming metal bolts into the jawbone and inserting a fake tooth. It's done professionally and really doesn't hurt DURING the surgery because you're dosed up with anesthetics, but I would argue it is FAR more pain-inducing for the body and more intense surgery than wisdom tooth extraction. This time around, I was reluctantly given enough pills for slim usage for 3~ days. When pain persisted beyond this point, they refused to give me anything more than "high dose ibuprofen" (which you can just replicate by buying a bunch of ibuprofen pills at your store, it is pointless to prescribe such things).
The backlash is absurd, and it's especially absurd when you look at government policy overall. Where I live, fentanyl is widely available on the street, and the government puts out messages that every citizen should carry around anti-fentanyl shots to save the druggies. Yet a responsible person with no history of drug addiction cannot get real painkillers after a serious surgery. They are treated worse than the actual, demonstrable drug addicted, mentally ill people on the street. None of it makes any logical sense.
What you’re describing is one of the ways the industry reacted to forced consolidation. By creating new financial rules and agencies, Obama forced at least several thousand industries to consolidate in self defense. A few large firms are easier to regulate than many small ones. The objective was always to regulate. In medicine this means the patient-physician relationship takes on a middleman.
“Job prospects” are meaningless to most practitioners. If his license is revoked he can no longer practice anywhere. I, for one, wanted to make people’s lives better and gave up years of my life and incalculable time with my family to become a psychiatrist.
It's not that they're lazy, physicians are far from lazy or they wouldn't have been able to become physicians. These are mandates / Dictates that come from the government through Medicare and the insurance companies, And enforced by the DEA and at the state level by the Medical boards which for the most part do not include physicians. There is substantial punishment just by the prolonged expensive punitive process of being "investigated” even if exonerated. Doctors are understandably afraid of this, as are hospitals.
agreed. i suffered with pain that was only relieved by opioids for some time. Toward the end i was told "take two Tylenol" to treat my ongoing pain..I was not them and am now not addicted to any mediation but I am not sure how i would have made it through without the drugs.. I imagine this heartbreaking scene plays out more than we know as doctors allow patients to suffer needlessly even when they are terminal..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plqzeUB9B-w.....why. becasue they have to follow the "rules' and the rules are for 'everyone"
There's what's medically sensible. And then there's what the law allows. You'd think these two sets would be in phase and largely overlap, but all too often they don't even intersect.
What's baffling to me is that among the left you have this simultaneous crusading attitude towards ANY opioids because of some image of profiteering pharma... but also, they are fine with handing out lethal doses of fentanyl to the homeless. It's so weird. Criminalizing proper painkiller use for normal people, and normalizing it for the actually mentally ill and drug-addicted underclass.
Same is true of the incentivized hospital death protocols in hospitals during Covid. As DPOA for my sis whom got the booster (tv won), the medical system literally broke my brain at one point just trying to save her life. Even when hospice ordered my legal request for “right to try” denied. Seems that needs a LOT MORE attention.
Last week, after cutting myself at work pretty badly, the paramedic who took me to the ER would have given me a shot, but I declined. Then, a few hours later on, after the xylocaine wore off, it started hurting real bad. Yes, you're right, nobody would give me any pain pills. Neither my primary care physician nor another clinic would hear of it.
I have had several surgeries that required opioids in the hospital setting. Sometimes they sent me home with 6 Percosets for pain. I try to avoid taking them unless the pain is overwhelming. I do not like at all how they make me feel. It’s like a sledgehammer hit me. I have no idea why people take them for pleasure. I still have 4 from a surgery more than a year ago. If I get in a bad accident and my bones are sticking out, then maybe I will use one. I would rather go to the ER and let them figure it out.
that’s horrible! i’m so sorry you’re going thru that.
pain activists are collecting horror stories like this all the time. currently a lot of amputees have been sent home w/o pain mgmt—war crime kinda stuff.
Useful in a hospital setting for a couple of days. Don’t take it home. It will make you psychotic. Benzos are highly addictive and hard to shake off. I had an ER visit last November with an extreme athesmatic attack. My SPoX was at 72% and I couldn’t breathe pretty much at all. I was in full scale panic. They gave me a benzo through the IV to calm me down and put me on powerful bronchiodialators and several steroids through a BPAP, the total face machine. I spent 2 nights in the ICU. When I got home, after 2 days of Benzo, I was already going through withdrawals. It took a few days to get back to normal and 2 new RX to get me normal. Just say no to benzos at home.
I know I am sheltered, but I had never heard of Benzos until the other day. I had to look it up to see what they were. I had watched a video where the police had pulled over this lady on Benzos, she was totally torn out of the frame. Hitting parked cars, had no idea what time of day it was.
I’m glad it worked for her. I’m not sure what they gave me in the ER. Perhaps it was much stronger. I did some research afterwards and will try to stay off these RX. As well as opioids.
I don’t really know what they gave me. It all happens very fast. I am grateful the ER docs were able to calm me down and restart my breathing. It took a few hours in the ICU. They held me a couple of nights to watch me. Not being able to breathe is not fun.
i remember a friend getting some when it first came out--i’d run into her at the local burger-beer joint and she telling me how “this new drug, adderall” enabled her to drink all nite and not get hungover. i thought “great, just what you need in your 30s” 😝
The fact is, it’s more complicated than that. The opioid crisis has a number of factors in its origin, not least of all patient advocacy and a realignment of the punishments/incentives, put on doctors To try and treat pain “better”. (Yes, I am a physician). I strongly disagree with the term lifestyle choices, I have many patients and friends who were prescribed opioids after procedures, or for severe pain, and they became addicted. This was not their fault. There are an enormous number Of caring, physicians and healthcare staff who truly want the best for people and want to help them. I strongly believe that is the case in industry as well, but make no mistake. There are some really terrible actors at the provider level and in industry. I just find it insulting and upsetting when we spent so many years of our lives learning how to try and help people and our motives get questioned or felt to be purely about profit. For the vast majority of us, this is not the case, It really is about trying to help other humans and alleviate suffering. In no way does this negate what you’re saying, again there are some truly terrible people out there who have harmed a lot of Americans and others. But the whole profession and industry is not rotten to the core.
