I have Lyrica. I did not get it from my GP. Linda talked to him, he wasn’t ready to prescribe anything but if I wrote him a paper, including a list of all the pain I felt, he ‘might’ be able to talk to the pain specialist, sometime next week or the week after.. When Linda told me this over the phone this afternoon, I was in so much pain I didn’t know whether to scream or cry. I did a bit of both.
I called the hospital and asked them what should I do, was ER the place for me? They said that if I was in that much pain, then I NEEDED to be treated. No disagreement here. She gave me a number for the head RN. I called and she listened to me and we talked and she told me to go to a walk-in clinic, that some were open until 9:00 pm tonight, that she could tell over the phone I needed pain control NOW. And no, I didn't sound like a junkie but a common condition, needing pain control while waiting for a pain specialist. She said the walk-in clinics just want to move you in and out, make some money.
The walk in clinic nearest to me was open until 8:00 and Linda had just arrived home so I told her we should go now, before my nap. I looked like crap. I wheeled in, the pain so bad I forgot the postcards I assembled to bring with me, that level of pain where connecting thought A to thought B just never happens. They put me in a room and the receptionist talked to me. First, she just couldn’t BELIEVE I was in my thirties, and kept saying, “No way!” (considering I was pasty and my arms were different colors I think that was a compliment). Then as her boyfriend was in school to be a neurosurgeon, she wanted to know about my condition but kept saying, “That’s crazy” or “Totally crazy.” About my various conditions (or that my arm was turning green due to the heat). It was obvious she didn’t know this was a terminal condition and was going how it was, “like totally tragic” that I was in a wheelchair.
The Doctor kept going by but never came in, he literally saw every other person who came in after us before he came in. He just kept staring at me and then walking on. Okay yes, in a wheelchair, face totally white pasty in pain, one arm with reynauds to the shoulder, the other purple. I guess he figured I wasn’t a 10 minute case. When he came he said we had 3 minutes to tell him my condition and why we were there. He ignored me after it became clear my speech was slower because of problems remaining from my stroke. He kept trying to put down that I had MS. He had never heard of MSA or autonomic failure, but he had heard of Lyrica. He prescribed me enough for a month and we were OUT OF THERE. That means that I can go back to my GP and say (hopefully), “We have been using this and it works!” (this is how we did it with the heart medication) and we get a lecture about how that isn’t the way it is supposed to work but then he renews the prescription. It turns out this is like the Pro version of Gabipentin (sic) which I tried but gave me heart and BP problems as a side effect. This drug is next generation, better and has less side effects.
The nurse was right, I had the script and so off I went. I put in the prescription and then off to bed, and then up an hour later, not fully rested but to get Linda ready to post the mail tomorrow; 17 postcards and 12 or so ‘surprises.’ Also the receipts of things I am expecting and hoping are in the Post office box.
I take my first Lyrica pill tomorrow morning in case I have insomnia (rare side effect), which tonight would put me in a seizure quick, but if I can’t sleep tomorrow afternoon for the first time in 18 months, I will figure out what to do then, and can survive that. But I hope that in 2-3 days I will have significantly less pain. I can double the dosage after three days. What was strange is that the pharmacist and everyone else, I think even the doctor, just LOOKING at me didn't see a problem with me on morphine or other more, effective opiates. But my GP treats me like this whole anemia, autoimmune disease, peripheral neuropathy and the rest is some excessively tricky way for me to scam him into giving me hard drugs. It makes me feel like a criminal every time I take a pain pill. So thanks to a RN who actually gives a damn and a phone operator at the hospital who gave a damn, they showed me to the back door to getting Lyrica.
I hope in a few days my blogs will be about the good parts of my life, the funny parts. Because this doesn’t seem very funny to me right now.
I was literally insane, planning to take a hammer to my GP’s visit (he said that if I came to an appointment next week and explained it to him myself he ‘might’ think about my pain control). He burned a lot of trust bridges. I needed him, bad. He ran and hid. I don’t forget that. If he was concerned, as he was the last visit, to call and have an emergency visit and drag me down to his office because he felt ‘threatened’ because as he said, I was intellectual and can be abrasive. So, my GP feels the girl is just too intelligent and demands accountability? Maybe there is someone on his board of directors who would like to ask him (instead of the female patient), why he isn’t meeting the FIRST mandate of the non-profit society, Cool Aid of Victoria: The purposes of the Society are: a) To respect the innate value and autonomy of the individuals we serve and to provide for their essential needs.
Actually anytime a male doctor (or any doctor) calls in someone who is sick and ill and he knows that and HASN’T treated them but wants to tell them that they better not THEATEN him with their INTELLEGENCE any time soon... Well, let me tell you doctor what I told the last person who tried that threat: “You had better hit me and hope I am unconscious so you can rape me. Because if you plan me to scale back my brain so you can feel more a man, then you need to find another planet or line of work, you arrogant, sack of insecurity. And isn’t rape what men like you do, when you can’t shut women like me up. So either make your move, or shut it and accept that I MAY be the bigger brain in the room.”
If someone in the Hague is reading this and has an empty slot on human experimentation, and crimes against humanity for a trial; I can testify of one doctor who treated me in a way it is illegal to treat a dog in this province.
Postscript: This post was written after 16 continuing hours of pain. Pain which stopped me from sleeping, and pain which made me unable to open doors or turn on lights. After a week of pain. And after I had to spend from 4:30-7:30 pm, fighting and going to a walk-in because my GP had called to say he 'might' give me some pain control IF I wrote what he wanted and IF I came when he wanted....four days later. So no, I suppose the end of this post wasn't very rational, except in the way people who are under pain and a form of dictatorship keep themselves going, stop themselves from being broken. Or let me put it this way, imagine being in labour with a baby for a WEEK then have the doctor look at his watch and tell you he might be able to get back to you to deliver that baby in four day and think about how you might feel about that doctor in the next several hours, knowing it is just YOU and the PAIN.
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