What happens when doctors can’t fix you? What happens when they don’t know the cause of what you have? What happens when there is no cure for the pain you are in? Well, you go to the pain clinic.
Over the past couple of decades, medical science has hit a wall when it comes to dealing with certain problems and illnesses. This has given birth to a new type of doctor, the pain management doctor. Now, first off, to be sent to a pain doc means that medical science has written you off as incurable. Secondly, once you get to a pain doc, all you can expect is to be on drugs the rest of your life. Now, these drugs may keep the pain at bay, but it does not guarantee that you will be cognizant enough to function in your daily life.
You see, pain drugs dull the senses. Hopefully they dull the senses enough so that you don’t feel pain. Hopefully also that they don’t dull the senses enough that you can’t function. That is the balance these doctors look for. But they don’t always get it.
I have seen where people have been totally lethargic while on these drugs, and some of them are addictive to the point that you need to keep taking more and more to manage the same level of pain. I personally know someone that went out walking the neighborhood in their underwear at 2am because the mix of pain drugs messed with their mind.
But pain management is a huge business. Most pain clinics are extremely busy. I remember going to one pain doc with my father-in-law so he could have some paperwork signed to get a scooter. We sat in a cold treatment room for 90 minutes until the physician’s assistant bothered to come in for five minutes. And then the doctor poked his head in for about a minute. That was all the time they had because they had so many patients.
Apparently, (and I didn’t know this) is that the state of Florida is starting to crack down on pain clinics. Now keep in mind that this is coming from word of mouth and I can’t vouch for it to be true, but I was told that there is a pain clinic in south Florida run by two doctors. The combined income for these two doctors last year was $14 million. No, that was not a typo. This person also told me his opinion which is that pain clinic doctors are nothing but drug pushers making huge amounts of money and keeping the drug companies in business. Well, uhh, yeah. When you couple that with something I was told some time ago about the drug companies not looking for cures anymore, but spending time developing drugs that will keep people on drugs, well, it just gets very scary. And don’t get me started on insurance companies that would rather you die in pain than help you.
So, if the medical industry can’t cure you, and the drug companies don’t want to cure you, what do we have to look forward to? We can’t by cheaper Canadian drugs because of the law, and we can’t afford the prices of drugs here, what is there for us? Yes folks, this is our future. Most of us will develop something that will keep on drugs the rest of our lives. Isn’t it good we can have faith in the medical industry and the drug companies to help us?? I’m glad they’re making so much money so they can continue to help us. Gee, I’d hate to see them go out of business.
The bad thing is that I know it will get a lot worse before it gets better.
First off, there are holistic treatments that can help many of these problems. Keep in mind, I’m not saying all. I’m saying many. And holistic methods don’t work on everyone. But there are many that that they do help given the chance.
Now many think socialized medicine is the answer. The proponents of this idea say it will treat everyone equally and better than the current system regardless of income. Opponents are throwing all types of scary situations out there claiming that we will be worse off than we are. Is socialized medicine the answer? I don’t know. I just know that what we are doing is not working. All it is doing is feeding the greed that keeps these institutions going and that includes the paying the people to speak out against any type of change.
Somewhere in there, we need to take responsibility for ourselves. We need to be educated on holistic methods and not depend on the government to bail us out. (Let’s be real, by the time any legislature gets through to be law, it has been watered down and had so many special provisions added that it is a shadow of what it was meant to be.) We need to make our own decisions. We need to take command of our own health.
Education is the key. Learn about holistic methods. Then you can be armed with knowledge when it is decision time. As someone who came from the computer industry, I have always felt that information is key. The more information we have, the better we are to make the correct decisions. Investigate. Learn. Then decide.
Ok, rant over for now.