Drug Seeking
May 28, 09- (by Therapy Doc)
- 9 responses
- Pros and Pro's, Sober Salon
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I’m in the car with FD. He’s driving south on 1, we’re heading for the tide pools, and two of our grandsons are kicking at the front seat.
I get a call from one of my sons, a married son with children who lives on the opposite coast. Basically, if I want to see my grandchildren, I get to get on an airplane and fly an hour or four. I’m still working it out three days later. My back is, that is.
Oh, let’s segue. I’m not complaining, although I do look silly in the galley on the plane, doing the physical therapy the docs will have you do for lower back pain. You can manage this condition without drugs, and FD is very big on that, managing pain without meds, or as few as possible, and the truth is, there’s nothing more empowering than really stretching out that cramped muscle, feeling the relief with no help from pharma.
When there’s no relief and it’s really bad (which has happened once in ten years dealing with this back problem) I’ll have to beg him, seriously beg, when I really need something more than an anti-inflammatory like Advil. Then and only then, when he sees the tears in my eyes will he prescribe something because he knows I generally soldier up with pain, not that I don’t kvetch* a little or a lot. But that’s when people want me to do things that will aggravate the problem, like take long drives on the freeway.
FD is my doctor, though, and he knows when I’ve reached my limit on pain, which is almost never, for martyrdom is in the genetics.
He’s very sensitive to my kvetches in general, the shoemaker’s family does not go barefoot, and worries about every aspect of my well-being, and the well-being of his patients. He’s just not so into complainers who complain for emotional aches and pains, so he refers most of that out. I get about a tenth of those referrals, if that, and only those in my line of work, family-relationship systems.
Being extremely caring, his bedside manner is above reproach according to many, and a little curt towards few, usually those who ignore his advice then call him on his sabbath or holiday or in the middle of the night to kvetch. As a spouse, of course, I get to hear him mumble later about that, but never quite so loudly as when someone has bothered him for drugs.
People actually try to get drugs from doctors and all they really want to do is get high. Can you imagine?
Hypnotics like Ambien,
Narcotics like Vicodan, Dilaudid, Percocet,
There’s a long, list, and their reasons are endless, too.
We’ll be sleeping. The phone rings. FD listens for awhile then says something like,
“Oh, you’re not my patient, but you’re calling because you were referred from the ER. And they wouldn’t prescribe the pain medication you need, but you feel that someone made a huge mistake because. . .”
There will be so much silence that I’ll fall back asleep, only to wake up to hear,
“And your regular doctor is in Africa or you would bother her for a refill. . . I see.”
More silence (we have this gift on both sides of the family, love the pregnant pause).
“And you’re out of . . ., need a refill. No, it’s not a refill. You want a new script. I see. , uh, huh. And that stuff they gave you at the ER just isn’t helping. . . .”
Etc., etc., etc.
“I’ll tell you what I think you should do, seriously. This will really help. Take 24 hours of nothing, absolutely nothing, then take 800 of ibuprofen with food. Your body can handle that. If you don’t need it, of course, the Ibuprofen, don’t take it.
And wait for your regular doctor to get back from Africa.”
I’d tell the rest of the story about the phone call in the car on the freeway to the tide pools, but my grandchildren want me to play CHOMP right now, a card game about the food chain. Shrimp eat plankton, small fish eat shrimp, big fish eat small fish, etc. We’ve changed all the rules and it’s a much better game now. But I’m wondering why anyone would want to do anything that blunts the capacity to do something as simple as play a good game of CHOMP.
Thus the rest of the story will be for another day, maybe on my other blog, maybe here, maybe both. Gimme a couple of days to play with the kids.
therapydoc
*A kvetch, rhymes with retch, is Yiddish for complaint. It can be a verb, obviously.
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[...] As much as I’d love to give you that post on drug-seeking here, I can’t. But it’s over at TheSecondRoad.Org. [...]
Why 800 of ibuprofen with food? What does that do?
Ahh, drug seeking. I deal with this at work in the ER, and then dealt with it at home with my opiate addicted son. He loved him some Klonopin, while the ER folk seem to go with Vicodin & Percocet. I feel for your husband..amazing how many people accidently flush their Vicodin down the toilet at 3:00am or need a Percocet refill immediately in the middle of the night. We hear the same ridiculous stories over and over, but the sad thing is people really think they are coming up with such original ones.
Can’t wait for Part 2.
Yeah, it’s soooo funny too, when you’re in the ER in the middle of the night with a kidney stone, and the doctor is all like: Weren’t you just in here last week, which you weren’t, and they make you wait and wait for the scan while you writhe in pain and act all SUPRISED when you have a 4mm stone in your ureter…oops, we thought you were drugseeking!
So funny!
Part Two really, Lou, you write it. You wrote it. But okay, there will be more.
DIARY, I’ve heard the primary care doc that shares where I sleep diagnose and treat kidney stones many, many times, and other acute illnesses, for there are thousands, that’s in the middle of the night, during daylight hours, on vacation, during holidays, in the middle of his own personal crises, for going on 34 years. He does this by asking the right questions, and getting the right answers, and he insists on the right answers because he’s a good primary care physician and he cares and doesn’t suspect everyone of drug seeking, rather he suspects drug seekers of drug seeking. And I wrote the post, made the joke, not him, just saying.
NIRO Z Truth is, he may not say this, perhaps doesn’t in this case, I’m sleeping most of the time. But if someone rear ends a new patient, he does seem to recommend that people do that immediately, and it sure works for that.
For everyone’s benefit, I’m not here to give medical advice. The posts I write about FD are to make some kind of social or psychological, relational point. In any and all medical situations, consult a physician, don’t take advice on the internet.
Thank-you for sharing an aspect of a doctor’s life that we don’t think about. I guess when you have an addiction to drugs that you don’t care who you bother or what time it is or whose career you put on the line. It is a shame for that one person who might be in true need.
Right, you could say the bad apples spoil it for the rest of us, but I think a good physician knows who wants to get high and who wants to get well.
Honestly, I think big pharma is somewhat at fault for the drug seeking. They created drugs that they know/knew cause a high (when improperly taken) and profit from it - both the prescriptions AND the illegal street dealing (since they obviously manufacture the pills that are sold on the street). I honestly feel that Big Pharma should be forced to contribute to the policing and rehab costs of addiction.
And, as a pain patient, I now know that there is research showing that it is really important to treat ACUTE pain to prevent it from possibly morphing into chronic pain. So, being treated as a drug seeker can lead to long term medical problems. Although, in my case, I was just stoic and didn’t ask for a pain reliever until it was too late and now, my pain is always with me (although, it is also a sign that I am alive and a survivor - I was in an MVA)