TLT
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Reged: 10/21/02
Posts: 358
Loc: loc. usa
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An interesting article I ran across, discusses the length patients will go to, in order to obtain the drug.
Terri
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/oxycontinER010820.html
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"RUDENESS IS THE WEAK MANS IMITATION OF STRENGTH"
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Sky_Queen
Fly Girl
Reged: 12/03/02
Posts: 1962
Loc: Texas
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Very interesting article, thanks for posting Terri! Pretty sad actually.
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toky20
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 03/17/02
Posts: 1347
Loc: Windy Place
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The first sentence says it all....
Quote:
...sometimes even endangering those doctors, and ultimately even keeping legitimate patients from getting it.
But this sentence has me baffled:
Quote:
In just six years on the market, OxyContin has become the No.1 selling brand-name prescription painkiller
It's not prescribed to anyone I know personally! So where is it being prescribed so much, so often? I will gladly pack up shop and relocate. I'd eat nails if I thought it would help me live a more productive and higher quality life!
Thanks, Terri!
Toky
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toe
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 10/09/02
Posts: 1422
Loc: MidWest USA
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Perhaps this number one spot is due to the quantities it's prescribed in?
I know a few people who are or have been prescribed OC. All of them are addicted to it or any other form of "high-tolerence opiate" they can get their hands on. Only one of them is a true chronic pain patient (a friend's father who broke his neck in a car accident years ago and has had multiple surgeries and rebreaks since). The rest are folks who have somehow gotten themselves into pain clinics. All of them have abused or do abuse it. All of them divert it. (The friend's father would occasionally give shavings or pieces of his pills to his adult children when they were suffering severe pain, until 2 of them became addicted to it and started stealing his medication).
So in my admittedly unscientific survey. I would say that 1/4 of those with prescriptions ore either those with cancer or those who have been in long-term pain management so long that nothing else really works, and the other 3/4 are those who have delibarately managed to get into a pain clinic with backaches, ovarian cysts, and tendonitis.
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"It's the end of the World as We Know it. . ."
-REM "and I'm seeking asylum in Canada"-toe
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TLT
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Reged: 10/21/02
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Toky I totally agree with you As many trips that I have made to the ER, I have never been given a script for oxy, I ususally get sent home with Motrin 800 I have gotten vicodin a couple of times but then they only give 8 tablets until I can get into see my Dr.
I have been fortunate enough to find a PM Dr, I don't have to go to Er anymore.
Terri
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"RUDENESS IS THE WEAK MANS IMITATION OF STRENGTH"
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IMSUSCOT1
Threadhead
Reged: 10/23/02
Posts: 868
Loc: usa
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Not sure where you meet people and what kind of people you hang with, but lot's of people take oxy who aren't addicted and don't divert or abuse it. I've been on the same dose of oxycontin for 2 years, I do take break through meds, but I've taken 20 mgs q 12 hrs for the past 2 years, and have never asked to increase it, although I'm sure my PM doc would if I asked....Frankly, I've never been able to figure out what the all the fuss is about...I don't feel ANYTHING when I take it, except relief...I mean it doesn't make me high like wine or MJ or even soma would...it doesn't even make me sleepy..it doesn't feel like anything, so I don't get it, maybe I don't take enough....But I don't get your point ..you're point is everyone taking oxycontin is addicted and abusing it? That's sad
Edited by IMSUSCOT1 (05/15/03 09:00 PM)
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IMSUSCOT1
Threadhead
Reged: 10/23/02
Posts: 868
Loc: usa
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One wouldn't expect to get Oxy at the ER...oxycontin is indicated for the management of chronic pain...the ER manages acute conditions...so they really aren't the entity that should be prescribing oxycontin (I couldn't get the link to the article...so not sure what it says) Oxycontin is most apporpriately prescribed by PM docs, or even PCP's but the ER, that would definately raise red flags
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toe
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Reged: 10/09/02
Posts: 1422
Loc: MidWest USA
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I suppose I come from that "undesirable" sector. After my post above, someone mentioned they knew many OC prescribed patients who were legit, albeit older.
I'll tell you the straight sotry. My best friends' father broke his neck in the late 80's, lotso surgeries, rebreaks, constaint pain since than.One night his daughter (with blood-curdling ovarian cysts stops by and he give her a piece of one of his 80mg, perhaps a half, telling he not to take all at once. She took ~13mg oxycodone and was telling me about the experience, how she had been sick all night, was just gonna give the rest back to her father.
Now, I have never lied, stolen, suggested, or in any other way tried to obtain prescription for these drugs. Hydro doesn't do me much, oycodone on a short term will work, and that's how I take them. But when I NEED then, I CAN'T get them from a doctor, save one extremely benevolent ER Doc who realized my migraine had gone too long on too a dose of perc and, after 10mg orally produced no results, sent me home with a shot of demerol and a script for 10 percocets.
When I was sent out of the ER after pulling amuscle in my back it was after 1 on a Firday night. They gave me nothing before I left, just a script for 8 hydro5 and a list of all-night pharmacies. I was supposed to follow up with my doctor. Taken as prescribed, that equalled 16 hours meds until I got get a doctor's visit. I went in the next morning, the x-rayed my back, and shuttled me off with an order for bed rest and a script for methobarbomal, but not before yelling at me for not lying in my cot all the hours I waited for nobody to come and talk to me. They also fairly berated me for going out on a run the night before. when I had an hour and a half to kill between the present and the time I'd be meeting my friend. I only saw too good options for killing time: take a run, or bulimia.
So that was it. I couldn't even so much as call my student clinic till Monday morning and god knows when I could get my appt. I failed to connect with a USOP the previous Friday evening, and I just wasn't going to make it. I couldn't fcccc*king move. My GF drove me to the house of a guy who know sells 2/3 of his pain scripts each month to buy crack and he gave me a demerol. Saved, for that evening at least. The next night, another friend rides up to see what else he can get his hands on for 20 bucks. Another dilaudid (and, ridiculously, a duragesic) But it kept me going until I got my doctors visit and my OP package in the mail.
I don't know where I'm going with this. You can see that I'm acquainted with some pretty shady characters. You can see the holes I have to jump through to get even acute severe pain treated.
But are the shady acquaintances the docs or the dealers?
The one that yelled at me for having a healhty lifestyle and left me to find my pain meds elsewhere, or the one that gave them to me?
Which of them demanded more loops in those first days when it hurts bad I walked like an ole Russian osteperotic peasant?
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"It's the end of the World as We Know it. . ."
-REM "and I'm seeking asylum in Canada"-toe
Edited by Melody (06/11/03 09:53 AM)
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IMSUSCOT1
Threadhead
Reged: 10/23/02
Posts: 868
Loc: usa
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Toe, it sucks you can't get the med that works for you...and I think the oversensationalization of oxy abuse has done much to make docs afraid to write scripts for it....I personally have to fly from a large metropolitan city in the southwest, (population well over 1million) to a small city 400 miles away, because there are no PM docs here who will prescribe Oxy or any other narcotic for long term use. And I guess, if you're really have chronic pain it wouldn't make much sense to abuse it, because you would run out of it before your next script was due and then what would you do? I remember what my life was like before oxy and let me tell you, I am a different person today. I didn't work for 8 months prior to getting this PM doc and my doc here wanted me to apply for SSI disability...I now work 40-70 hours a week, hike, clean house, jet ski, in other words, I am normal....but I have to fly 400 miles, every four months to be normal, so it's a trade off, it's worth every penny though!
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