War is always depicted as a two sided battle. Often it is written off as the good guys against the bad guys, whom you choose to put into each category is up to you, but there are always two sides. During the Revolutionary war it was the British against the Americans; in World War Two, it was the Axis against the Allies, and in Civil War the Confederacy and the Union fought hard. The side that no one sees is the third side of a war. This is the side that is often overlooked or considered insignificant. In the war on opiates this third side is chronic pain patients.
Law makers, doctors, and advocates everywhere consider this "war" to be two sided. It is depicted as the addicts against everyone else, but this is not the whole side of the story. Behind the fight against these addictive medications there is a girl sitting at home barely holding it together. This is a girl who is sitting in a neck brace with pain at a 7 barely making it through every day. To her, every day is an uphill battle, and she will have to keep fighting to make it to the top. The only thing keeping her functional is her medication. Without her tramadol she would be sitting on her couch, immobile, with nothing on her mind except pain. This girl is me. The only reason I am capable of sitting here writing this article is because of my pain medication. The truth is that I am not an addict though, I am a chronic pain patient.
Every day I suffer from an array of dislocations and subluxations of all my joints from my fingers to my neck due to a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. This is a very painful, debilitating condition, but with the help of my phenomenal pain management doctors I have been able to function in life as a normal teenager. I can go out with friends, go to school, and attend football games and school plays. My biggest fear though is losing my medications to new laws. What law makers do not understand about patients on opiates is that we do take them for the high, but our high is different.Our high is those few blissful minutes where our pain has almost completely disappeared.
Recently I have heard heart breaking tales of my friends losing these medications due to new opiate laws being passed along with the new CDC opiate guidelines. Many of my fellow Ehlers Danlos patients are scared to go to the emergency room because they know that the first thing the doctors will do will be take away their medication. Quite frankly, this is pathetic. Patients should be overjoyed to take a trip to an E.R. to receive some pain relief, but instead they dread the experience. What the doctors who revoke medications do not understand is that they are not taking away medication, but a quality of life.
While there are other methods to relieving pain such as meditation, yoga, and others, none of these are realistic for someone like myself who would be needing to perform one of these every time something dislocates. I do understand combating addiction, but I am calling for future opiate guidelines to address those of us with chronic pain. These medications may not be ideal long term, but I believe that the benefits will outweigh the risks for so many of us with chronic illnesses when it comes to quality of life.
This quality of life is 3rd side of the story. It is the side of the story that is the positives of opiates. This is the side of people positively effected by opiates rather than addicted. There will always be casualties in wars, but this casualty is much too small to be silenced for much longer. Those of us with chronic illnesses need to speak out about our positive experiences with opiates to help persuade lawmakers to help us rather than hinder us.
To all of my fellow spoonies, remember this: advocate for yourself, fight for the treatment you deserve, and stand united as patients not addicts.
