Chronic Pain Forums of the Pain Relief Network (PRN)

monkeyboy wrote:

i WORKED with a kunschner nail protruding two inches out of my femural head----i cannot work now-----while working, i lost 65 lbs---i have gained it all back--i am pre diabetic, PISSED off (most of the time),  isolated, financially fukked, and rapidly losing any faith i had in getting help----while i understand what the drs face, i dont understand why there is not more of a cohesive effort made within their ranks to raise not only their voices but raise hell as well---they have $, connections, and influence, but are getting picked off and ran off and vast swathes of populations are getting tossed off and forgotten by all but the bill collectors---why are old paradigms still being taught that label a CPP and deny them treatment?  why do you go to a 'center' to get the multidisciplinary treatment approaches recommended for a CPP?  what i see, along with dustin, IS a complicity---why are there only 5000 docs to 'treat' 75 *MILLION* pts?  "office of demand reduction" my fat ass----why dont we have a democratic office of bullshit reduction?  i have good friends who cant find a good reason to go on living----and i can understand why, and i dont have any reasons for them, as frankly  i am running out of them myself---we are fighting for our very lives here---hyperbole be damned, these are facts that are convenient to forget for them that got, convenient because we are invisible, and by all current standards, expendable

In another thread, perhaps unfortunately, Part 5 of the mostly unedited CEI interview with me, entitled "Why I Don't Practice Anymore" ended up being, in a sense, the response (so far) to new-member Dustin who makes a very similar point, or rather, asks a very similarly pointed question, to the one you raise here, monkeyboy.

The answer to why don't doc's rise up and assert their Constitutional rights to a doctor-patient relationship without federal interference, and their professional ethics which require docs to hold the interests of the individual patient before them, highest - and "highest" means exactly what it means... highest as in above the interest of the physician to make money; highest as in 'above the interests of police and the state', for another example.

So this is a very valid question. My personal solution to the "doctor's dilemma", leaving practice in order to be able to exercise my right to free speech, and also to be able to defend docs to the fullest in criminal trials, which I could not do if I were a practicing physician, is obviously not socially desirable. That is, we don't want the few remaining prescribing docs to quit treating us - we don't need more of me, in a sense.

Actually, what we need is more docs like Billy Hurwitz, but he is still in federal prison. And it always comes back to this - this is a core problem, the criminalization of the practice of pain medicine, and it is this core aspect that PRN is targeting in our currently unfolding legal strategy.

But the answer to why more docs don't just suck it up and do the right thing, ESPECIALLY IN CLEAR-CUT, EASY CASES, will not satisfy either monkeyboy or Dustin, I think. The reason is post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. But not PTSD the way we usually think about it, as an affliction of an unfortunate individual. The PTSD I am talking about here is a disorder that afflicts an entire profession, every single doctor, from every single graduating medical school class, year after decade after century. From personal experience I can assure you that the fear and loathing of opioids is inculcated into all young doctors. Doctors have been brutalized, over decades, and as much as they themselves want to deny it, IT HAPPENED, AND IT KEEPS HAPPENING - the beatings continue.

There have been literal Reigns of Terror - with pain docs being rounded up and indicted... like in the '20's and '30's -- it's all in my paper War on Drugs, War on Doctors, and the Pain Crisis in America (including copious links to full text source documents). And the current environment we find ourselves in IS AS BAD AS IT HAS BEEN IN MODERN MEMORY, right now, as in KANSAS, AMERICA.

My point?  Docs can indignantly proclaim that DeLuca is an ass and of course the practice of medicine is not "distorted," at least not their practices. And patients can rightfully complain about sub-standard medical care of chronic pain, and rightfully insist that their docs do the right thing in a sacrosanct doctor-patient relationship. All of which is fine; I agree entirely... AS LONG AS WE ALL RECOGNIZE THAT PHYSICIANS HAVE BEEN BRUTALIZED BY THE US FEDERAL GOVT - LITERALLY HAD THEIR LIVES TORN OUT FROM UNDER THEM, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, EVERY YEAR, EVERY DECADE -- IT PERMEATES US.

monkeyboy and Dustin are entirely correct - docs are failing their patients BIG TIME. The dithering and lying and denial and irrationality heaped upon patients in lieu of a real doctor-patient relationship, are explained by a sort of cultural, professional PTSD. That partially, at least, explains it, and explaining is not the same thing as excusing.

I don't know if this makes any sense. I am not denying monkeyboy's and Dustin's experience or claims. They call it exactly correctly, imo. I'm just fascinated by the pathology, by the raw horrific venal power of the Big Lie of prohibition to corrupt us all.

Love,

monkeyboy wrote:

why are there only 5000 docs to 'treat' 75 *MILLION* pts?  "office of demand reduction" my fat ass----why dont we have a democratic office of bullshit reduction?

Nice post mb,
And the 5,000 pain treating docs are dwindling in number. As I posted above, if they are not prosecuted, they surely feel the, "chilling effect," or are encouraged by the medical establishment to stay the hell out of the pm field.