Should Johns Hopkins be Policing the Nanny State?
/By Terri Lewis, Guest Columnist
I was copied a response to the recently issued document, "The Prescription Opioid Epidemic: An Evidence-Based Approach" published by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The 46-page document is full of pronouncements about what the proper course of action should be to rein in the abuse of opioids by people who experience unrelenting chronic pain on a daily basis. The document is replete with terms like addict, addiction, surveillance, monitoring, intervention, adherence, and conformance distributed across seven topical areas, all claiming to address the current evidence for the need to ramp up the nanny state:
#1: Prescribing Guidelines
#2: Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs
#3: Pharmacy Benefit Managers and Pharmacies
#4: Engineering Strategies
#5: Overdose Education and Naloxone Distribution
#6: Addiction Treatment
#7: Community-Based Prevention
Nowhere, does this document even remotely address the fact that the onset of chronic pain is often an iatrogenic event that occurs as the result of medical harm or insufficiently delivered medical care.
Nowhere, does this document address the financial and practical impact of these pronouncements on the ability of persons who have lost everything to illness to conform to protocols that turn healthcare delivery into a policing activity.
Everywhere, these protocols engender the further victimization, the institutionalization of marginalization, and stigmatization of the chronically ill as unworthy, incapable of protecting themselves, and potentially harmful to themselves and others because of the characteristics of their illness imposed disabilities.
Every dollar that is proposed for expenditure in this document should be going to research designed to prevent and minimize the impact of chronic pain -- not punish it. But this document, from a major public health training institution, completely fails to address the prevention and reduction of chronic pain as a public health issue of significant importance, and is focused instead on counting adherence, conformance and compliance activities that will (a) not lead to improved personal outcomes for consumers who live with chronic pain and (b) rob consumers of precious resources with which to live.
These pronouncements reflect an ignorance of astounding proportion in understanding who persons with chronic pain actually are and the conditions under which they are forced to live. Who does this document serve? Who are we trying to protect?
I am outraged.
And then this. Into my email came a response to this smug, sanctimonious document from a woman in California who suffers from interstitial cystitis -- acquired through medications she received after treatment for shoulder and spinal injuries at the hands of her medical provider. It's too good not to share:
To the misguided folk at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:
This is my contribution to your little Town Hall hand-wringing session.
So, I guess you are jumping on the anti-opiate frenzy bandwagon. Just another organization that feels compelled to point at anyone who takes opiates, and call us all "addicts" and not even considering those of us who suffer from severe CHRONIC PAIN (the kind That Never Ends) due to circumstances totally beyond our control. My pain is not caused by any flaw in my character. People like myself who see our doctors religiously and always take our medication responsibly. What, are you being financially rewarded by punishing us? What did we ever do to you? Or are you just trying to Thin the Herd? I guess Chronic Pain Patients' Lives DON'T Matter.
I'm talking to you. I'm one of those people, who suffer from illnesses and or injuries that have already stolen our quality of life away from us, and pain that causes as much, and sometimes more, pain than cancer. People who suffer from pain that only opiate prescription medication can dull. And people like you, whom I will never meet, want to take that away from me. A patient who has NEVER EVER ABUSED HER MEDICATION. Not ONCE. I am a 60 year old lady who worked her entire adult life and never once did anything to invite nor cause the condition that causes me terrible TERRIBLE pain.
My pain saga started with chronic tears to both my rotator cuffs, and a herniated cervical spine. All from a desk job involving typing and mousing and staring at a computer monitor for years and years and years. This activity has destroyed the tendons in both my shoulders and neck and herniated my spine. And while that pain was bad enough, I figured it would eventually end. I never envisioned that the pain would remain after my shoulders were carved up and stitched back together. It was during my recovery from this surgery, that I began to experience the horrors of an incurable illness known as Interstitial Cystitis.
On bad days it feels like someone is taking a blowtorch to my genitalia. In fact, Interstitial Cystitis is considered the Third Worst Pain in all of medicine. Imagine, if you will, the sensation of hot lava being blasted through your bladder, vagina, colon and pelvic parts. All the time. Having the urge to urinate every 15 minutes -- or more often than that -- on bad days. I am basically chained to a toilet. And because the pain is ALWAYS much worse at night, I suffer from severe insomnia. It is impossible to fall asleep or stay asleep with pain this bad. My urologist opined that I would be better off if I suffered from Bladder Cancer, because there is at least a chance of recovery from that illness.
