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Canada - A patient's story: cut off from medical painkillers

S.J.B.

S.J.B.

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My Year on Death Row
Dawn Rae Downton
National Post
August 23rd, 2018

It started in my feet, which ached constantly whether I wore flats, heels, trainers, or went barefoot. Physiotherapy and orthotics? Useless. Soon the ache climbed my legs, wrecking my knees and seizing up my hips, then my lower back. Eventually I was diagnosed with sacroiliitis, an uncommon inflammatory arthritis that can follow trauma or infection, or, rarely, childbirth. Mine, cause unknown, made one orthopedist say my spine in an x-ray looked like a 90-year-old's. I was 39.

Over the next few years, I made at least quarterly visits to a Halifax pain clinic. I tried acupuncture, meditation, mindfulness, massage and yoga. I tried physical, occupational and cognitive behaviour therapy. I tried injections to block nerves and trigger points, IV lidocaine infusions, anti-inflammatories, anticonvulsants and antidepressants with names straight out of Tolkien -- Elavil, Aventyl. I tried cannabis and even (God help me) group therapy.

My pain screamed back. I couldn't sit, lie down, stand or walk.

"One must have a mind of winter," said Wallace Stevens, as if he'd gone through this, and so I did. I was hopeless, bleak -- until, with opiates the very last resort under pain management protocol, I was trialed on transdermal fentanyl. It worked almost overnight. I was back!

And then, 12 years later, just like that, I wasn't.
Click to expand...

Read the full story here.
 
What a heartbreaking story. Just one of countless others, unfortunately. I am glad, though, to see this given a platform in the National Post.
 
terrifying. i was shaking with fear halfway into that story. What was even more terrifying was the description of how nothing is being done to battle against these restrictions.


My life is being put at risk by these policies. I'm trying to figure out what country i can move to and get a job in that i can be prescribed opiates.

I am absolutely terrified of dying from fentanyl one day one i get cut off and cant find a doctor before my reserves run out, as i have had to resort to heroin so many times because the pharmacy was out.
 
So I am realizing I am not the only one who all of a sudden is being tapered by my doctor for no legitimate reason! LucidSDreamer, are you considering suboxone as I am? I think it will be as potent as transdermal fentanyl based on some .gov study I read.
 
LucidSDreamr said:
My life is being put at risk by these policies. I'm trying to figure out what country i can move to and get a job in that i can be prescribed opiates.

I am absolutely terrified of dying from fentanyl one day one i get cut off and cant find a doctor before my reserves run out, as i have had to resort to heroin so many times because the pharmacy was out.
Click to expand...
Hi LSD,
will you turn to suboxone if your meds are restricted? or back to H? I say sub.
 
Sub is not a great painkiller. I would go with methadone personallly if I was going to use a maintenance med for pain
 
^agreed. It seems like only lower dosages of buprenorphine really work well for pain, and even then it’s probably not going to be as effective as a full agonist like morphine or methadone. Suboxone comes in doses that was way higher than those used for analgesia.
 
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