Honey, your home! Ain't going nowhere.
Matt: I read about your knees and I know how serious it is when chronic pain sets in. I see a neurologist after having most of my c-spine replaced in 2013 and then another disc last December of 2014. I had absolutely no idea how I injured the discs in my neck. I woke up feeling very different, and my fingers were numb and I could not play my guitars! Weird! Then I started having shooting pain down both arms and I was worried it was my heart because I have a missing blood protein that causes me to be hypercoagulable and it caused a heart attack 15 years ago. I have three stents. Wow! Pain is the most draining state to be in that I know of. It aged me dramatically last year. I strongly empathize with pain -- especially the knees. They are very difficult to repair. About the only thing one can do is gently walk in a swimming pool (that is my form of PT) and even that is painful!
I just finished reading a book called
American Pain and it was all about the clinic that went by that name. They were operating in Broward County and also Boca Raton, Florida. You probably know all about it. They operated a pill mill that accepted patients with no MRIs, X-rays, CAT scans ... nothin'!!! They prescribed Oxycontin and oxycodone along with Percocet in dosages that were usually reserved for end-stage cancer patients. You can imagine the overdoses from respiratory distress. People traveled to the clinic in droves! Junky after junky!!! It really hurt thousands of patients who were in genuine debilitating pain! It just went on and on. I used to take little 3-day vacation packages with my husband from Logan to Fort Lauderdale and have sooo much fun in the sun! I had no idea that American Pain was even around. To this day it holds the record for the biggest pill mill operation in the US!
When you had written earlier that you are looking for a doctor you can trust, you are absolutely right! Dependency is entirely different than addiction. I developed dependency to opioids when I ruptured three discs in my lumbar spine when I was just 26. They just kept writing and writing!!! I kept taking them! I'm lucky I was able to get off of them -- but it took me almost a week of withdrawal. Never again! I took pain medicine with great caution on several occasions and was hooked up to a PCA so I could just press a button every 12 minutes! Oh, how pain bites the big one! People must have access to pain meds, but it scared me the last few years when I had to take them or my BP would send me up a tree! Since 2012 I have had four major surgeries and am glad to be here -- glad to be anywhere is more like it!!!
We have been talking about Florida a lot here lately. The sinkholes, pill mills ... but then you've got Dave Barry
("Miami: Maybe You Won't Get Shot!!!") We LOVE Dave Barry! I remember being lost in Miami thinking to myself, "get me outta here!" I was so scared! It was about as crazy as driving in Boston! Oh, but those were the good old days! And the seafood was incredible! Even though I grew up eating Maine lobsters, there was nothing better than the restaurants in Florida!
Thanks for making me feel so at home here! I know I have probably said this before, but it took me almost four years to start writing here and now, I love it here so much that
"Maybe I Won't Shut Up!"
.. it's my understanding that, at least in the USA, the check engine light usually has something to do with emission control, etc .. even a gas cap that's not secured down fully ..