The whole industry is not rotten to the core, but there are enough bad apples that leave the impression that it is rotten.
Physicians have allowed this to happen because they never spoke up when the trend to halt all Rxs for opioids began. We went from prescribing opioids for every tiny malady to almost total abstinence. A lot of surgeons got on board. An orthopedic surgeon friend returned from a conference & said he will now give only ibuprofen post op. He wasn’t opposed to prescribing opioids but understood that the practice was now frowned upon. I saw the look of determination (almost fear) on his face. Peer pressure is as bad in medicine as it is in law, and we’ve seen how strong that pressure can be.
We saw it happen with the vaccines. Because hospitals are govt controlled the vax was mandated. How many of you spoke up? How many searched for the truth about COVID & the “vaccine” that ensued? Instead, you all dutifully wore your masks & accepted the jab.
Speak up for your medical freedom & make choices based on your knowledge & experience. When you understand that nothing can be done without physicians, and you alone have the power, maybe you’ll ignore what people say about your motives because you know yours are honorable.
Joe, I appreciate your comment. My concern about Dr's is off topic, but from what I see in patient support groups, there is a real resentment toward the medical profession due to medical gaslighting. I know you must be right about the existence of well intentioned doctors, but sometimes It's hard to see it. I have a daughter who has a rare muscle condition, (periodic paralysis), which took many years to get diagnosed. Along the journey we had to see many specialists, get many tests done, etc. We did have a couple of docs who were kind and helpful. Unfortunately they were greatly outnumbered by others whose treatment of my daughter ranged from mere indifference to outright cruelty, (ex. screaming at her that "you are never going to find an answer!" (for her disabling condition), and another who laughed loudly at her, and said "Go figure out your trauma!"). My daughter was 17 at the time.
I've spoken to docs I trust about this, and apparently this type of behavior is an open secret. So my question is, WHY don't the (majority if you are correct) of "good" doctors put a stop to it? Call it out? Call for retraining?
Sorry to put you on the spot, but I just don't understand this. Sometimes it just takes good people being silent for evil to persist, as the saying goes.
BTW, I don't expect you to have to defend bad doctors, or good doctors who don't call them out. That wouldn't be fair. The post is more rhetorical. I just wonder if good doctors realize how much their toxic peers are poisoning patients' trust in the profession.
So sorry you and your daughter went through that. It’s so frustrating. It can take so many visits to finally get to the right doctor. It’s not uncommon to be invalidated or dismissed along the way. A close friend of ours daughter had that … for several years as a teen. Finally they figured it out (two rare conditions - unrelated) - she went from bed ridden to now off to college. But along the way plenty of “it’s in her mind”. I do a lot of teaching … I tell the docs it’s ok not to know .. and to say I don’t know..but work to get them to someone who might know. Advocate for your patient. Some doctors just suck as people .. calling them out on it makes as much difference as telling a rude miserable person that they are rude and miserable. It rarely changes anything and it’s not illegal or reportable. Payment cuts and time crunches (my doc still does an hour appointment but many are 10 or 15 minutes! (Mandated by management )) are creating burnout in doctors and make it very hard to have time to explore complicated cases. Physicians get extremely frustrated by physician, extenders, NP, and PAs. Many think the care is substandards due to much less training. We see missed diagnoses and complications from them all the time. I like to point out that is incredibly easy to find the same things and patient patient nightmare stories from seeing physicians. Medicine really is hard. Even the good doctors can miss things or may not have heard about uncommon cases. The flipside is the doctors who work up every single case for extremely rare things costing the system thousands and thousands of dollars and of course it’s not whatever they’re looking for. No system is perfect, we can all do better. I’m so glad they finally worked out what was wrong, I’m usually the last stop on the line from my patients who have gone from person to person. It’s extremely frustrating and doubly so when you are the parent and it’s your child who is affected. I’m sorry for the Odyssey you know doubt went through, regrettably. It’s not uncommon. (Sidenote, I teach a lot of really excellent residents… At my last teaching, all the kids were great except for one; he’s just a dick. Has been all his life and will be all his life and his colleagues recognize it. You really can’t do anything about douche bags)
Thank you for your response, and your kind words. It's just, I worry sometimes about what is happening with the breakdown of trust. I read comments from many patients, who have vulnerable conditions, who are afraid to go to the ER or to see a new doctor, because of bad past experiences. It seems dangerous.
Of course, you're right that there are bad people everywhere, including medicine. It also makes sense that being rude, etc. to patients isn't a reportable offense, (though I wish it were, since the impact on the patient can be significant and last long after the doctor has forgotten the interaction). I guess we hold our doctors to an impossible standard sometimes. Your profession does seem to be getting squeezed pretty hard, and I have no doubt some patients can be a real pain too.
I thank you for what you do. Your residents and patients are fortunate to have you.
One of the most satisfying things is having a successful patient interaction. Especially with someone who’s had a bad experiences before. You just sit and you listen, give words of acknowledgment. “ That sounds so frustrating” , “ I can’t believe they did that” etc And you truly listen. You have to eliminate the idea of moving on the next patient and really try to understand what’s going on with the person in front of you. Belligerent or upset person really doesn’t want to be that way usually they’re struggling to have some form of control over situation that feels very out of their control. When you recognize that you give them control by allowing them to choose some options in their care. Let them have a voice in it. When they leave happy, everybody wins. It’s really hard to teach, some people are just more natural at it than others.
Joe, Ive read there are genetic markers that predispose an individual to addiction. Would it make sense to know those markers and include them in prescription and consultation decisions?
That is used with some prescriptions, for example, determining the best antidepressant. I think it will depend on the clinical situation, if you know you have a procedure coming up, you could get tested and you would know what would be OK, but if you broke your leg, you wouldn’t likely get genetic testing back for a week… Furthermore That kind of testing is almost never covered by insurance, so the patient would have to pay . And likely it’s not cheap. But one could imagine a Gattaca Situation where even more things are screened for at birth
My dad was a doctor in the old days (graduated med school in 1931). He died in 1989 long before the opioid crisis. He thought opiates were miracle drugs. He fully believes in treating pain aggressively and was horrified by doctors who left their patients suffering.
