I'm all for western medicine. I'll never be one of those vitamin popping, herb ingesting, mantra chanting natural health people. If there's medicine for it, I want it. If it has pleasant side effects like sleeping or goofiness, I want a lot of it. Oh relax! I'm not likely to be cooking up drugs in my bath tub...unless it removes that soap scum issue on the sides of the tub. I just think that if someone is going to go through all the trouble and lab rats to test out medications that will help mankind with it's ills, that I will be one of the happy chemical cesspools that will take those medications. Look, you aren't likely to find me on a poster with meth mouth...you are likely to find me on a poster that says "Take Vicodin!" with a happy grin on my face, holding a pill bottle and glass of water. If you hurt...I think you shouldn't. It's that simple. Everyone, people, animals and anything else that doesn't feel good...deserves to feel better.
As an RN, I've always been fairly easy with regard to pain medication orders. If it's time for you to have them and you are hurting, then I'll be happy to dance on out to the medication cabinet and get you a dose. Especially because the side effect is that you'll feel better and go to sleep so that I can do something fascinating at the nurses station, like say, my charting. It's even better if I can get you an order for patient controlled analgesia so that you can give yourself your own damn medication and I don't have to really do much of anything but make sure you're still breathing and occasionally will answer one of my endless series of nurse questions like "Did you poop today?"
Pain medication is dangerous but necessary stuff. Working in a busy neurosurgery office, I saw many many patients with debilitating back pain. They needed pain medication and I happily wrote scripts out that were cosigned by the doctors and faxed them to various drug stores to keep people happy and functional while dealing with a very painful issue. You can't stay on it forever, but it can help you out during an acute period of pain. What I couldn't tolerate were the people who abused the medication. Here's a common example:
"Hello could I speak to the nurse?"
"This is the nurse, how can I help you"
"Well, my back hurts really bad and I can't get out of bed and nothing works but this pill that a friend gave me and I wondered if I could get a prescription of my own since it works so well."
"What did you take...by the way don't take your friend's medications. I can see if Dr. will write it for you."
"THC."
"(moment of dead air) you mean Marinol? That's medical grade marijuana in a pill"
"Yeah. So?"
"YOU'RE NOT GETTING MARINOL"
"Ok. BYE."
Honestly. You wouldn't believe the number of people who come lurching into a clinic saying they can barely move and the next day at the Farmer's Market you see them in spike heels carrying a watermelon on their head juggling tomatoes. These are the people who see health care providers as a buffet of pill possibilities. Fentanyl...a strong pain reliever...even comes in a lolly pop. For Pete's sake.
With my recent migraine issues, I've had the opportunity to try a smattering of pain pills myself. It's sort of like a wine tasting. Lortab...not bad. Norco...good too. Toradol...eh..not so much. A little IV Dilauded in the hospital...HOLY CRAP. How about some Nubain? HEY.....that's nice and floaty with a little bit of a warm buzz! I'll take a case and have it shipped right to my house!
Fortunately, the migraines have abated somewhat and I can rely on my old standby, acetaminophen (although my primary MD informed me I'm ruining my liver with it...I said it was trashed anyway). It's not as much fun, but it does the trick for those tension headaches and aches and pains. Cheap and not addictive isn't bad either. But for those really special occasions...it's nice to have a bottle of the good stuff aging on the shelf. Gotta go....late for my Vicodin poster shoot.
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