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Articles by Angelika Byczkowski
How every doctor should address a patient's pain
From medical school to residency, I’ve worked with colleagues who don’t prescribe pain medications for their patients who truly need them. Or they are just very hesitant about doing so. Some simply don’t believe in them. Others fear the legal implications like being named to a med mal or wrongful death lawsuit. And several avoid pain meds, specifically opioids, like the plague because of possible addiction risk even when their long-standing home med is an opioid prescribed by their PCP.
The patient I cannot help and a gun
“You’re my last hope.” The words come from a patient I have no prayer of helping. He has had decades of back pain. He has had several surgeries, injections, hardware in, hardware out, but nothing has helped. He is unable to work. His struggle with back pain has ruined relationships, ruined his financial stability, ruined his mental health. His goals and mine are aligned. We both want to make his life better. Unfortunately, I have no operation to offer. His pain has become like a cancer. It’s incurable.
Blame the pain, not the opioids
I’ve noticed a frightening trend in the latest research on patients taking prescribed opioids: whatever the negative outcomes, researchers attribute them to the opioid medications instead of the underlying pain. The many detrimental outcomes these studies find are exactly what you’d expect from a person suffering long-term chronic pain. They don’t recognize or calculate into their studies that opioids were prescribed to ease intractable pain.
A patient's opposition to the anti-opioid movement
I recently read an article — “California Doctors Alarmed As State Links Their Opioid Prescriptions to Deaths” — that infuriates and frightens me I’m furious that doctors are being persecuted for opioid prescriptions written years ago, and frightened that my doctor here in California may be pressured to stop prescribing them for my painful genetic disorder (Ehlers-Danlos).
How the war on opioids has harmed some patients
In a recent article for Pain Medicine News, “4 Steps Every Provider Must Take Before Prescribing an Opioid,” two lawyers detail the voluminous documentation doctors must collect and maintain to protect themselves against all these new anti-opioid rules. When even so many doctors don’t understand chronic pain, it’s no surprise that lawyers don’t either.
Stop the war against patients with intractable pain
An open letter to doctors still prescribing opioid medication when necessary: Thank you so much for standing up for us pain patients. My chronic pain comes from a genetic connective tissue disorder (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome), so there is no treatment or cure for my slow, but relentless, physical deterioration as the collagen holding my body together falls apart.
When impossible pain is, in fact, possible
I had my first outpatient surgical procedure when I was still in high school and needed a plantar wart removed from the sole of my foot. As the doctor injected the area with a local anesthetic, he explained he did these procedures all the time, and I wouldn’t feel a thing. After a short wait, he began to dig out the deeply embedded wart with a hooked scalpel. With the first cut of the scalpel, excruciating pain exploded in my foot, and I was shocked speechless.
Opioids Blamed for Consequences of Chronic Pain
I’ve noticed a trend in the proliferating numbers of studies ostensibly investigating the damaging effects of opioid therapy: whatever the negative outcome, researchers correlate or attribute it to the opioid medications instead of the underlying pain. That’s like stating that people who take Dilantin (antiepileptic) have seizures. Technically that’s correct, but it doesn’t address the reason people are using Dilantin in the first place, which is that they have epilepsy.
The subtle arrogance of good health
Until my physical ailments began worsening rapidly in my late 40s, I was a high achiever, proud of my “kick ass” attitude, thinking I was so competent I could surmount any challenge life threw at me. Life appeared to be straightforward, and I didn’t understand why this didn’t seem to be the case for so many other less fortunate folks. Though I worked hard for my accomplishments and sometimes struggled, there was never a question of ability, never a doubt I’d prevail if I made enough effort.
Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer
Are you ashamed to be ill? In our competitive society, chronic infirmity or illness is viewed as a personal failing rather than the random stroke of fate that it is ~ Angelika Byczkowski I recently spotted a post on the Kevin MD blog writen by Angelika Byczkowski, a patient withEhlers-Danlos syndrome, group of inherited disorders marked by extremely loose joints, hyperelastic skin that bruises easily, and easily damaged blood vessels.
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