Regarding addiction, that was a condition that needed to be watched for...but it was one that could be treated. Mind you, the definition of "addiction" that he used (and that was used professionally prior to the 1970s) was a medical condition resulting from use of opioid drugs resulting in tolerance and withdrawal symptoms. The term used to describe compulsive use of drugs was "habitual." Now, "habitual" is called "addiction" and the other condition is called "dependence" or does not have a name at all.
You’re a bloody star! And not to take away from your devotion and effort - but WTF!? Why aren’t there many more thousands of reporters also out there doing work on the truth? Has it come to this? I have to rely on a dozen reporters to cover the planet?
In 2018 I needed surgery for my lower back pain. Turns out my surgeon needed to do a bilateral laminectomy. He informed me that I'd be given high dose ibuprofen for pain relief!
I declined and found another surgeon who was serious about pain management.
It enraged me to think that this doctor would actually think I'd end up living under a tarp on a sidewalk if he gave me a few days worth of pain pills.
A friend’s father was in a tremendous amount of pain after surgery. They would not give him anything but ibuprofen. He was so desperate that he committed suicide.
I’d love to be the nurse for one of these doctors when they had surgery. I’d give them a narcotic for pain, but I’d make them wait so they could experience what their patients endure.
This is extremely important work. Look what pharma has done to your fellow citizens. I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge their partner Corporate Food.
One thing you might find interesting is the stock price history of Teva. Somehow the corporate higher-ups are manipulating the finances, because the Revenue numbers, typically, would translate into a much higher Net Income, Earnings Per Share and thus a much higher stock price. They're somehow extracting value "off the books". Black Rock is the major Shareholder of Teva. Another thing is the Teva stock price totally tanked during Trump. Same as the War Stocks, Big Oil, Big Coal and The Bankster's stocks -- they all plummeted during Trump. Beginning right at the time he took office, then right through his term, the timing is uncanny.
Get in touch with John Abramson, who wrote ‘Sickening’, about how Pharma has totally corrupted the clinical trials process. He’s been a witness in many courtroom trials concerning Pharma malfeasance, and probably has a long list of leads based on his participation in research and depositions.
Yes, in that book and the sequel, Abramson makes it clear that anything he’s ever found out has been obtained through litigation/discovery , because FDA does not publish the Pharma original data and the journals do not even get it. So doctors just get big pharma spin.
If you want another example of misquoted or misinterpreted data used to drive the public perception-take a look link in your article “reported on before” which takes you to a Dec 2021 story in Al Jazeera Global news regarding the opioid issue. Within that article is a link to story regarding increase in Omicron and the hospitalization of children in Dec 2021-incredibly misleading and drove many parents to get their children vaccinated.
This isn't a trial exhibit, but a meta-trial exhibit:
RECAP (Pacer spelled backwards) is a free archive of legal documents. The trick is, you install a browser extension that automatically archives whatever you get from Pacer. I say "trick" because I think a lot of big law firms use it, so a surprisingly huge number of Pacer documents are available for free. Those Big Law firms pay, and the rest of us benefit.
Matt, thanks for letting us help out. It reminded me of my post on Matt Taibbi’s Substack by guest contributor, Dr. Matt Bivins, April 15, 2024:
Reminds me of the opioid crisis brilliantly detailed in "Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic" by Sam Quinones. One small study launches advertising, marketing, sales, subscriptions, crime... and creates havoc with peoples' lives to make money. "...in 1979, a doctor at Boston University School of Medicine named Hershel Jick sat in his office pondering the question of how often patients in a hospital, given narcotic painkillers, grew addicted to these drugs."
"At Boston University, he had built a database of records of hospitalized patients. The database charted the effects of drugs of all kinds on these patients while they were in the hospital. The database grew from the thalidomide scandal of 1960, when babies were born with defects after their mothers were prescribed the drug. Only anecdotally did doctors discover the risk of thalidomide.
In the early 1960s, Dr. Jick was asked to begin building a database of drugs used in hospitals and their effects." "Dr. Jick asked for the NUMBERS OF PATIENTS IN THE DATABASE WHO HAD
DEVELOPED ADDICTIONS AFTER BEING GIVEN NARCOTIC PAINKILLERS." (emphasis mine)
"Of almost twelve thousand patients treated with opiates while in a hospital before 1979, and whose records were in the Boston database, only four had grown addicted. There was no data about how often, how long, or at what dose these patients were given opiates, nor the ailments the drugs treated. The paragraph simply cited the numbers and made no claim beyond that." "... New England Journal of Medicine" "January 10, 1980" "It bore the title “ADDICTION RARE IN PATIENTS TREATED WITH NARCOTICS.” " (emphasis mine)
I wanted to note that the auto industry is terrible and does no net good because there have been several scandals of note. It is full of reprehensible people who only care about the bottom line. Plus it never even provided us with life saving interventions such as COVID vaccines, Hepatitis C cures, and it never moved cancer survival overall rates from 50% to 67% over the course of a couple decades. https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/02/Five-year-cancer-survival-rates-USA-v2-01-768x563-750x550.png
Most physicians are part of the bureaucracy because they are employed by hospitals who are controlled by govt. They may not view themselves as bureaucrats, but peer pressure forces them into the same mold. Give me a better reason why almost every doctor was a vaccine advocate.
Not knowing how bad the vaccines are is no excuse. You have a responsibility to know. The lack of knowledge has almost destroyed your profession.
TYVM Brook for bringing your point to this conversation. The "opioid crisis" has left TRUE pain sufferers that do not abuse but use responsibly due to excruciating, debilitating chronic, cancer, disease (short term surgical) etc pain to endure incomprehensible agony. Many to the point of suicide. Or.....frequently repeated/ongoing injections, Invasive device implants, surgical interventions - all with extremely high or guaranteed failure rates &/or long term irreversible physical damage (too long to list & rarely if ever discussed).
27 year devoted, compassionate R.N. here with significant work-related injuries, left permanently disabled. 30+ years of witness & research.
