I am tired of winter! They seem to get longer every year? They seem to be colder every year too! I am Northern California, San Francisco born, raised from there on up to mid Oregon, Coastal hills Southern Oregon, and been stuck in Salt Lake City, Utah, high desert country for the better 1/2 of my adult life. I want to go home where it's warmer. I love the snow, but it is getting harder to deal with in age and with chronic pain,. I see why everyone was moving south when I was younger and they were getting to be my age now. I thought, why would you want to be where it gets so hot? Ha! Now I get it!

The chronic pain will be 10 years this August. Wow, a freeking decade and I am no closer to better pain management or less pain, I have no life activity right now to speak of, quality of life is in the garbage can. I can't seem to wrap my mind and certainly can't wrap my heart around the way the great U.S.of A. is treating us. They killed one of the only supporters we had in the so called war on drugs. Her name was Siobhan. She was an angel here for our cause.

I am now down to 1/2 the dose, which was almost the correct dose, from a year ago. The doc I have been seeing only wants to do his specialty with procedures of needles in the spine and invasive dangerous, risk to me crap. So he's now got me in enough pain I will either go away to find real help, or allow him to do his *$!@ procedures and risk my spine being worse.

They say they are So afraid I will go to sleep and not wake up because of the meds and dose it takes to have any relief or activity. He is really only wanting the $1000.00's of dollars for the procedures, rather than just an office visit for meds, and not such a risk for him. He isn't treating me. He is treating the system in place. I don't know why we don't all have someone push us in our wheel chairs to our respective State Capitols and sit there until they get the DEA out of medicine so the docs can do their work. I was waking up every day on the dose over a year ago, and I'm waking up now. I have been waking up for 10 years of days now.

This doc tried to blame my central nervous system's, over sensitivity symptoms, to a hyperalgesia / allodynia symptom caused by long term high dose of opiates. It is a real problem and my symptoms look like it. So..... I trust this guy and allow him to supposedly take me off this one med assuming he will replace it if needed along the way. I go thru over a year of lowering meds and rising pain levels/rising pain intensity to hear him say at my last appt he will leave me where I am at on 1/2 the dose, with a look on his face of contentment. I asked a few appts ago about another med I l know works for me and he said I wouldn't like it because the patch would irritate my skin.????? He is not taking me off the med which is supposedly causing this other intensifying central nervous system problem. My daughter even asked him about it at the appt and he shrugged that one off too with a comment, "oh,you remember that?"

Even my counselor says this one is a quack. I hope he reads this.
I am not sure if I hate him for crumbling under the pressure from without to not hold loyal to his oath as a doc, or the system in place which is unrealistic and ineffective (that's being very nice with my words) or the Chronic pain, worse. I hate the pain the worst, that's a no-brainer. But, I am so disappointed in how people, even in the medical community, don't get what suffering in physical pain constantly really means. I get so caught up in the victim stance, because I am a victim in this experience, and it is difficult to stay in any healthy frame of mind and spirit about it.

Like walking aimlessly through a maze with no outlet. Only I am about crawling desperately looking for the answer to how to get outta here, where ever 'here' is.

I can't believe I am writing the same thing I was writing when I first found this Daily Strength community 5 plus years ago. I was clueless then to the attitudes of, "your just a drug addict" back then. I didn't know that docs would save their own bum before they would treat you with respect and dignity. They will lie if they must. I didn't know about the sales on the street of pain meds, I didn't know about any of the DEA crap going on in the country's "War On Drugs," I was ignorant of the whole story.

Now I know, I completely understand each sides experience and reasoning for their positions, I don't presume to have answers to their problems. I do however know there is a way to solve all the problems with THE TRUTH and for some reason, the Truth for a chronic, severe pain patient, PERSON, human being, is suffering, is real, and is not being addressed. It is being swept under the huge rug and we cannot see each other from the other side of the room because the pile under the rug is too big and in the way.

Then there is the person who has had the perfect outcome with their surgery and their doc and they are healed and active and they presume we who are having a different experience are, "Just not doing " this or that, or your attitude is unhealthy, or something to make this happen but it's not as bad as you say it is, and the doc would never do this or that."

So now I am a liar and a drug addict and my pain is not real or as bad as I say and I need to pull myself up from the boot straps and get real!! Friends disappear, family members have all the answers and treat us badly, the community we live in is unresponsive and not accountable for anything, the docs have no real responsibility to us any more and the law can and will throw us in prison for the dose we need to take???

I don't want to write these real truths anymore, and really don't want to live them any longer.

I want to be heard. I want to be trusted and be able to trust. I want the best possible quality of life (which means; the least amount of intensity of pain level for the longest period of conscious hours in each of my days so I can have activity without severe suffering.)
I feel more like a lab rat than a human being in this system of dehumanizing people and rules and regulations before sane thinking and procedural practice.

I do not want to spend the few minutes of tolerable pain level ( not pain gone, but tolerable pain) I had today writing this reality to you.

I want to type all the words of spiritual growth I had last night and the simple abundance, living my life like a prayer everyday, how awesome my grand kids are and how nice it was to see the blue sky and sunshine today rather than the 4 day snow storm and cold wintery week it was.

And I will write these things in other posts, and I will share support with those who need help and give uplifting promise and hope to others who come here looking for it, because that is what we do best here on Daily Strength. We support and lift each other up in a way no one else can or will. But this moment I am so angry I cannot change this very real truth many of us are continuing to experience.

It is cold outside and it is cold looking for real help with chronic pain issues. I want spring to come with all the hope of an awesome, plentiful harvest to come in a season or two. A harvest of real answers to real problems of real pain and suffering that need not be happening. My prayers, my moments of conscious living each day are a prayer to be better tomorrow, a little progress toward better quality of daily living experience for those chronic pain patients who must live everyday with this pain. Not terminal patients, who somehow have the right to have their pain diminished because they will be out of it soon and to leave the chronic pain sufferer to have to live with it....???? This thinking is insane.

Sorry for the rant. It's been building all winter along with my pain levels. Last night and this morning were real bad. Might as well have been sawing my spine in half with a hacksaw or huge knife. It becomes so intense with no relief insight and it will be 10 years of this daily experience this summer. A decade of my mid-life gone to useless suffering in intense severe pain.. Not the legacy I was preparing to leave.
Looking for a way out of the maze. Hope I didn't offend anyone with my reality or my opinions. If I did I apologize, and please let me know. I am open to anyone's opinion.

Love Light Truth & Service,
"Stubborn"
TerrieAnn
ralop