Well yes, but if he has suddenly or will suddenly be forced, with a seizure history already known to be vulnerable to such, to drop that much clonazepam cold turkey, he's going to need to retain the capacity to seek help, at least. I wasn't suggesting he just continue self medicating, but to obtain enough that if he DOES have no other choice but to abstain utterly, and suffer horribly at best, grand mal seizure and even death at worst, whilst suffering horribly, or to self medicate and taper, if the hospital fucks him over as an inpatient (I've had it happen to me, they KNOW I was dependent on high dose morphine and oxy for my chronic pain but refused anythign more than 10mg oral morphine when I'm taking 20 times that minimum a day of morphine, IM/SC and 80mg oxy minimum a day, prescribed, require chlormethiazole for seizure prophylaxis and response, and have a benzo script for 10mg nitrazepam a day, take 2 different adrenergic autoreceptor agonists, withold them ALL from me, bar 10mg oral morphine twice a day and one paltry little zopiclone tab a night, despite showing them the script refill slips and them having my med notes, yet when I LEAVE the hospital, after a week of living hell, going in for an injury, in one case an absolutely agonizing one, a base-burn to an eyeball which would absolutely justify heavy-duty analgesia of the opioid kind, the only analgesia I got in the ER even, was, for the most part by the paramedics in the ambulance, who let me on the entonox, and one kind doctor, after hearing my shitty fucking plight, that the rest of the docs in the ER were consigning me to, brought me a full tank of nitrous to my bedside and left it there for me.
the rest of the nurses, doctors, the lot, withheld the rx meds I am already ON, that I need to BE on, and have been on for years, with legitimate prescriptions for them, and then when i left the hospital (and this has happened more times in hospital than it has not happened, most times in fact, 90% I'd say its what they've done) and then once I am discharged, or discharge myself because I ended up in so much fucking misery that I'd have better outcome with my GP after the initial trauma being attended, but discharged, with, after asking for (it being a friday, and impossible to get a GP appt before the monday to come, asked for a few days med coverage, and then they shoved a big fucking bag of 2 dispensary-size full bottles of chlormethiazole caps in my hands, a big bottle of liquid oxycodone, a variety of 10, 30 and 100mg morphine XR capsules, some capsule IR oxy, some XR oxy, and all the rest of everything I take, more than willingly. Almost so readily, and so over the quantity I'd have needed, or asked for that it felt like it was done in the hope of stopping me suing them for malpractice! ) and without any warnings as to safety. Given me my usual dose of morphine, plus another..I think it was about 400-500mg morphine more than my regular dose, twice or three times daily enough for a couple of weeks to three weeks, when I asked for my regular meds for three days, god only knows how much more oxy, I didn't even try to work it out, and as for the chlormethiazole, christ, gave me enough of the stuff to level a horse with it alone. Hospitals can be really, majorly irresponsible fuckwit-infested nidula of cretins; same lot, some fucker asked me 'are you allergic to any antibiotics', me 'yes, beta-lactams, likely anaphylaxis' doctor then starts up an iv drip of some IIRC amoxicillin, one of the penicillins anyway, straight away after being told of the allergy. And repeatedly warned that I was allergic. Only bothering to tell me what was in the drip because I specifically asked him. And when told it'd likely kill me, he ignored me and walked off, saying he'd be back to check on me in 10 minutes.
In the meantime, I had to fix the situation myself, and he came back to see that I'd severed the IV line with my knife and the IV bag was pooling over the floor. If I hadn't, or if I had not known about the nature of the meds, and had not asked and indeed when polite asking was ignored, demanding to know what was in the IV bag, I'd probably be dead by now. And then realizing that yes, it was indeed life and death serious, and that no, I was not going to take any shit from him whatsoever, I'd question him and make sure I got answers, he then, after being informed I'd had a lot to drink (about 70cl-1l of southern comfort rye spirit a couple of hours before) then tried to start me on a metronidazole drip. Said 'oh, you'll be fine don't worry about it'
I ended up having, whilst in a shitty, shitty situation, to lecture the guy on liver enzymes and alcohol metabolism, gritting my teeth with pain and pretty much snarling in fury at his utter stupidity and unfitness to practice medicine on so much as a flatworm. I haven't much tolerance for fools at the best of times, and in a situation like that, my inclination to put up with a moron of that nature when the stakes are so high is so little as to be unmeasurable. Whilst I didn't threaten to stab him with the same knife I used on the IV line, from the look on his face and the way he stayed there and listened to the furious bollocking he was then given, I think the look on my face alone said that I seriously wanted to grab him and fillet him on the spot, then reassure him 'oh you'll be fine, I'll tell somebody you are bleeding out of both carotid arteries and have a severed spine and your tongue ripped from your face in about ten minutes, you don't need a blood transfusion, you'll be ok..''
It shouldn't happen, but regrettably, such abject neglect and incompetence can and does happen. Its not the first time I've had a dr (different one) this time a GP, ask me about antibiotic allergies, be told of them, and less than 30s later, prescribe me a beta-lactam. And again, had to be told what to use. Thankfully she at least, was sufficiently neuronally functional to amend the script and give me the erythromycin I needed to take rather than co-amoxiclav and look shame-faced afterwards.
The hospital 'doctor' if it hadn't been for the fact I could barely move my lower body at the time, is lucky that I DIDN'T spring up and go freddy kreuger on his face. He certainly did leave looking pretty pale-faced and shaken, even so after the public dressing-down I had to give him, twice. And once I'd finished, he left in a hurry and never came back. The next dr was far more respectful and made a point of avoiding such moronic mistakes.