Suboxone, Naloxone (also highly addictive)....& more new to the market huge money makers or ineffective &/or dangerous OTC medications are now the sole treatment options. "Natural/Alternative" remedies are always a first & best choice, but not always effective for severe or chronic pain.
It certainly did not require my medical career to understand & witness the devastating addiction/abuse problem plaguing our nation/society. As an unfortunate consequence, true pain patients have been discarded, stigmatized & demoralized.
Fentanyl impact & deaths are lumped into the "crisis". What is being done about this? The truth about anti-anxiety & anti-depressant medications. Addiction & withdrawal are severe implications of these hugely prescribed medications.
Follow the money: Big Pharma, Medical Device manufacturers (continuous/ongoing damage lawsuits), surgeons' surgical & device manufacturer kickbacks, doctor medication kickbacks, injections costs (billions annually) & so much more. Compassion, homework, reasonable & honest solutions please.
thank you 💕 and i’m so sorry about your work-related injuries and disability. just in my tiny circle of acquaintances I know a few nurses who retired early b/c of being hurt on the job (many made worse from surgery; esp knee surgery).
i think a lot of ppl imagine that pain pts “just want to get high,” but you don’t get high from opiates when you’re in pain, and that’s not our goal. it’d be much easier if it were! we’re just trying to get well enough to function at a level where we’re not burden our families.
I take opiates for pain almost every day. Sometimes I can get by a day without them. I don't try to stop all the pain...if you try to do that you develop a tolerance and you have to start taking more.
I was on 40mg of hydrocodone every day...10mg every 4 hours. Then it stopped working. I started taking a dose every 6 hours. Then I found other ways to cut back. I was horribly constipated during that time.
Now I take a cocktail of non opiates along with my hydrocodone. I only take 20 mg per day now. I don't get high from my drugs. If I take too much they make me nauseated and constipated. But I have to see a nurse or a doctor every 30 days to get my prescription written. What a waste.
Spoof skits and comedy videos from decades ago sales conferences in many industries make for hilariously cringeworthy viewing, but only ambulance chasers would take them out of context as signs of criminal conspiracy. Most of the actual crimes committed at the conferences of that era were more in the racial and sexual harassment categories. Pharma salespeople don’t run “studies” but they did engage (with hospitals and doctors) in bribery (er-incentive) schemes. Usually not at the sales conferences (except for the dinners with the invited speakers from the medical community).
Of course this happened with salesforces in lots of industries, and still does, to a degree.
For extra bonus fun, can we get recordings of surgeons and team in operating rooms from 20 years ago? Also entertaining stuff.
Also police, fire, teacher’s lounges, airline cockpits, office cubicles . Once we dispense with humor and context we’ll find lots of criminals.
The “comedy” video revealed what the industry thinks of the customers. Bad motives produce bad results. Enron met the same fate for laughing at freezing grandmas during brownouts. It’s fucking sick behavior.
This series of articles would benefit from the balance of including the human rights angle of pain pts. Under this anti-opioid/anti-pain regime, if you present to ER with pain you’ll be automatically considered a drug seeker instead of a person with an emerging health crisis.
This happened to me in 2003: presented more than a dozen times, and ignored by ERs until I had a full-blown spinal infection and sepsis. I’ve endured more than 20 years in untreated chronic pain and honestly couldn’t care less if I died tomorrow.
There is a lot to learn about all the corruption on the side of abandoned pts, jailed MDs, Suboxone lobby, and insane deaths of despair—including hospice pts who’re denied opioid pain medication. What sense does that make? The anti-opioid panic has become an anti-pain panic, and there’s something extra-cruel about never hearing from us. Here’s a source for more information, or hmu https://nationalpain.org
I’ve seen this often. It’s pretty much the standard. I was speaking with an orthopedic surgeon who said he now gives only ibuprofen after surgery. I encouraged him to do the same if he ever has surgery.
These trends begin after doctors attend large medical conferences. Surprisingly, educated people, like physicians, hear the latest trends at these prestigious meetings and instantly buy into the treatment du jour.
Doctors can be lazy so they don’t check facts or follow up with their own research.
This is one reason why millions are now vax injured. Only rare physicians are not sheep.
there’s a core group of anti-pain crusaders led by Andrew Kolodny of Brandeis University, who are funded by the Suboxone lobby (anti-addiction med; $$$) and other compounds like it.
they’re responsible for new “care” such as amputating limbs to “treat” neuropathy. it’s ghastly.
It’s absurd. This type of physician should be shamed out of business. But doctors are too meek to say anything. I’ve seen this my whole life. I’m so tired of it that I now have contempt for most physicians.
i have quite the medical PTSD as well. i have stories that’d curl your toenails. it’s not even on my short list of essays to write b/c i’m tired of being triggered by it.
From Pubmed:
Eighty-one percent of the patients were satisfied with the amputation and would decide to undergo an amputation again under the same conditions. Sixty-nine percent of the patients reported an improvement in pain, 69% an improvement in mobility, 75% in daily living activities, and 56% an improvement in sleep. Seventy-five percent of the patients used their prosthesis on a daily basis.
Conclusion
Most patients who underwent an amputation in our hospitals for chronic pain and/or functional impairment of a lower limb were satisfied and reported an improvement in function and pain.
LAY ABSTRACT
Therapeutic decision-making for chronic pain and/or functional loss in a lower limb is a complex problem. Many articles have been devoted to chronic pain, and current guidelines mention a lot of treatment options. However, patients can still experience a lot of pain and/or functional loss after having tried many treatments. Some of these patients request an amputation. Most physicians refrain from this treatment, since it is very drastic, irreversible, and there is a lack of evidence regarding the outcome. To our knowledge only a few case reports and a select number of case series have been published to date about amputation for chronic pain and/or functional loss in a lower limb, and these show variable results. This study followed a small group of patients in University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium, who underwent a lower limb amputation for this complex problem. Most of these patients were satisfied with their amputation. They reported an improvement in function and pain, and would decide to undergo an amputation again under the same conditions.
