Day: 06/18/2015

The VA and opioids

Found in my search terms:  will the va ever give out hydrocodones again?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but it looks like the Veteran’s Administration is moving away from treating chronic pain with prescription medications.  Just like the medical industry, the VA thinks that treating chronic pain is about treating drug addiction, not pain. They are working with groups like Project ECHO, which I’ve come to believe is a program about drug abuse and addiction masquerading as pain clinics.  For more information, you can look under my category entitled “Veterans.”

https://painkills2.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/military-transformation-of-pain-management-2013/

Political profiteers push Ohio’s pot vote

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/06/18/17469/political-profiteers-push-ohios-pot-vote

But the political consultant isn’t just gathering the signatures. He came up with the idea for the measure. And he recruited a lawyer to draft a constitutional amendment that would put Ohio’s future marijuana market in the hands of only 10 growers — an arrangement that critics are calling a monopoly. Meanwhile, he plans to pay his own firm nearly $6 million to run the campaign.

Though James is an extreme example, he’s a member of a much larger and little-known class of professionals that form what could be called Ballot Measure Inc.: a powerful electoral-industrial complex funded by moneyed interests that belies the quaint notion of “citizen democracy” that such efforts are assumed to represent…

James’ initiative has drawn considerable heat. The measure would root the 10 marijuana growth sites to particular land parcels, which happen to be controlled by the mysterious companies funding the initiative. They would function as Ohio’s only wholesale suppliers of marijuana, selling to separate retail shops and nonprofit medical dispensaries…

Around the state, at least four other sections of land were reserved in the same way — to LLCs that paid for the exclusive right to buy the land by the end of the year or early into 2016. All 10 land parcels will be written into the state constitution should Responsible Ohio get its way.

The Responsible Ohio campaign has trumpeted some of the investors, including minor celebrities such as Nick Lachey, former 98 Degrees boy-bander and ex-husband of singer Jessica Simpson; fashion designer Nanette Lepore; and Arizona Cardinals defensive end Frostee Rucker. Others — such as Chicago investor Ben Kovler and Dayton pain specialist Dr. Suresh Gupta — can only be found after digging through documents…

http://www.vitals.com/doctors/Dr_Suresh_Gupta/reviews

by Kellie Praydis on May 1st, 2015
This doctor kept me strung out on narcotics for over a year milking the VA for payments. When he finally gave me radio frequency shot, my pain was gone for over a 18 months. He insisted that I continue to see him every month. After the radio frequency shot wore off and I needed another treatment, he gave me a “stick” test, which is required by law for anyone receiving narcotics. His “stick” test came back postive for PCP, LSD, Methamphetamine and Marijuana. When I protested that this was crazy, “I’ve never taken these drugs”, he threatened to call the police. I immediately went to the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center ER and had my urine tested by a lab. Of course, it came back negative for anything except for what I was legally and medically prescribed. I later found out he simply didn’t want to treat me because the VA wasn’t paying him enough.

Mar 19th, 2014
This “doctor” treated me for pain from a shoulder injury. On one occasion he gave me an injection in my upper back and nicked one of my arteries. I could feel the blood streaming down my back. I am very lucky that I did not have a stroke or suffer possible paralysis. He does have roaming hands when examining female patients in the experience of this female patient. He gave me such high doses of pain medication that my handwriting deteriorated and I had serious problems driving my car. He upset me so much on the last occasion I had an appointment with him that I came home and vomited in my kitchen sink. Avoid at all costs. Just doing without treatment would be safer for you than getting treatment from this charlatan.

Jul 3rd, 2012
I waited in the lobby for over 2 hours and when i was finally brought back to see this “doctor” i waited for another hour in the office. I am on pain meds and am required to give random urine samples, after one of these samples he accused me of using heroin. I have never used any drugs other than what he gave me. He also continuously rubs his nurses shoulders and backs while he talks to his patients. He has been tried and unfortunately acquitted for gross sexual imposition.

My First Butterfly

“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”  Nathaniel Hawthorne

“A cockroach likely has no less brainpower than a butterfly, but we’re quicker to deny it consciousness because it’s a species we dislike.”  Jeffrey Kluger

http://www.naba.org/qanda.html

There are approximately 20,000 species of butterflies in the world…  An adult butterfly probably has an average life-span of approximately one month…  Most adult butterflies drink nectar from flowers through their tongues, which function much like straws…

(Photo taken 6/3/2015.)

IV Lidocaine: Injecting Pain Medication Directly into Your Bloodstream

http://weartearandcare.com/2015/06/04/iv-lidocaine-injecting-pain-medication-directly-into-your-bloodstream/

Friday was a trip to the pain management clinic, which — per usual — was wholeheartedly depressing. I find that I feel even worse whenever I come out of those appointments because I realize how useless they are. Pain management clinics, that is. Massachusetts as a whole is now attempting to curb prescription drug addiction. That’s great. That’s dandy. But now my clinic’s stance is that they will not prescribe opioid pain medication to anyone except for cancer patients. We’re talking even something like Tylenol 3, which my pediatrician used to prescribe to me after the First Accident. Patients who’ve (responsibly) used Percocet or Vicodin for years are now finding themselves wanting and in withdrawal. Actual pain patients are being treated as addicts.

So I get my nerve medication and antidepressants, but then the big gaping black hole they don’t cover is alive and writhing and screaming in my head all day, every day. When I asked how to handle that hole, the nurse practitioner, oblivious to the fact that she has never experienced a decade’s worth of pain, actually had the gall to say, “You have to learn to live with the new you.” …

The drug was injected over the span of about twenty minutes. The doctor kept asking me questions, waiting for side effects to kick in — which happened almost immediately. I swooned back into the pillow on the hospital bed, wagging my tongue around; it’d gone numb. My face was tingling. My eyes slid around in their sockets like pool balls…

They kept asking me what my pain was on the normal one-to-ten scale. I started at about a six; I slurred my way to a one, which I haven’t experienced in more than ten years, and then ended at about a three. I was crying. The pain was almost gone. The pain was almost gone.

But not for long, naturally. Barely an hour after the procedure, once Husband had poured me into the car and then chauffeured me home, the base of my head was alight. My spine was crackling with fire. My hands and feet were jolting. What I think happened was that once they stopped injecting the medication, my body went from zero to sixty. No pain to all the pain…

The worst part is that this pain clinic said if the IV lidocaine doesn’t work, they would attempt an infusion of lidocaine mixed with ketamine. If that doesn’t work… shrug…

Under comments:

Lori
June 9, 2015
Oh-I have a comment on the use of ketamine for chronic pain. If its the “coma” therapy (well, not exactly a coma, but patients call it that. They put you out for a couple hrs w/ketamine, then wake you up. It is used in Europe. Not a permanent solution, but DOES help…