Dont wait for the doctor to diagnose you!

For the past 3 years, my wife has been in constant chronic pain. Her first serious spike in pain came from a history of gradually growing chronic pain that averaged about a 3 to 5 unmedicated. Occasional medium level pain meds were necessary to use after strenuous activity.

To our surprise, her pain level shot out of sight after a female related ablation procedure at a local women's clinic. Three days after the incident, she woke up in such severe pain in her lower back that we rushed her to the hospital. After being stabilized with no life-threat concerns by the ER team, she struggled with pain throughout the next day and following day. Her ER medication wore off quickly and as soon as it did, we were on our way back to ER in the next nearest city-partlt out of embarassment but more due to desperation! History repeated itself five times until her pain management doctor agreed to send her across the state to the premier University Medical Center where she was to be evaluated by the top neurosurgeon at the Hospital.

Having already taken a full battery of spinal xrays and cat scans that revealed a large gall stone, this surgeon walked into the exam room and without asking a question, rebuked my wife with agitation and hostility with the question, "Why are you wasting our resources?" My wife, my mother-in-law and I were so dumbfounded by the question that we stared at each other with glazed eyes. Obviously, this so called "expert" had no idea what my life partner was suffering from, yet with the conviction of a retreating army general, he defied our realtiy and called the world "flat" while at the same time condemning my wife for what he could not see in an x-ray, CT printout, or her history of bizzare symptoms that had failed to match his small world of brain and spinal specialization.

This foolish "hero" blundered on...he referred her to the lower regions of the hospital where she would be permitted to get a final assessment from the "Pain Management Department" related to her "fibromyalgia." The pain doctors who tested and treated her there, evanglized her with Lyrica and Cymbolta recommendations, assuring her that once she began these medications, the narcotics would likely be replaced and go away. She was also "bonused" with a referral to the Rhumetoid Division of the hospital where another round of blood tests would be taken to confirm the cause of her severe pain and arthitic back, leg, arm and hand immobility.

After her visit to that department, it was clear that her severe pain was not being taken seriously. Fortunately, her practicing RN back home was willing to keep her on enough medication to prevent her from falling backwards into the abyss of despair and uncertainty regarding her present and future torture requirements, since the state we lived in was not willing to support the levels of pain she suffered through no fault of her own.

After making the final rounds through the medical delivery politics and insurance network that had a monopoly in our rural part of the state, we decided to accept a traveling sales position that would lead us to green money and greener medical pastures in a bleak economy and an unjust medical delivery culture. That decision paid off on the pain management side for a while. Two doctors in southern California and one in Nevada cared enough about my wife's day to day quality of life, that they prescribed the medication needed to stay at or below a 5 pain level most of the time.

18 months later, we returned to our native state to help our parents and to reduce our living costs for a season. But, hell's bells, if we didn't find ourselves pinned in again! This time with the uncaring detached face of pain managemen policy that was more concerned about managing a state pain policy limiting the amount of narcotics that on can be provided to one suffering unbearable pain for the last 3 years! To be continued...tomorrow.