I had a dear friend whose left arm was crushed in a machine when he was young. The doctors saved the limb, but the bone was as brittle as balsa wood. A slight bump against something would break it...and it would hurt as much as any broken bone.
He asked to have it amputated and the doctors refused. The limb was not functional and he wore it in a sling.
In his case I see amputation as a viable treatment since the presence of the limb and it's condition leaves him vulnerable. But that is a rare situation.
May Kolodny burn in hell. Better yet, may he suffer from severe chronic pain and be refused necessary pain meds. He tells half truths and says they are the entire truth. The vast majority of chronic pain patients using opiates do NOT abuse their prescriptions. But he is part of a movement to block their use.
You're mixing medical bureaucrats and normal practitioners. Medical bureaucrats are like all other bureaucrats; practitioners are interested in improving patients' lives.
I can't agree with that. In my experience, most practitioners are people with a day job. That tendency has increased with the perception that medical care is a big business field with reliable job prospects; people go into medicine just to have a decent middle class life, or possibly even upper middle class/luxury life.
The whole reason the government's anti-painkiller push was so effective in terms of getting doctors to just submit and never prescribe powerful painkillers is because they value their job prospects more than their patients. That's just human nature.
It's a real phenomenon. As someone who does not have chronic pain, but had reasons to get painkillers before... here's my comparison: back in the early 2010's, I had my wisdom teeth out. Without asking for them, I was given a whole bottle worth of hydrocodone; like 50 pills. I didn't use most of them and ended up forgetting about them and throwing them out years later. More recently I went in to have dental implant done. For the uninitiated, this involves ripping out a tooth and all its roots, then jamming metal bolts into the jawbone and inserting a fake tooth. It's done professionally and really doesn't hurt DURING the surgery because you're dosed up with anesthetics, but I would argue it is FAR more pain-inducing for the body and more intense surgery than wisdom tooth extraction. This time around, I was reluctantly given enough pills for slim usage for 3~ days. When pain persisted beyond this point, they refused to give me anything more than "high dose ibuprofen" (which you can just replicate by buying a bunch of ibuprofen pills at your store, it is pointless to prescribe such things).
The backlash is absurd, and it's especially absurd when you look at government policy overall. Where I live, fentanyl is widely available on the street, and the government puts out messages that every citizen should carry around anti-fentanyl shots to save the druggies. Yet a responsible person with no history of drug addiction cannot get real painkillers after a serious surgery. They are treated worse than the actual, demonstrable drug addicted, mentally ill people on the street. None of it makes any logical sense.
What you’re describing is one of the ways the industry reacted to forced consolidation. By creating new financial rules and agencies, Obama forced at least several thousand industries to consolidate in self defense. A few large firms are easier to regulate than many small ones. The objective was always to regulate. In medicine this means the patient-physician relationship takes on a middleman.
“Job prospects” are meaningless to most practitioners. If his license is revoked he can no longer practice anywhere. I, for one, wanted to make people’s lives better and gave up years of my life and incalculable time with my family to become a psychiatrist.
100% agree, Bill.
It's not that they're lazy, physicians are far from lazy or they wouldn't have been able to become physicians. These are mandates / Dictates that come from the government through Medicare and the insurance companies, And enforced by the DEA and at the state level by the Medical boards which for the most part do not include physicians. There is substantial punishment just by the prolonged expensive punitive process of being "investigated” even if exonerated. Doctors are understandably afraid of this, as are hospitals.
agreed. i suffered with pain that was only relieved by opioids for some time. Toward the end i was told "take two Tylenol" to treat my ongoing pain..I was not them and am now not addicted to any mediation but I am not sure how i would have made it through without the drugs.. I imagine this heartbreaking scene plays out more than we know as doctors allow patients to suffer needlessly even when they are terminal..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plqzeUB9B-w.....why. becasue they have to follow the "rules' and the rules are for 'everyone"
What’s weird is that euthanasia is OK in some places, but pain relief can be hit or miss.
The second can lead to a desire for the first. The pain does end.
Sounds like 2 similar things.
There's what's medically sensible. And then there's what the law allows. You'd think these two sets would be in phase and largely overlap, but all too often they don't even intersect.
What's baffling to me is that among the left you have this simultaneous crusading attitude towards ANY opioids because of some image of profiteering pharma... but also, they are fine with handing out lethal doses of fentanyl to the homeless. It's so weird. Criminalizing proper painkiller use for normal people, and normalizing it for the actually mentally ill and drug-addicted underclass.
Same is true of the incentivized hospital death protocols in hospitals during Covid. As DPOA for my sis whom got the booster (tv won), the medical system literally broke my brain at one point just trying to save her life. Even when hospice ordered my legal request for “right to try” denied. Seems that needs a LOT MORE attention.
Last week, after cutting myself at work pretty badly, the paramedic who took me to the ER would have given me a shot, but I declined. Then, a few hours later on, after the xylocaine wore off, it started hurting real bad. Yes, you're right, nobody would give me any pain pills. Neither my primary care physician nor another clinic would hear of it.
I have had several surgeries that required opioids in the hospital setting. Sometimes they sent me home with 6 Percosets for pain. I try to avoid taking them unless the pain is overwhelming. I do not like at all how they make me feel. It’s like a sledgehammer hit me. I have no idea why people take them for pleasure. I still have 4 from a surgery more than a year ago. If I get in a bad accident and my bones are sticking out, then maybe I will use one. I would rather go to the ER and let them figure it out.
I agree..Had knee replacement & the oxy, made me sick as a dog. I can't believe people actually enjoy that feeling..Not me.
that’s horrible! i’m so sorry you’re going thru that.
pain activists are collecting horror stories like this all the time. currently a lot of amputees have been sent home w/o pain mgmt—war crime kinda stuff.
Thank You for this comment.
Thomas Herring, PE
Useful in a hospital setting for a couple of days. Don’t take it home. It will make you psychotic. Benzos are highly addictive and hard to shake off. I had an ER visit last November with an extreme athesmatic attack. My SPoX was at 72% and I couldn’t breathe pretty much at all. I was in full scale panic. They gave me a benzo through the IV to calm me down and put me on powerful bronchiodialators and several steroids through a BPAP, the total face machine. I spent 2 nights in the ICU. When I got home, after 2 days of Benzo, I was already going through withdrawals. It took a few days to get back to normal and 2 new RX to get me normal. Just say no to benzos at home.
