Dude you need to find a better pain management doctor, it's as simple as that. A doctor that specializes in pain management and addiction. I found a doctor, he worked with me to find a non-narcotic combination that worked (buprenorphine, ultram, lyrica, injections). He was very clear that, before he went to narcotics, we'd try every combination of everything available to try and treat the pain. I guess the difference is that my pain is documented, something you need to do. You need to suck it up and deal with the pain until you and your doctor figure out what's wrong, something I had to do for a long time before I could get treated.
One option is to tell your bupe doc that it's not holding you anymore and to increase the dose, for me Subutex has been a godsend and helps so much with pain (although I'm on a very low dose now). At the very least, you can increase your bupe dose which should help a hell of a lot with your pain.
this is james' sister and i would first like to thank everyone who seems to care about him and is wishing him luck, but i have to say that i am disgusted at what some of you are saying. he told me that he had explained in detail what he has gone through, and i would imagine that would have made it clear to some of you, like the man who posted this quote, that james has done everything possible to get better. and when i read about you telling him to suck it up, it just makes me want to say things to you that i wouldnt say to my worst enemy but he told me to act civil when i posted for him so i am going to respect that.but you saying that makes me sick to my stomach.
i want to make something cllear to everyone. he is dying. there is no doubt about that. he hadnt eaten or slept for weeks until last night when i gave him some oxycotin that i got from a nurse friend of mine. i would have never done that but given the circumstances i know i made the right choice. as soon as the drugs hit his system he completely knocked out and slept hard. he is still asleep actually. so its been 24 hours now that he has been asleep. i guess the pain was the only thing keping him from sleeping and as soon as some of it was relieved, his body just couldnt stay awake. he looks like a ghost and doesnt even have a personality anymore. he has now lost 25 pounds i think it is and looks like he just came out of a concentration camp.
so please, dont tell him to suck it up because thats what he has been doing for almost a month now while going to several hospitals and doctors, and specialists, and chiropractors.....and they all refused to help him. actually, i apologize, its a bit more complicated then that.
The last hospital he went to, he had taken a bunch of kolonopin before so he could even stand up and get in the car to get there. he was reffered to that hospital by one of his regular doctors after being turned down by several other hospitals, and this regular doctor said that this hospital was sure to help him and believe him. well, when he got there the kolonopin started to stop working but he was able to get a cat scan in before he was unable to lie down or move anymore. im not sure if you are aware of this but when he doesnt have drugs in his system, he is basically immobile and cant even lift a glass. me and my mother have stopped working temporarily so we can act as his home nurses beause he literally cant do anything for himself. he cant even put his clothes on or take them off, he cant eat without vomiting in horrific pain, he cant lie down without hurting his sides and legs, and he cant sit up without experiencing horrible pain in his legs. he pees and poops by us pushing him over on his side which makes him cry in pain, and then he goes into a bucket we put there. but this has only happened a couple of times because he was only able to drink about a quarter of a smoothie we made for him once and then about a half of another one another time, so there isnt much to shit out. he cries every few hours after he has built up the energy to do it again. in between the crying he just lies there, too exhausted to speak or move. sometimes he will groan and its sad but thats how we can tell he is still alive sometimes.
anyway, after the cat scans and 9 vials of blood taken from him, the pain had come back in full force and he was hunched in his bed, rocking back and forth very quickly, screaming and crying. atleast they had gotten the tests done allready we thought. the doctor told us it was a problem with his intestines and basically part of his lower intestine had rolled over itself like pulling a sock inside out, and it can cause the worst pain he said. he also said its extremely rare in people other than elderly or infants, but since he had an impaction earlier it made more sense.
well, they refused to help with his pain, even though they had a diagnosis. the nurse literally told us that they thought he was faking most the pain to get opiates to get high because they thought he was still a drug addict. we couldnt believe it.
the doctor said they would perform surgery tommorow. so we went home because we have many animals to attend to and james was only screaming and crying and didnt want us to watch him like that all night. he told us that he was screaming at the top of his lungs for 4 hours all the way until 4 am and constantly pressing the nurse button on the bed and they kept telling him a nurse would come to help him over the intercom but they never came for 4 hrs.
They finally came, but not to help him, they came with a security guard to yell at him and tell him to shut up and that he was disturbing other patients. He told us that between the crying and screams he told them that he couldnt help it because the pain was too intense but they still didnt believe him and called him a stupid junky and took him out of that room, and moved him into a room in the corner by himself, unplugged the power to the buttons to call for a nurse or help, and shut the door, leaving him there crying like a baby, rocking himself back and forth. He couldnt even adjust the bed angle because they had unplugged everything. im not sure but he told us he thought that was illegal.
that is when he called my mom and screaming and crying on the phone he begged for her to come and take him away from that horrible place. of course we all rushed over immediately. and if you can believe it, they wouldnt tell us what room he had been moved to. luckily he had typed it into his phone as they rolled him in. he told us later that he had a feeling of being surrounded by people that he couldnt trust at that point so thats why he did that even though he was in horrible pain. he called us and told us what room he was in and we went there and tried to get him some help. we asked why he wasnt being gien painkillers to help with the pain and they told us because he wasnt really in pain and that he wqas putting on an act. i dont know why they thought this because he had lost so much weight and looked like death and could barely breath or talk and his heart was so weak. we just couldnt understand why he was being refused treatment.
