Is chronic kidney disease painless?

This “expert” thinks so:

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PainManagement/PainManagement/62462?isalert=1&uun=g875301d5423R7051790u&xid=NL_breakingnews_2017-01-11

How Much Are Docs Responsible for Patients’ Opioid Abuse?
F. Perry Wilson, MD, looks at the data on how patients get hooked

I’m a nephrologist. I specialize in chronic kidney disease – a completely painless condition. But there has been a coordinated and I think well-intentioned campaign to increase physicians’ awareness of patient pain. Some have argued that the adoption of pain as the “fifth vital sign” has led to an increased rate of opioid prescription, addiction, and overdose…

The major unknown here is the rate of transition from licit to illicit opioid use. And that data is harder to find than, well, street fentanyl nowadays. We also need to know the reason for that initial opioid prescription. It is a very different thing to receive oxycodone after you have your wisdom teeth removed and to receive it for chronic low back pain, and the risk of transition to opioid use disorder is much higher in the latter…

Do you suffer from back pain? The opioid war has now labeled you a faker and potential drug addict.

If you complain of back pain to a doctor, expect your pain to be disregarded and dismissed. After all, back pain can’t be a symptom of a more serious condition (like kidney disease), right? If your doctor isn’t concerned about your back pain, why should you worry about it? I’m sure you’ll be just fine.

Dear George Clooney

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/george-clooney-asks-trump-the-one-thing-on-everyones-mind_us_5874fd57e4b02b5f858b21f2

My comment:

Johnna Stahl · Albuquerque, New Mexico
Dear George Clooney: You’ve been described as a compassionate humanitarian with a heart of gold, but it’s also been reported that you suffer from intractable pain. Surely you must know about the opioid war and the millions of pain patients who are being criminalized because of it. Won’t you please do something to help? Be like Meryl Streep. Use your celebrity status to stand up for those who are unable, and too afraid, to stand up for themselves.

“When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”

Wed, Jan 11, 2017 8:48 am
To: george@georgeclooney.com, slashever@caa.com, blourd@caa.com
From: painkills2@aol.com
Re: Dear George Clooney

You’ve been described as a compassionate humanitarian with a heart of gold, but it’s also been reported that you suffer from intractable pain. Surely you must know about the opioid war and the millions of pain patients who are being criminalized because of it. Won’t you please do something to help? Be like Meryl Streep. Use your celebrity status to stand up for those who are unable, and too afraid, to stand up for themselves.

“When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”

Johnna Stahl
Albuquerque, New Mexico
http://www.painkills2.wordpress.com

“Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” Jeff Sessions

The Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions has labeled me as a bad person. And yet, during his confirmation hearing, Senator Lindsey Graham asked him how he felt about being “labeled”:

Graham:  “Being accused of being a conservative… People have tried to label you as a racist or a bigot… How does that make you feel?”

Sessions:  “Well, it does not feel good.”

No, Mr. Sessions, it does not feel good. You’ve judged me without even meeting me, which means I can do the same to you.

And you, Mr. Sessions, are a dickhead.

What do you have against cannabis, Mr. Sessions? Do you feel the same about alcohol and cigarettes? Like, good people don’t drink alcohol? Is there some reason for your illogical position on marijuana?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-10/trump-deportation-plan-to-hand-windfall-to-a-dying-u-s-industry

In the hardscrabble desert hamlet of Milan, New Mexico, incarceration is the biggest game in town. Not far from Interstate 40, among fragrant sage and creosote bushes, stands a sprawling outpost of CoreCivic Inc., one of America’s biggest for-profit prison companies. The 1,200-bed facility, formerly a lockup for car thieves and drug dealers, is being transformed into a detention center for immigrants fleeing Mexico and Central America. It will be opening just as Donald Trump becomes president…

Since the Republican was elected, CoreCivic stock has jumped 78 percent. Rival private-prison company Geo Group Inc., is up 53 percent…

Stricter laws, tougher enforcement, more incarceration, longer sentences: for private prisons, that’s a path to profit. In Trump and his choice for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions, the prison industry now has important boosters in Washington…

With marijuana legalization and Congress’s easing of drug sentencing causing the first prison-population decline in three decades, it looked as if the government’s experiment of outsourcing the incarceration business was drawing to an end…

As the drug war fades, private-prison companies have shifted to the immigrant-detention business…

As part of his “100-Day Plan To Make America Great Again,” Trump said he would work with Congress to build a southern border wall and establish two- and five-year mandatory minimum prison sentences for illegal re-entry into the U.S.

A five-year minimum for the offense would expand the federal prison population by 65,000 prisoners, which would require the government to build more than 20 prisons, according to a 2015 American Bar Association letter to Congress…