I know I am sheltered, but I had never heard of Benzos until the other day. I had to look it up to see what they were. I had watched a video where the police had pulled over this lady on Benzos, she was totally torn out of the frame. Hitting parked cars, had no idea what time of day it was.
I’m glad it worked for her. I’m not sure what they gave me in the ER. Perhaps it was much stronger. I did some research afterwards and will try to stay off these RX. As well as opioids.
I don’t really know what they gave me. It all happens very fast. I am grateful the ER docs were able to calm me down and restart my breathing. It took a few hours in the ICU. They held me a couple of nights to watch me. Not being able to breathe is not fun.
Fully agree
indeed.
but, did you see that the shortage of Adderall is a “public health crisis” according to CDC 💀
i remember a friend getting some when it first came out--i’d run into her at the local burger-beer joint and she telling me how “this new drug, adderall” enabled her to drink all nite and not get hungover. i thought “great, just what you need in your 30s” 😝
That's scary..
...social media enthusiasts...
Matt - I made this comment on the original article, but this might provide some leads to look into:
Medical schools are now treating obesity as a chronic disease instead of a lifestyle disease and these lessons are funded by big pharmaceutical companies pushing their obesity drugs: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/the-hidden-struggle-in-health-care
In the early 2000s, NEJM editor quit due to the number of faulty trials in clinical studies: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/i-dont-know-why-liars-lie-but-they
Long story short, medicine is just another industry used to control the populace and has been that way ever since Rockefeller and Ford got involved: https://unorthodoxy.substack.com/p/donating-to-a-good-cause-how-billionaires
The fact is, it’s more complicated than that. The opioid crisis has a number of factors in its origin, not least of all patient advocacy and a realignment of the punishments/incentives, put on doctors To try and treat pain “better”. (Yes, I am a physician). I strongly disagree with the term lifestyle choices, I have many patients and friends who were prescribed opioids after procedures, or for severe pain, and they became addicted. This was not their fault. There are an enormous number Of caring, physicians and healthcare staff who truly want the best for people and want to help them. I strongly believe that is the case in industry as well, but make no mistake. There are some really terrible actors at the provider level and in industry. I just find it insulting and upsetting when we spent so many years of our lives learning how to try and help people and our motives get questioned or felt to be purely about profit. For the vast majority of us, this is not the case, It really is about trying to help other humans and alleviate suffering. In no way does this negate what you’re saying, again there are some truly terrible people out there who have harmed a lot of Americans and others. But the whole profession and industry is not rotten to the core.
The whole industry is not rotten to the core, but there are enough bad apples that leave the impression that it is rotten.
Physicians have allowed this to happen because they never spoke up when the trend to halt all Rxs for opioids began. We went from prescribing opioids for every tiny malady to almost total abstinence. A lot of surgeons got on board. An orthopedic surgeon friend returned from a conference & said he will now give only ibuprofen post op. He wasn’t opposed to prescribing opioids but understood that the practice was now frowned upon. I saw the look of determination (almost fear) on his face. Peer pressure is as bad in medicine as it is in law, and we’ve seen how strong that pressure can be.
We saw it happen with the vaccines. Because hospitals are govt controlled the vax was mandated. How many of you spoke up? How many searched for the truth about COVID & the “vaccine” that ensued? Instead, you all dutifully wore your masks & accepted the jab.
Speak up for your medical freedom & make choices based on your knowledge & experience. When you understand that nothing can be done without physicians, and you alone have the power, maybe you’ll ignore what people say about your motives because you know yours are honorable.
Joe, I appreciate your comment. My concern about Dr's is off topic, but from what I see in patient support groups, there is a real resentment toward the medical profession due to medical gaslighting. I know you must be right about the existence of well intentioned doctors, but sometimes It's hard to see it. I have a daughter who has a rare muscle condition, (periodic paralysis), which took many years to get diagnosed. Along the journey we had to see many specialists, get many tests done, etc. We did have a couple of docs who were kind and helpful. Unfortunately they were greatly outnumbered by others whose treatment of my daughter ranged from mere indifference to outright cruelty, (ex. screaming at her that "you are never going to find an answer!" (for her disabling condition), and another who laughed loudly at her, and said "Go figure out your trauma!"). My daughter was 17 at the time.
I've spoken to docs I trust about this, and apparently this type of behavior is an open secret. So my question is, WHY don't the (majority if you are correct) of "good" doctors put a stop to it? Call it out? Call for retraining?
Sorry to put you on the spot, but I just don't understand this. Sometimes it just takes good people being silent for evil to persist, as the saying goes.
BTW, I don't expect you to have to defend bad doctors, or good doctors who don't call them out. That wouldn't be fair. The post is more rhetorical. I just wonder if good doctors realize how much their toxic peers are poisoning patients' trust in the profession.
So sorry you and your daughter went through that. It’s so frustrating. It can take so many visits to finally get to the right doctor. It’s not uncommon to be invalidated or dismissed along the way. A close friend of ours daughter had that … for several years as a teen. Finally they figured it out (two rare conditions - unrelated) - she went from bed ridden to now off to college. But along the way plenty of “it’s in her mind”. I do a lot of teaching … I tell the docs it’s ok not to know .. and to say I don’t know..but work to get them to someone who might know. Advocate for your patient. Some doctors just suck as people .. calling them out on it makes as much difference as telling a rude miserable person that they are rude and miserable. It rarely changes anything and it’s not illegal or reportable. Payment cuts and time crunches (my doc still does an hour appointment but many are 10 or 15 minutes! (Mandated by management )) are creating burnout in doctors and make it very hard to have time to explore complicated cases. Physicians get extremely frustrated by physician, extenders, NP, and PAs. Many think the care is substandards due to much less training. We see missed diagnoses and complications from them all the time. I like to point out that is incredibly easy to find the same things and patient patient nightmare stories from seeing physicians. Medicine really is hard. Even the good doctors can miss things or may not have heard about uncommon cases. The flipside is the doctors who work up every single case for extremely rare things costing the system thousands and thousands of dollars and of course it’s not whatever they’re looking for. No system is perfect, we can all do better. I’m so glad they finally worked out what was wrong, I’m usually the last stop on the line from my patients who have gone from person to person. It’s extremely frustrating and doubly so when you are the parent and it’s your child who is affected. I’m sorry for the Odyssey you know doubt went through, regrettably. It’s not uncommon. (Sidenote, I teach a lot of really excellent residents… At my last teaching, all the kids were great except for one; he’s just a dick. Has been all his life and will be all his life and his colleagues recognize it. You really can’t do anything about douche bags)
Thank you for your response, and your kind words. It's just, I worry sometimes about what is happening with the breakdown of trust. I read comments from many patients, who have vulnerable conditions, who are afraid to go to the ER or to see a new doctor, because of bad past experiences. It seems dangerous.