Anywa, sometime in the middle of the night a surgeon looked at his cat scan and said that the diagnosis was wrong and it must be something else. so we were back to square one but he was now in unbelievable pain and no painkilliers to help him. they also took him cold turkey off of all his regular medicaltions as soon as he went in, which included the kolonpin. he told me this could have caused a seizure, i dont know why but he knows more about this stuff than me.
so they needed to do another cat scan they said but after he drank this 32 oz liquid that would light up on the screen or something. and james wanted to do it and we did to so we could finally figure this out but he was in way to much pain to lie down or sit still. he was half sitting half standing and frozen solid, rocking back and forth crying, and then being silent, but all the time in horrible pain. they also wouldnt allow him to eat or drink anything. not even water. even though he hadnt eaten or drank in weeks. allthough he couldnt keep anything down anyway, but im sure some painkillers could have changed that.
so they yelled at him and told him to stop faking it and stop crying and screaming and that he was a junky and they told him to do the cat scan but he said he couldnt even move or lie down or sit still. he said the pain was worse than death. he kept asking us to kill him, and when he was too tired to cry, he would whisper ways of killing himself. it made my mother cry and she yelled at him to shut up. that is the pain he was dealing with. and he is not weak or cant handle pain, he has broken dozens of bones during a 16 year soccer career and never cried once. but this was something different altogether.
the doctors told him that he was refusing treatment and wrote that in there charts. he yelled and cried at them saying that he wasnt refusing treatment, it just was impossible to do the cat scan in the pain he was in. they of course didnt believe him and kept saying he was refusing treatment and kept calling more and more security guards to stand in and out of the room. i dont know why. maybe because he was screaming so much. maybe because they were worried he would go junky crazy on them. i really dont care, they just stood there. they of course woudnt give him pain meds to help his pain just a little so that he could do the scan. my parents begged the doctors to do this but they kept calling him a junky. they kept using that word. junky. junky. junky. i wanted to slap all of thos idiot doctors for saying that and treating my brother like that.
then they said they would call a pain management specialist to the hospital to see if he would advise giving him pain meds so they could run the tests. james was screaming that he wanted to leave at this point. he had had it with the entire staff of the hospital and the way he had been treated. it had put so much more stress on his allready frail body and heart, we were all worried he would have a heart attack. he didnt want to wait for this doctor because they couldnt tell us when he would show up. he was a very busy man they said, they didnt know when he would be there.
9 hrs later, im sure it felt like a lifetime for james, the doctor showed up. and james told me that he allready told you about how that doctor treated him. calling him a junky and refusing to help him. he then bit off his IV and then ripped it out of his arm an bled all over the place and limped out of the hospital. my parents and i were all weeping.
so dont ever fucking tell me or my brother to suck it up. he is the strongest person i know and i cant imagine lasting this long in that much pain. especially since he could have easily gone to the streets to get painkillers this entire time. he was trying to do it the right way, but instead, he was treated like scum. we had gone to so many hospitals, doctors, specialists, we didnt know what to do anymore. my brother is dying and we cant do anyhting. we cant go back to the hospitals because he left against doctors orders. and the earliest doctor he could find that could get him in was 3 and a half weeks away. i am almost positive he will not make it that long. that is when i decided to get him the oxycotin. just seeing him sleep made my mother cry and cry and cry. she was so happy because her son had been awake for weeks, screaming in pain, and that was the first moment she had seen her son in a peacefull state.
we are going to wake him up soon as we are worried about how sleeping that long could effect his spine and back. we are also going to try to feed him. because if we can get food and water down his throat, even little by llitte, he has a much bigger chance of surviving.
he has told us that he cant do it anymore and wants to die and that when he dies he wants us to sue the hospital and doctors and get alot of money. but this makes my mom so angry and cry so he has stopped saying and he now pretends like he has some hope in front of her, but he tells me he doesnt have any hope in anything anymore except his love for his family. he says he doesnt even care anymore. im sry but im getting too emotional to write anymore about this. i have been crying for a while now and cant type like this.
i hope that some of you people who are trying to give james advice about sucking it up or just find a better doctor, learn something from this because that is one of the reasons i typed all of this. the other reason being that he had asked me too. and i swear to god that if my brother dies i dont want to feel guilty for not doing his last wish. and it digusts me to people telling him that there are such simple answers to his problems. no there arent. he has tried everyhting. he has gone to over a dozen doctors. he has gone to almost all the hospitls in our city, he has dealt with the worst pain of his life for almost a month, he has not slept or eaten in a month, he has not had one peacefull moment, he is dying, and no one will help us.
we are desperate, and we do not know what to do.
he cant keep living like this without help.
please, people, just hope that my brother gets better, and he wanted me to tell you to make sure that you do your best to not let this kind of shit and injustice happen where you live. nowhere in the world should a family have to watch there son die because he use to do drugs and because of that, he is not worth giving painkillers that could save his life.