The only FDA authorized treatment for this condition is Elmiron, and it doesn't work on every patient. In fact, it only works on maybe 25% of patients who suffer from this horrible condition. It did nothing to help me with any of my symptoms but cause my hair to fall out and raise my liver enzymes to a dangerous level. That's all our modern medical machine could do for me medically. They sure as hell cannot cure this illness yet. The only thing that medicine CAN offer is pain relief. The only chance in hell I have of ever having a life without this horrible, searing, burning, aching, stabbing pain is if The Good Lord decides to send me into remission. All a doctor can really do for me to help me is provide me with pain relief.
The only medication I take that takes the edge off of this pain is Norco. I tried the Fentanyl patch, but it caused me to develop an intestinal blockage. For obvious reasons, I had to discontinue that medication. And while I intensely dislike taking ANY medication, I dislike the awful pain worse. I have NEVER abused my medication. I never take more than I am prescribed. I do everything and anything that is asked of me, whether it involves blood tests and/or pissing into a cup.
So why am I going to be punished? Answer me that question. I just found out that my pain medication is going to be cut drastically OR terminated at my next visit to my pain doctor, which is this Friday. It is not being taken away because I have ever abused my medication, or lied, or deceived, or stolen, or sold it. I can only assume that my pain doctor is just too afraid of the DEA and the paperwork headache. It will be easier for him to just dump me as a patient, and limit his practice to injections which make him more money anyway. Well, guess what? Injections have never done a thing to help my pain, and I have had quite a few. I have had TENS units, Physical Therapy, Massage and Ultrasound. I have tried just about everything that exists to reduce the horrendous pain I experience 24/7. The only medicine with the fewest side effects that helps reduce pain is Norco.
We are a vulnerable part of the population who are being deprived of compassionate and adequate care to help us live our lives with a semblance of normalcy. We are being punished for the irresponsible actions of people who would be addicted whether or not it was via opioids or anything else. All of this noise is just that: NOISE. Mark my words: all this brouhaha will not make one iota of difference in the epidemic you speak of. People who are addicts will always find a way to get high. That is what addicts do. However, what your actions WILL do is cause an increase in suicides of people suffering from terrible TERRIBLE pain, who can no longer get medication that enables them to have something resembling a quality of life, and be semi-productive citizens.
Yes. The pain of illnesses like mine can and does drive good people to commit suicide if they can't get pain relief. Or maybe these same people turn to other drugs they would never EVER consider if they received the compassionate care we are all entitled to. That is what you will see start to happen. I am sure that some of this surge in heroin use is by people who are in such terrible pain that they are desperate, and their doctors will not help them because of fear of the DEA and organizations like yours. And then what will happen? More "meetings" and "studies" and "head-scratching" about the spike in suicides? How can you be so obtuse?
No one is speaking up about us. No one is helping us. Chronic pain patients are being marginalized and treated like addicts, when we are not. We can barely function because pain robs us of the ability to function, and we are already exhausted from this daily fight. I guess we are easy targets. Few of us possess the strength to march on numbers in Washington or anywhere else. I know I couldn't. I am so ill that I can barely leave my house.
I know what happens to me when I don't take my pain medication: I experience much more severe pain. I don't drool, or hallucinate, or stumble, or vomit, or shiver, or do anything but just cry buckets and buckets of tears, and huddle in a corner of my bed in the fetal position with bags of ice stuffed into my underwear to try and numb the horrible, searing pain of this illness. And I guarantee that if any of you people making these horribly unjust decisions suffered from the condition I suffer from, that you would be begging for drugs to take the pain away. I'm willing to stake what few dollars I still possess on that fact, because guess what? This illness has also rendered me destitute and incapable of working at my job. I can't even sit in a chair very long because of the pain.
So, in summary, what you are doing is KILLING US. You, and 60 Minutes, and the CDC and the DEA and every other soulless agency that is carping about this. If I weren't so sick from this horrible illness, and what it has done to my life, I would be laughing because of the incredible stupidity being displayed by a bunch of suits I will never meet. Dumping every single person who takes opiates into a category you call "addiction" and shoving us off in the same leaky boat. Yes. You are killing us.
Name withheld to protect her privacy
For the record, this person also found out last week that her beloved husband of 20 years is in the throes of stage 4 kidney failure as a result of 5 years of treatment from a physician for arthritis -- resulting in an unidentified drug-drug interaction that has, unbeknownst to the physician, destroyed his patient's kidneys because he failed to monitor his patient or pay attention to known drug-drug interactions.
So who needs to be monitoring and surveilling here? Who? Does the public really need protection from persons with chronic pain who can barely leave their homes? Or do persons in pain need protection from the public purveyors of unsound, impractical, and misguided policies?
God spare us from the nanny state.
Terri Lewis, PhD, is a specialist in Rehabilitation practice and teaches in the field of Allied Health. She is the daughter and mother of persons who have lived with chronic pain.
This column was reprinted with permission from the author.
The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.