Of course, you're right that there are bad people everywhere, including medicine. It also makes sense that being rude, etc. to patients isn't a reportable offense, (though I wish it were, since the impact on the patient can be significant and last long after the doctor has forgotten the interaction). I guess we hold our doctors to an impossible standard sometimes. Your profession does seem to be getting squeezed pretty hard, and I have no doubt some patients can be a real pain too.
I thank you for what you do. Your residents and patients are fortunate to have you.
One of the most satisfying things is having a successful patient interaction. Especially with someone who’s had a bad experiences before. You just sit and you listen, give words of acknowledgment. “ That sounds so frustrating” , “ I can’t believe they did that” etc And you truly listen. You have to eliminate the idea of moving on the next patient and really try to understand what’s going on with the person in front of you. Belligerent or upset person really doesn’t want to be that way usually they’re struggling to have some form of control over situation that feels very out of their control. When you recognize that you give them control by allowing them to choose some options in their care. Let them have a voice in it. When they leave happy, everybody wins. It’s really hard to teach, some people are just more natural at it than others.
Joe, thank you so much for you comment! I mistakenly typed “opioid” when I meant to type “obesity”. I just edited my comment to correct that.
Sorry mate! Yes you are right
Joe, Ive read there are genetic markers that predispose an individual to addiction. Would it make sense to know those markers and include them in prescription and consultation decisions?
That is used with some prescriptions, for example, determining the best antidepressant. I think it will depend on the clinical situation, if you know you have a procedure coming up, you could get tested and you would know what would be OK, but if you broke your leg, you wouldn’t likely get genetic testing back for a week… Furthermore That kind of testing is almost never covered by insurance, so the patient would have to pay . And likely it’s not cheap. But one could imagine a Gattaca Situation where even more things are screened for at birth
Thanks for the answer!
My dad was a doctor in the old days (graduated med school in 1931). He died in 1989 long before the opioid crisis. He thought opiates were miracle drugs. He fully believes in treating pain aggressively and was horrified by doctors who left their patients suffering.
Regarding addiction, that was a condition that needed to be watched for...but it was one that could be treated. Mind you, the definition of "addiction" that he used (and that was used professionally prior to the 1970s) was a medical condition resulting from use of opioid drugs resulting in tolerance and withdrawal symptoms. The term used to describe compulsive use of drugs was "habitual." Now, "habitual" is called "addiction" and the other condition is called "dependence" or does not have a name at all.
You really deserve A Pulitzer Prize, and probably the presidential medal of freedom. Keep doing what you do
But skip the Nobel, it's proven to no longer be a merit metric.
And the Pulitzer is?!
Best ask Joe, it's his proposal.
You’re a bloody star! And not to take away from your devotion and effort - but WTF!? Why aren’t there many more thousands of reporters also out there doing work on the truth? Has it come to this? I have to rely on a dozen reporters to cover the planet?
THIS is what the internet was invented for.
In 2018 I needed surgery for my lower back pain. Turns out my surgeon needed to do a bilateral laminectomy. He informed me that I'd be given high dose ibuprofen for pain relief!
I declined and found another surgeon who was serious about pain management.
It enraged me to think that this doctor would actually think I'd end up living under a tarp on a sidewalk if he gave me a few days worth of pain pills.
That infuriates me.
A friend’s father was in a tremendous amount of pain after surgery. They would not give him anything but ibuprofen. He was so desperate that he committed suicide.
I’d love to be the nurse for one of these doctors when they had surgery. I’d give them a narcotic for pain, but I’d make them wait so they could experience what their patients endure.
This is extremely important work. Look what pharma has done to your fellow citizens. I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge their partner Corporate Food.
One thing you might find interesting is the stock price history of Teva. Somehow the corporate higher-ups are manipulating the finances, because the Revenue numbers, typically, would translate into a much higher Net Income, Earnings Per Share and thus a much higher stock price. They're somehow extracting value "off the books". Black Rock is the major Shareholder of Teva. Another thing is the Teva stock price totally tanked during Trump. Same as the War Stocks, Big Oil, Big Coal and The Bankster's stocks -- they all plummeted during Trump. Beginning right at the time he took office, then right through his term, the timing is uncanny.
Get in touch with John Abramson, who wrote ‘Sickening’, about how Pharma has totally corrupted the clinical trials process. He’s been a witness in many courtroom trials concerning Pharma malfeasance, and probably has a long list of leads based on his participation in research and depositions.
Yes, in that book and the sequel, Abramson makes it clear that anything he’s ever found out has been obtained through litigation/discovery , because FDA does not publish the Pharma original data and the journals do not even get it. So doctors just get big pharma spin.
If you want another example of misquoted or misinterpreted data used to drive the public perception-take a look link in your article “reported on before” which takes you to a Dec 2021 story in Al Jazeera Global news regarding the opioid issue. Within that article is a link to story regarding increase in Omicron and the hospitalization of children in Dec 2021-incredibly misleading and drove many parents to get their children vaccinated.
