
The Painful Truth About PainSeptember 11, 2019 |
By Travis N Rieder,
On June 16, 2015, I woke up in agony. The day before, I had been in surgery for nearly nine hours, while three different teams of specialists tried to save my foot by carving muscle, fat, skin, artery and nerve out of my thigh and using it to patch together my shattered lower extremity. It was my fifth surgery following a motorcycle accident the month before, and it left me reeling with fiery, electric, boiling pain.
I begged nurses and doctors to increase my pain medication. When they moved too slowly for my liking, I stopped being quite as compliant a patient as I tend to be. I needed more drugs.
Tags: bioethics, doctor, health policy, narrative, obligation, opioid, pain, patient, public health, safety, support, withdrawal