-C Jung

I’ve been dealing with these headaches and migraines for 23 years now, but I’ve only just started to finally really feel at home in this broken down body. I don’t know exactly why things clicked the way they did, but it feels as though another, perhaps final, piece shifted into place, and a more well-rounded acceptance finally happened.

Acceptance isn’t really an event, it’s a process. I’ve made significant progress over the last several years in accepting this illness and it can be a very difficult thing to do. We’re taught all our lives to push past our limits and better ourselves, and that when something is ‘wrong’ you need to fix it. When you accept you can’t fix what’s ‘wrong’ with you, it can feel like you’re giving up. Nobody wants to feel that way, and many of us fight that path. I stopped fighting it and I’m so glad I did. But still, there was something missing.

I think the latest piece of the puzzle was this last bit of uncertainty that was left, hovering over me making me wonder what was going to become of me. I don’t know for sure if I will ever be able to get back to work, full or part-time. It kept me in this perpetual state of what felt like limbo. Limbo is a very unproductive place. A conversation with my doctor last month finally revealed that no, she does not know if I will ever be able to go back to work. That was the first time that kind of finality about the situation has been approached, much less said out-loud.

All of a sudden I felt like I was relieved of chasing the incredibly elusive someday when things would get back to normal, or at least much better, and I would get back to work. Even though the current state of my health made that day seem eons away, it felt like I was always waiting for it. Limbo. When she told me she didn’t know if I would ever get back to work I thought I’d feel depressed. Instead I felt free!

It doesn’t feel freeing that I cannot work. It’s freeing that if it turns out I cannot go back to work in the future, it no longer feels like a catastrophe. I feel quite fortunate that the last few years have shown me that I can take care of myself. I’ll be alright and I know I’ll find a way to make my life fulfilling if I can’t work.

“This body will constantly betray me” sums up how I used to look at my illnesses and what they were doing to my life. Another migraine was always lurking, ready to pounce and wrestle the day from me. Depression was always just biding its time until my neurotransmitters crapped out again. What I didn’t see was that this body, this psyche, also always carried me through safely to the other side every single time. In the last few years I’ve discovered I have more courage than I ever thought possible.

I don’t feel like a victim anymore. I don’t “suffer from” anything these days. I deal with a couple of illnesses and I’m getting better at it as time goes on.

The ratio of drug abuse stories to health(y) news was so unbalanced the other day that I remarked to friends that I might just write about that instead of a “real” subject, but that is the real subject, isn’t it really? When I really think about it, it isn’t only the DEA coming down hard on the Doctors that’s causing them to refuse to treat patients’ chronic pain needs–it’s also what these Doctors themselves perceive, and if they also read all of these stories about rx drug abuse, well, the math tells me they get suspicious. Add that suspicion to the sorts of things they are taught and is it really any wonder that the emergency room is a migraineur’s worst nightmare? (and the Doctors think they dislike us.)

Sadly after contemplating all of that, I came across several fellow patients this weekend with horrible ER stories void of pain relief and full of feelings of being treated like drug-seekers even though they are not.

It’s not just patients who are treated as nefarious criminals these days though.

Treating Doctors as Drug Dealers

The Drug Enforcement Administration’s War On Prescription Painkillers

This is an excellent piece I found just as I was about to go to bed on Saturday night. This piece is about 30 pages long, and looks at why things have become so ridiculous with the DEA and pain meds. It delves into everything from why there aren’t more pain specialists to begin with, to just how the DEA’s focus from “the war on drugs” morphed into the war against legitimate pain medication (and subsequently against chronic pain patients and doctors).

In 1999, the DEA came under heavy criticism from Congress on the grounds that no “measurable proof” existed to show that it had reduced the country’s illegal drug supply [...] The DEA now needed to find a new front for the war on drugs on which it could produce tangible, measurable results.

The Controlled Substances Act empowered the DEA to regulate all pharmaceutical drugs. [...] In 2001, the DEA had already announced a major new antidrug campaign, the OxyContin Action Plan

This is apparently after much prompting from the Justice Department, with claims that the prescription drug ‘problem’ in the United States was equal to that of Cocaine. The OxyContin propaganda campaign that followed was incredibly successful as you’ll see in the piece. The author points out that theft is actually a major source of diversion of opioids, and not patients, yet the DEA and even the makers of OxyContin dispute this and continue to insist that Doctors and patients are the main source of diversion of these drugs and so, the investigations continue.

The DEA has also set up a hotline to report doctors whom patients suspect of over-prescribing, an odd move that further complicates the doctor-patient relationship

I never really considered the informant angle before, but now the paranoia and reluctance of some Doctors makes far more sense. It’s hard to believe things have gotten this bad. Please do take the time to read this piece. It’s long, but well worth it if pain impacts your life or the life of someone you love. And if you disagree with what’s happening, please write to your representatives.