This isn't a trial exhibit, but a meta-trial exhibit:
RECAP (Pacer spelled backwards) is a free archive of legal documents. The trick is, you install a browser extension that automatically archives whatever you get from Pacer. I say "trick" because I think a lot of big law firms use it, so a surprisingly huge number of Pacer documents are available for free. Those Big Law firms pay, and the rest of us benefit.
https://free.law/recap
Matt, thanks for letting us help out. It reminded me of my post on Matt Taibbi’s Substack by guest contributor, Dr. Matt Bivins, April 15, 2024:
Reminds me of the opioid crisis brilliantly detailed in "Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic" by Sam Quinones. One small study launches advertising, marketing, sales, subscriptions, crime... and creates havoc with peoples' lives to make money. "...in 1979, a doctor at Boston University School of Medicine named Hershel Jick sat in his office pondering the question of how often patients in a hospital, given narcotic painkillers, grew addicted to these drugs."
"At Boston University, he had built a database of records of hospitalized patients. The database charted the effects of drugs of all kinds on these patients while they were in the hospital. The database grew from the thalidomide scandal of 1960, when babies were born with defects after their mothers were prescribed the drug. Only anecdotally did doctors discover the risk of thalidomide.
In the early 1960s, Dr. Jick was asked to begin building a database of drugs used in hospitals and their effects." "Dr. Jick asked for the NUMBERS OF PATIENTS IN THE DATABASE WHO HAD
DEVELOPED ADDICTIONS AFTER BEING GIVEN NARCOTIC PAINKILLERS." (emphasis mine)
"Of almost twelve thousand patients treated with opiates while in a hospital before 1979, and whose records were in the Boston database, only four had grown addicted. There was no data about how often, how long, or at what dose these patients were given opiates, nor the ailments the drugs treated. The paragraph simply cited the numbers and made no claim beyond that." "... New England Journal of Medicine" "January 10, 1980" "It bore the title “ADDICTION RARE IN PATIENTS TREATED WITH NARCOTICS.” " (emphasis mine)
I wanted to note that the auto industry is terrible and does no net good because there have been several scandals of note. It is full of reprehensible people who only care about the bottom line. Plus it never even provided us with life saving interventions such as COVID vaccines, Hepatitis C cures, and it never moved cancer survival overall rates from 50% to 67% over the course of a couple decades. https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/02/Five-year-cancer-survival-rates-USA-v2-01-768x563-750x550.png
Most physicians are part of the bureaucracy because they are employed by hospitals who are controlled by govt. They may not view themselves as bureaucrats, but peer pressure forces them into the same mold. Give me a better reason why almost every doctor was a vaccine advocate.
Not knowing how bad the vaccines are is no excuse. You have a responsibility to know. The lack of knowledge has almost destroyed your profession.
TYVM Brook for bringing your point to this conversation. The "opioid crisis" has left TRUE pain sufferers that do not abuse but use responsibly due to excruciating, debilitating chronic, cancer, disease (short term surgical) etc pain to endure incomprehensible agony. Many to the point of suicide. Or.....frequently repeated/ongoing injections, Invasive device implants, surgical interventions - all with extremely high or guaranteed failure rates &/or long term irreversible physical damage (too long to list & rarely if ever discussed).
27 year devoted, compassionate R.N. here with significant work-related injuries, left permanently disabled. 30+ years of witness & research.
Suboxone, Naloxone (also highly addictive)....& more new to the market huge money makers or ineffective &/or dangerous OTC medications are now the sole treatment options. "Natural/Alternative" remedies are always a first & best choice, but not always effective for severe or chronic pain.
It certainly did not require my medical career to understand & witness the devastating addiction/abuse problem plaguing our nation/society. As an unfortunate consequence, true pain patients have been discarded, stigmatized & demoralized.
Fentanyl impact & deaths are lumped into the "crisis". What is being done about this? The truth about anti-anxiety & anti-depressant medications. Addiction & withdrawal are severe implications of these hugely prescribed medications.
Follow the money: Big Pharma, Medical Device manufacturers (continuous/ongoing damage lawsuits), surgeons' surgical & device manufacturer kickbacks, doctor medication kickbacks, injections costs (billions annually) & so much more. Compassion, homework, reasonable & honest solutions please.
thank you 💕 and i’m so sorry about your work-related injuries and disability. just in my tiny circle of acquaintances I know a few nurses who retired early b/c of being hurt on the job (many made worse from surgery; esp knee surgery).
i think a lot of ppl imagine that pain pts “just want to get high,” but you don’t get high from opiates when you’re in pain, and that’s not our goal. it’d be much easier if it were! we’re just trying to get well enough to function at a level where we’re not burden our families.
I take opiates for pain almost every day. Sometimes I can get by a day without them. I don't try to stop all the pain...if you try to do that you develop a tolerance and you have to start taking more.
I was on 40mg of hydrocodone every day...10mg every 4 hours. Then it stopped working. I started taking a dose every 6 hours. Then I found other ways to cut back. I was horribly constipated during that time.
Now I take a cocktail of non opiates along with my hydrocodone. I only take 20 mg per day now. I don't get high from my drugs. If I take too much they make me nauseated and constipated. But I have to see a nurse or a doctor every 30 days to get my prescription written. What a waste.
Spoof skits and comedy videos from decades ago sales conferences in many industries make for hilariously cringeworthy viewing, but only ambulance chasers would take them out of context as signs of criminal conspiracy. Most of the actual crimes committed at the conferences of that era were more in the racial and sexual harassment categories. Pharma salespeople don’t run “studies” but they did engage (with hospitals and doctors) in bribery (er-incentive) schemes. Usually not at the sales conferences (except for the dinners with the invited speakers from the medical community).
Of course this happened with salesforces in lots of industries, and still does, to a degree.
For extra bonus fun, can we get recordings of surgeons and team in operating rooms from 20 years ago? Also entertaining stuff.
Also police, fire, teacher’s lounges, airline cockpits, office cubicles . Once we dispense with humor and context we’ll find lots of criminals.
The “comedy” video revealed what the industry thinks of the customers. Bad motives produce bad results. Enron met the same fate for laughing at freezing grandmas during brownouts. It’s fucking sick behavior.
You should get out more.