To People
With Serious Chronic & Debilitating Pain
I must be a very bad person. It seems clear from the reactions I receive
from professional people who should know that I deserve to be treated like
an undesirable. After all I am frequently forced to ask for help. I desperately
need understanding, compassion, attention, support, strong narcotic medications
but my biggest crime of all is that I need to be believed and that is a great deal to
ask for.
It would appear that I am a very bad person because I have the audacity
to suffer from Chronic Pain, not the more acceptable and certainly more
respectable Acute Pain because that is a hell of a lot easier to handle and
results are usually fairly quick to come. That makes the healer look very good.
People with Chronic Pain on the other hand are all liars, they must be, because
they never get better, they just keep getting worse and constantly need more of
everything just to get through another day.
Nah, these CP people are merely
seeking the euphoria and the buzz that can only be found in the evil world of
narcotic medications. Who wouldn't trade a pain free life for a good buzz. The
simple fact that a very large percentage of people who suffer from Chronic Pain
are almost daily on the edge of suicide is not important. A happy and fulfilling life
without pain is not too much to give up for the privilege of paying staggering prices
for pain pills is a fair trade. It must be because so many have done it.
These misguided people who in many cases have lost the ability to make a living
because they can't work anymore and are usually left with no income but a disability
pension, who have become social outcasts because they can't join with others in a very
long list of activities, who have watched the walls of their world close in on their lives
until there is little enjoyment and quality of life left for them, certainly these people
must be punished. My God! People with Chronic Pain can't even support their families
anymore, these are terrible people and they deserve to be treated with contempt and believe
me, they are.
They are constantly looked at with suspect by their Doctors who make very good money
sending them for one test after another to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that they do
in fact have constant, severe and debilitating pain. Doctors who really give a damn can be
found but they represent a very small segment of their numbers. Most doctors when faced
with a Chronic Pain patient will at best pass the buck to another or at worst just get rid of
them. Amazing how easy it is to close a file. People with Chronic Pain are looked at by
pharmacists, who spend thousands of dollars advertising the limitless scope of their caring
and compassionate service, as just another drug seeker at best a social undesirable.
The
Pharmaceutical community however has the best way to punish these Chronic Pain degenerates,
that has even more impact than the hours they spend waiting to see a doctor in dull waiting rooms.
The fact that these pain filled people are in a daily living hell doesn't even enter the picture. On
the contrary they present a very profitable resource to the friendly people behind the drug
counters of the world.
Indeed, your caring pharmacist doesn't even bat an eye at charging more than six hundred
dollars for 120 narcotic pain pills. After all that many pills will last for a whole month and
we must remember, people with Chronic Pain are all liars and they truly do deserve to be
punished. They don't really need these pills they just want a buzz. At 600 bucks a go, the
Chronic Pain person is not getting a hell of a lot of buzz for their buck. If motor cycle gangs
charged that much for a handful of pain pills, they would go to jail. Something wrong with that
picture. You can be sure that no pharmacist will ever lose any sleep over a person with Chronic
Pain.
The media take on Chronic Pain is to do at best a sadly incomplete representation of the
true and desperate need of people robbed of the joy of life in this manner. It makes a far better
story to give the impression that anyone who takes narcotics is a scourge on society. The fact
that millions of people with a critical need for help to enjoy even a minimal quality of life are
shot down in the same audio, visual or printed barrage against the slimy side of society is not
worth the effort to research stories that could show the incredible difference between the two
drug using segments of society.
For the government, it makes far more sense to design and build a new weapon or create some
useless task force to look into some political embarrassment and fix it rather than to put any funds
into or make any effort to consider the desperate need of such an obvious segment of society. The fact
that if they did make laws to protect the Doctors and tell them it is ok, even commendable to provide
adequate medications regardless of strength or amount to allow some person with Chronic Pain to
dare to hope for a truly managed pain level, is not important.
The fact that if something was done to make this disgraceful picture of human pain better, millions
upon millions of dollars would be saved in the use of medical services and resources, is totally
inconsequential.
No, I have really begun to believe that I am a very bad person. I have Chronic Pain so I must be.
If I sound somewhat pissed off at this point in life it is because I am mad as hell at being punished
for the fact that I spend my days in pain so bad that it makes another day, a sentence rather than
something to cherish and look forward to.
Chronic Pain destroys quality of life, the ability to make a living family relationships and so much more.
A person with Chronic Pain has to endure it so does anyone in any way involved with that person.
I can think of no other situation that is more destructive to a persons sense of self worth.
It is time that the people who we as Chronic Pain sufferers need to give us the respect and the help that
we deserve, get off their collective, pain free asses and do something about this problem. It only takes a
split second, some mishap or even some understandable physical deterioration to make you a member of our
Chronic Pain Club. God forbid that should happen but if it does would you really want to be seen as a bad
person because I can assure you, unless something is done, you will be.
As for those of us who are already Charter Members of the Chronic Pain Club, it is time that we stopped
apologizing for having a pain that never goes away, we are not bad people we simply have pain and want
as much and whatever help is available.
If people in the medical, the pharmaceutical or in our government departments can not or will not care
enough to give us simple human compassion then perhaps pain should be made illegal and anyone who has
Chronic rather than healable acute pain should simply be marked for termination. Many of us would consider it a favor.
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