Florida Pain Victims Trapped by Prescription Crackdown: Health

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-16/florida-pain-victims-trapped-by-prescription-crackdown-health.html

Meredith Diaz’s battle against chronic pain has fallen foul of America’s new war on drugs.

The 35-year-old mother of three from Florida suffers with lupus, an inflammatory disease that causes bone loss and joint problems. She has a ruined knee that will soon need replacing, and herniated discs in her back. Until last year, Diaz, a nurse living on disability benefits, had no trouble getting the painkillers and anti-anxiety medicines -- OxyContin, roxycodone and Xanax -- her doctors regularly prescribe.

That’s now changed after regulators clamped down on Florida’s lax prescription controls to halt an epidemic of painkiller abuse that kills more people nationwide than heroin and cocaine combined. Drug distributors and pharmacies hemmed in by new regulations are limiting the pain medicines they keep on hand and who gets them, making Diaz and hundreds of other patients like her collateral damage.

“Regulation is fine, but truly making the pharmacists not able to get the medication can’t be the answer,” Diaz, who lives near Tampa, said in a phone interview. “There shouldn’t be this apprehension about how I’m going to get my medicine.”

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Patients in incredible pain react differently to opiates than average drug users.

The opiates don't make them addicts. The drugs are so strong that they act as the only analgesic that will work on the punishing pain.

Sixty Minutes once did a segment about dying cancer patients in London. Their pain prevented them from a minute of relief in their 24 hour days. No comfortable position, no sleep. They were given pure morphine and they were allowed to live their last days pain-free. Their smiles were that of surprised relief.

[mucifer]

2. yeah that's what I see as a pediatric hospice nurse

I have administered crazy high doses of pain meds. The doses are increased slowly under doctors orders and it's not the narcotics that kill the kids it's the cancer. They need the medicine. It helps.

I get very nervous with some news stories that discuss the high amounts of narcotic overdoses but don't mention that some people at end of life NEED these meds. They can just add one sentence to the end of the story and I'd be happy. The problem with the media is that we hospice nurses have a harder time educating patients and families regarding the importance of narcotics for some at end of life.