Change to NICE guidelines for treating chronic pain with opiates: Don’t
I have lived in a kind of chronic pain that is referred to as “intractable”. (literally every second every day) there is no medical expectation that it will ever stop. But it’s not just chronic pain for me but regular acute pain, which is a response to actively being injured.
I’m not sure if this would mean they these guidelines wouldn’t mean me losing my opiates.
Though the BBC reports that this change applieS to chronic pain not caused by another medical condition, frankly, I do not trust them to take my condition, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, properly into account.
This fear is based on a lot of experience with doctors who have no idea what EDS is. It is shockingly under recognised and it’s no exaggeration to say that most GPs, the gatekeepers to right help, have no idea what an Ehlers Danlos is.
So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be concerned that it is very possible this will effect me.
I have been on morphine transdermal patches for years now, they cannot be abused as there is no way of speeding up the release of the medicine.
I have never at any point become dependant or addicted to the opiates.
So, there are sensible as well of risky ways of treating with opiates.
I was put on morphine after years of other opiate painkillersthat barely touched the pain, rather, I’m they did help but even with that improvement I was and still am, every moment, in debilitating pain.
But marginal gain, when it’s the best you have to hope for, is no small thing
The reason my doctors made the change to morphine (patches) is that I tired to kill myself twice in the space of a few months.
I just couldn’t stand the pain.
It’s like being followed everywhere but an invisible assailant torturing me while I try to get on with life
As for the use of therapy, the recommended alternative, as well as antidepressants; these treatmentS can indeed help, did indeed help me but I have been in therapy and on antidepressants for most of my life, starting long before my pain became chronic and then intractable. They did help me, but again, it was a matter if marginal gain: A relief, sure, but on it’s own, it was never enough for life to be tolerable without combining with the marginal gain from painkillers.
Coincidentally, I am currently going through the process of testing the effectiveness of the medication by reducing and seeing how it feels.
So, I should hope it is clear that I don’t deny that one must be careful with opiates or that becoming addicted to them can utterly devastate lives.
It’s just, opiates did, and continue to, save mine.
I can’t be the only one for whom opiates wasn’t a terrible mistake.
So, with our actual lives at stake, surely should mean leaving room for some nuance in these guidelines. Last time I looked I still couldn’t find a proper study into the instances of suicide in those with chronic pain.
Which is just fucked up if you ask me.
Let me give you one anecdote that should suffice to make my point: from a physio I used to see. He specialises in Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. (The cause of my chronic and acute pain) In the the space of just two weeks, a physio I used to see two patients that tried to kill themselves.
One couldn’t be saved.
Honestly I don’t know how long I can last in this body. I have things I want to live for now but most times I am walking I hit the pain wall, it’s code red, alarm bells, and all I want is for it to stop, at any cost. I am afraid I will lose my mind, loose my life to to these moments of intolerable, torturous agony.