Trust a key word and a staple in the relationship between doctors and
patients, especially when treating pain management. When a patient
first comes to see a physician for pain management, they must realize
that the history they express to the physician, usually, at that visit
anyway, is totally invalidated and a scheduled medicine is more often
than not being requested or being thought of as appropriate by the
prescribing physician, physician’s assistant, or nurse practitioner.
Often at a first office visit a patient will have very little
information other than names, very occasionally addresses and phone
numbers of other practitioners, and some recent x ray or MRI results.
The patient does not realize importance, legally in today’s society,
of the present provider contacting: past physicians, past pharmacies,
past hospitals, and past diagnostic testing facilities for faxes of a
patient’s previous visits. Often also ignored is the fact a computer
wise patient can go on a computer, do a little research on a medical
condition and create false imaging reports. Do not laugh because it is
frequently done. It is done as often as a patient bringing in
duplicate urine from a ‘clean’ person and substituting it for their
own. That also frequently happens. The funnier part is when patients
think that their charades are original; I can tell you in doing
medicine for 36+ years, very little of the fantasy tales have not been
tried on my practice.
Then the patient must trust me as a physician. All medications taken
in a way other than as directed can result in serious injury, an
emergency room visit, or in some cases resulting in death. It may be
a consequence of the self prescribing dosage, a dangerous combination
of medication taken, or an allergy reaction based on the prescription
being taken or used in the wrong manner. The medicines utilized in
pain management not only can injure or kill a patient but it can do so
when the abuse is even minimal. A minimal prescribed dose of
alprazolam (Xanax) combined a “little” illegally obtained Oxycontin or
methadone can put someone to sleep, and they may never wake up. This
is your accidental overdose. This is the question that surrounds the
deaths of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith along with
a multitude of others. The amounts of these legally prescribed
medication necessary to kill someone is minimal in the right
combinations and doses. Example is Xanax and Oxycontin, both abused in
the world by people who cannot face their own problems, are both
respiratory depressants, taken together in an abusive manner without
following your physician directions can cause a person to stop
breathing. That is why most, but by no means all, overdose deaths
involve multiple drugs. Now do not feel: “well I can utilize one drug
and get high and live,” because utilizing an Oxycontin 40mg, one of
the most abused medications in America today, for one person will have
minimal adverse effects, and then for metabolic reasons the next
person who does the same medication, in the same dose winds up
stopping breathing and sleeping into eternity. You never know when
that will happen or to whom it will happen.
The above all being said the key message is: number one do not take
medication purchased or obtained illegally and that can be pills
prescribed for someone in your family and in your own medicine
cabinet, number two is that if you utilize a practitioner who limits
their medical practice to pain management take the medication only as
prescribed and give it to no one else unless you can live with the
thought you may have killed someone. Besides the fact your giving one
controlled substance pill to another person can bring a felony charge
of trafficking in narcotics against you, whether the person lives or
dies and the person may well be an undercover policeman/woman. And you
never know when the pain management practice you obtain your
medication from works closely with local and/or federal law
enforcement.
Therefore be truthful and take all medication prescribed for you by
you in the manner prescribed and help save you or your friends life!