My Migraine Battle: On The Forefront

Let Up and Let Down

Well, my mig pain let up some today. It's only been at between a 4-5 today. That's the best it's been in 2 weeks, so I'm thankful for the pseudo break.

On the other hand, I had a bit of a let down today. A couple months ago I'd written a letter to one of the local hospitals regarding their treatment of me when I was in the ER and the fact that they'd given me an extremely dangerous drug, because they have a policy of not prescribing narcotics in their ER's.

I got a call back from the ER Administrator today (finally!) and he basically told me that they weren't going to change any of their policies and would continue to prescribe inapsine rather than give narcotic treatment. He then proceded to tell me that there haven't been any reports by doctors to the drug companies that there have been any problems with that drug.

I couldn't believe I was talking to such an ignoramous! The drug company that makes inapsine has written in it's report that the drug should be used as a very last resort when all else has failed to work for the patient. They have also made it very clear that abaout 12% (give or take) of patients given this drug end up dead or with a very serious heart problem that doesn't go away and leads to an early death. This was reported to them by doctors and surgeons who used the drugs on their patients.

I had sent this "doctor" the information from the FDA and the drug company which says exactly that, so I told him that if he'd read the information that he would see that the trials and doctors who've used the drugs HAVE reported deaths from the use of that drug. He said that that's just what the drug company and the FDA want you to think and if it was really a bad drug they would've pulled it off the market. I said, Why would the company that makes the drug want to tell you that you shouldn't use it. They want to make money and they want you to use their drugs. That doesn't make any logical sense. And the FDA hasn't pulled it off the market YET for one reason only and that is that it is needed by some patients who don't respond to other forms of anesthesia. That is what this drug is, an anesthetic.

How scary that doctors feel this way about the FDA warnings that they receive. I mean, these guys are supposed to be professionals. What if a builder decided that he could just ignore the guidelines and put a roof on a non-load bearing wall? Or why not have food service workers just wipe their butts and go out and slap together your sandwich without washing their hands. How about a banker just take money from the till and embezzle and not care about the rules and laws? I mean, why don't we all just become anarchists? What gives doctors the right or special privilege to decide what laws and regulations to follow and which ones they can ignore?

This is not the kind of guy I'd want working on me. I don't know what I'm going to do, yet, but I'm going to figure out some way to make sure that these changes take place at that hospital. Fortunately, there's another one in the area and that's the one I've been going to and it's really a compassionate and wonderful place.

Any suggestions?

posted by Jessica @ 4:06 PM