Spokane7
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January 22, 2012 in City
Mom’s nightmare becomes a cause
Doctor shares lessons from her son’s overdose
Dr. Rosemary Orr didn’t see it coming. It was the morning after Mother’s Day. She needed a ride to work, so her 24-year-old son Robin drove her. She was in a hurry to get to Seattle Children’s Hospital in Seattle, where she is chief of anesthesiology. Otherwise, she says, she would have spent more time talking with him.
She’d been worried about his sleeping habits, his weight loss. She knew her smart, handsome son had struggled with addiction to OxyContin in the past. But he’d kicked it. He’d assured her of that. He’d looked her in the eye and said, “You don’t have to worry about me, Mom.”
No parent wants to believe her child is using. Not even one who is a doctor.
“I was stupid and desperate enough to believe that explanation,” Orr says now.
When she got home from work that day, she found Robin on the floor of his room, dead of an overdose.
Orr’s son is one of thousands of Washington citizens, including a growing number of young people, who have died from prescription pain medications. Prescription medication abuse is now at epidemic levels in this and other states.
Ending the epidemic will require not just attention to all these issues, but also a fundamental change in the way the medical culture deals with pain.
Orr is haunted by a quote from her son: “Mom, you have to see – doctors are the biggest drug pushers in the country.”
She wants to change that.
“Teenagers are given oversupplies of Vicodin for things like wisdom teeth extractions. Surgical patients get more pills than they need when they leave the hospital. People take them all because they figure, ‘Gee, if a doctor prescribed it, it must be safe,’ ” she said. “Before they know it, they’re addicted.”
She points out, too, that this is an American problem.
“The U.S. is responsible for about 90 percent of the world’s prescribing of Vicodin,” she said.
In Britain, where she grew up, she recalls breaking her leg in three places when she was 14 years old. “My father was a doctor,” she said. “He gave me an aspirin.”
Americans are notorious for their pill-popping. Addiction is minimized and glamorized by shows such as “House,” featuring a doctor who pops Vicodin like Tic Tacs.
There are consequences to that, said Orr, who has taken her message to the medical community as a member of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing.
Her son is never far from her thoughts. She writes: “Sometimes, I feel his presence and sense that he is encouraging me to tell others what I now know so that perhaps one life will be saved.”
In brief: South Hill McDonald’s robbers sought 
misjustice on January 23 at 1:34 p.m.
And the flip side of this story is the many folks that can not get help in addressing pain management because the Federal gubmint criminalizes marihuana; a “drug” that many use to help them deal with pain and other medical issues.
Despite many states legalizing marihuana for medial patients the Feds still can, and will, over ride states’ rights and patients’ rights in their over arching attempts to keep on fighting the “war on drugs”.
*sigh*
Roberoo on January 26 at 6:02 a.m.
If my child’s leg was broken is 3 places and all I allowed her for pain was an aspirin, I’d be arrested and jailed for child abuse. Anyone hearing about it would think me cruel and inhumane, and they would be correct. I would also lose every friend I had at the time. I am very sorry for the doctors loss and the loss of thousands of people who have died because they overdosed on drugs, but those who want to deny medication to the people who’s lives are made livable by opioids, are seeking revenge for their loss in the wrong place. The subsequent bitterness which is a part of grieving, should be aimed at those who had a hand in such a sad event.
Persons in chronic intractable pain have nothing to do with anyone overdosing. For those seeking revenge perhaps they should aim their anger at Wa. State, as they have had methadone as their sole “preferred drug” for long-term pain management for more than 10 years, even though over 2100 people have died (since 2003) of an unintentional overdose linked to the methadone. To prescribe a drug as strong as methadone to opioid naive patients, because it is the “preferred drug,” is a logical reason to get up in arms. To rail against those who use opioids to help seek a life other than incessant pain, is to rail against the wrong group. The human reaction to pain is to seek abatement, to deny this is to deny that which is in our DNA.
Today cancer patients are exempt from the 120 mg cap, as they should be, and no one would argue that their pain medications should be halted, but is their pain any worse than the person with degenerative disks, severe RA, some types of Lupus, or many other very painful chronic intractable conditions, and, some cancers are curable, where intractable conditions by definition are not.
There most certainly are Md’s who are too liberal with their prescribing of opioids, but that number is receding daily, and in 2006 the U of Wi published a study which used DEA figures to conclude that up to 85% of all diverted opioids come from other sources than the Md/patient relationship. While the pill mills are responsible for a tremendous amount of illegal pharmaceuticals, this is a criminal undertaking and not a valid Md/patient activity. Washington State cut funding for a PMP (prescription monitoring program) once, and it wasn’t until Oct, 2011 that the program began to seriously set up. The fact that Md’s are woefully lacking in the knowledge of pain management is the fault of med schools not Md’s, and certainly not chronic pain patients. There are many ways of improving the system, but cutting pain medication for those in chronic pain is not one of them. People who habitually abuse drugs are always going to pay the price, but why should those who never give their Md or the legal system cause for alarm be punished ? Those of us in chronic intractable pain already have enough of a challenge to live a normal life without having to pay for the sins of others.