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Poisoned Nurse's avatar

Your article reinforces WHY I homeschool my children. I’ve been a nurse for 18 years and everything you speak of is exactly how it is. The system cannot have a nation of free thinkers who will question, challenge, and demand ethical informed consent.

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Leslie Goodman-Malamuth's avatar

Two of the finest doctors to ever treat me also believed Purdue Pharma when the corporate pusher touted the wonders of OxyContin as a “non-addictive” analgesic. Since 1996, opioids have been the curse and blessing of my life. I’ve undergone a number of so-called “drug holidays,” and attempted dozens of other treatment modalities. Nothing but opioids effectively relieve my lifelong chronic pain.

After a terrifying gap between prescribing doctors last year, during which I spent ten days going cold turkey, my most recent practitioner reduced my opioid dosage by two-thirds, and eliminated medications for breakthrough pain and nausea. Today’s regimen prevents me from entering withdrawal, for which I am grateful, but leaves me a hundred percent disabled from unaddressed pain that has not diminished, as I was assured it would. I don’t have any answers—or even any questions—at this late stage of life. This winter I optimistically tried Nurtec and Amovig without the desired effect, and was informed that opioids cause my chronic insomnia, and have robbed me of my singing voice.

My only certainty is that if I can possibly avoid it, I will not follow in the wheelchair path of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose. Jem Finch read Sir Walter Scott to his elderly neighbor as she broke the back of her longtime morphine addiction. A thoroughly impressed Atticus Finch called her “the bravest person I ever knew,” but this is one time when I disagree with him. The bad-tempered bitch was just virtue-signaling.

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