Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Because someone suffering in severe pain is FAR less important

than "Someone somewhere might misuse this stuff!"
To sum up, thus far, I had to drive across town in rush hour traffic to receive my precious permission slip because, due to federal regulations, doctors cannot simply call in a prescription for narcotics. The first nine pharmacies I went to were out of the drug because they may only receive X amount of narcotics at any given time.

Due to federal regulations, the soonest they could have the drug delivered to them would be three to four business days. And, due to yet more regulations, they cannot disclose over the phone whether or not they have any of the narcotics in stock, so a patient must go, in person, prescription in hand, to the pharmacy to find out if the prescription can even be filled. Once they filled it, in order for me to receive the medicine, I had to present a valid, state-issued photo ID.
I think I mentioned once being in an ER due to a metal rod getting stuck in my arm, and when they started to give me morphine I said "That doesn't work on me."  Nurse looked at me like I'd just asked for my drug of choice and a syringe to self-administer and asked how I knew that.  I explained, she gave it to me anyway.  And then was shocked when it didn't work, and wanted to give me MORE of it...

Yeah, I know some people get drugs for the purpose of getting high; that's not a good reason to keep people in pain from getting what they need.  And damned if we need some bureaucrat or agent at DEA deciding your doctor isn't giving you what/how much they approve of.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Now try that with cancer. Better still try having cancer and have four deputies place you in cuffs while they go over your records without a warrant , because "you take too much opioid, its outside the federal guidelines", and that was almost a decade ago. Things have gotten much worse now.