Posted on 01/31/2017 12:46:34 PM PST by servo1969
Last week, my two stepsons' father, a man who loved life, killed himself.
I would like to tell you why.
Two years ago, a 62-year-old father of three named Bruce Graham was standing on an ladder, inspecting his roof for a leak, when it slipped out from under him. He landed on top of the ladder on his back, breaking several ribs, puncturing a lung and tearing his intestine, which wasn't detected until he went into septic shock. Following surgery, he lapsed into a two-week coma.
In retrospect, it's unfortunate that he awoke from that coma because for all intents and purposes, his life ended with that fall. Not because his mind was affected -- it was completely intact until the moment he took his life -- but because while modern medicine was adept enough to keep him alive, it was unable or unwilling to help him deal with the excruciating pain that he experienced over the next two years. And life in constant excruciating pain with no hope of ever alleviating it is not worth living.
As a result of the surgery, Bruce developed abdominal scar tissue structures known as adhesions. Adhesions can be horribly painful, but they are difficult to diagnose because they don't appear in imaging, and no surgery in America or in Mexico (where, out of desperation, he also sought treatment) could remove them permanently. Many doctors dismiss adhesions, regarding the patient's pain as psychosomatic.
The pain prevented him from getting adequate sleep. And he could not eat without the pain spiking for hours. By the time of his death, he had lost almost half his body weight.
Prescription painkillers -- opioids -- relieved much of his pain, or at least kept it to a tolerable level. But after the initial recuperation period, no doctor would prescribe one, despite the fact that this man had a well-documented injury and no record of addiction to any drug, including opioids. Doctors either wouldn't prescribe them on an ongoing basis due to the threat of losing their medical license or being held legally liable for addiction or overdose, or deemed Bruce a hypochondriac.
The federal government and states like California have made it extremely difficult for physicians to prescribe painkillers for an extended period of time. The medical establishment and government bureaucrats have decided that it is better to allow people to suffer terrible pain than to risk them becoming addicted to opioids.
They believe it is better to allow any number of innocent people to suffer hideous pain for the rest of their lives than to risk any patient getting addicted and potentially dying from an overdose.
Dr. Stephen Marmer, who teaches psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, told me that he treated children with terminal cancer when he was an intern, and even they were denied painkillers, lest they become addicted.
Pain management seems to be the Achilles' heel of modern medicine, for philosophical reasons as well as medical. Remarkably, Dr. Thomas Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine last year, "Whereas the benefits of opioids for chronic pain remain uncertain, the risks of addiction and overdose are clear."
To most of us, this is cruel. Isn't the chance of accidental death from overdose, while in the meantime allowing patients to have some level of comfort, preferable to a life of endless severe pain?
Though I oppose suicide on religious/moral grounds and because of the emotional toll it takes on loved ones, I make an exception for people with unremitting, terrible pain. If that pain could be alleviated by painkilling medicines, and law and/or physicians deny them those medicines, it is they, not the suicide, who are morally guilty.
Bruce was ultimately treated by the system as an addict, not worthy of compassion or dignity. On the last morning of his life, after what was surely a long, lonely, horrific night of sleeplessness and agony, Bruce made two calls, two final attempts to acquire the painkillers he needed to get through another day. Neither friend could help him. Desperate to end the pain, he picked up a gun, pressed it to his chest and pulled the trigger. In a final noble act, he did not shoot himself in the head, even though that is the more certain way of dying immediately. He had told a friend some weeks earlier that if he were to take his life, he wouldn't want loved ones to experience the trauma-inducing mess that shooting himself in the head would leave. Instead, he shot himself in the heart.
An autopsy confirmed the presence of abdominal adhesions, as well as significant arthritis in his spine.
May Bruce Graham rest in peace. Some of us, however, will not live in peace until physicians' attitudes and the laws change.
I know people in Arizona who experience chronic pain. They go to pain management doctors who prescribe oxycodone. They are not allowed to receive pain relievers from any other physician and they are required to be tested to make sure THEY are using it and not just distributing it to others.
This seems to be a reasonable way to help people with their pain while preventing abuse.
A person with real pain will not become addicted.......................
...
I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve read it many times.
So when it’s raining you can’t check the roof -
but when it’s dry, the roof don’t need checking!
They put the acetaminophen in there to destroy your liver and kill you if you take too much of the Oxy.
I took it temporarily as prescribed. It helped me sleep, but it didn’t seem to do much else, and of course I didn’t become addicted.
Read the book.
Yep. There would have been mostly (entirely) illegal and dangerous ways to ease the pain. Ways that might have led to a debilitating addiction. And certainly a poor pathetic quality of life.
It sounds like the poor guy did what he could though.
Sadly true. My mom was end stage lung cancer and had to actually go to the oncologists office 2x monthly so she could get her pain meds. He was not allowed to just continue giving them unless she came in. And of course, he was always overbooked and running late and would have cancer patients sitting for 2-3 hours in his waiting room, in pain, exhausted- it was horrible to see.
I finally caused quite a scene about the wait time and was banned from his office....
Dennis Prager is Jewish, his stepson’s father might have been too.
Or cut down the trees that feed the gutters. That is what I did, though some leaves still manage to get in there. Also, there are attachments to leaf blowers that can blow the leaves out while you are walking on the ground.
They’re there and they still get clogged.
Oxy was a blessing for me. I have suffered with arthritis since my late thirties. I have used almost every opioid available over the past ten years. Over time, they will lose their effectiveness and I would have to switch to another formulation. Oxy was the best at minimizing my pain. Unfortunately, I lost my job last March and with it, my insurance. I’m now using Indian healthcare, and the strongest paid med the will prescribe is Tramodol. It’s little more than aspirin.
I never took any med more than was prescribed. I had been taking 30 mg of morphine 3 times a day, and when that quit working for me, I just weened myself off it. Some of us can take these meds without becoming addicted.
The problem is the difficulty getting the legal prescriptions drives people to go to the heroine market. Money that goes to the drug cartel is a story of corruption and gang violence. By allowing patients to go through the legal process and deliver a medical solution prevents the latter lawlessness. I say, let a patient get all the pain relief that can medically be achieved. It surly prevents even worse collateral damage.
Thank you! Ever roll on the bathroom floor for hours in agony with either a kidney stone or a gall stone? I have and oxytocin barley touches it, but does help. Now absolutely everyone if got their hair on fire about this and real people are going to suffer needlessly because everyone’s suddenly got the chic cause dejour.
Remarkable experience. Thank you.
The problem with unrelenting pain is first, the pain, and secondly the way it distracts one from life. To focus on breathing, on music, reading, food, becomes seemingly impossible.
My heart ..and prayers for Bruce, I cannot condemn this man. May his soul be at rest in God’s love..
Being a soft tissue back injury survivor, it takes years. Years. I think I was in five years before I finally started being able to cope with the pain and learning how to live my life around the pain.
Two years is in that five year window, and you suffer, mightily. The pain meds either make you a zombie, or are not providing relief, so your brain is responding to pain, all day long.
I thank God every day that my husband’s doctors believe he needs pain meds and prescribes them. He is addicted to wanting to live without chronic pain, not the meds.
I am so sorry to Dennis and his wife for having had to endure psychically the pain their kids’ dad, her ex, was suffering from. I am so sorry the kids lost their dad and his loved ones lost him.
Our medical system is a travesty. It really is. That kind of pain should be palliated. I’m sorry this happened. What a shame.
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