My husband suffers from chronic pain due to a neurological/nerve issue from MS. He is in a pain meds program and has been on some significant drugs. He has Never taken more than he is supposed to- in fact he is really straitlaced, never smoked weed, for instance - is fairly 'anti-drug. But chronic pain isn't like episodic pain; it changes you and not in good ways; depression, anxiety for example. People don't get it and yet are quick to offer their generally negative opinions.
Thanks for letting me rant, Jennylynn.

PLEASE look into Vitamin D therapy for your hubby. Lack of sun = MS. Researchers are catching on.

http://www.naturalnews.com/SearchResults.asp?query=MS+and+Vitamin+D&pr=NN

then moved on to similarly sunny southern Montana, and finally on to Hawai'i, where we met.

Sorry, but that Vitamin D thing sounds like a whole lot of woo.

Night shift workers, bar tenders, etc.?

and at least in Montana, she was a 9-to-5 professional. She must have spent some time outdoors, since she got the yellow Lab who eventually became her service dog as a pedigreed bird dog.

Does it really?

I've been taking 750,000 units of it a month for years now and no, I have not "recovered" nor have I "improved". There is NO CURE for MS as they do not know what it is! FACT.

I remain unconvinced!

I have been there, fortunately temporarily although I didn't know that at the time. Chronic pain really does cause depression, anxiety. It is so different to get relief from that.

How is the pain meds program doing? Is it a teaching hospital pain center? Doctors who know what they're doing as very important.

Have they worked on mental ways to change thinking, along with the meds?

who never strayed from the prescribed program. When Colorado legalized marijuana, they decided to try it. It's changed their lives for the better, much better. Especially my friend with MS. When her doc told her he didn't approve, she found a doctor who did. This is not a large sample or scientific, just to let you know.

You can rant here anytime. I'm listening to the radio right now about opiate addiction. We've accepted addiction as a disease, time to do the same with chronic pain, because aren't they related?

In the same boat as your husband is in and wow does it ever suck.

Luckily, I found a new place to go for medical care earlier this year and believe me, with a problem identical to what your husband is dealing with, it is not easy to find a new physician. The one I had been going to was verbally abusive and frankly, IMO, should not be practicing medicine at all if he/she hates those that have chronic diseases and pain problems to go with them and practices poor care at best as a way to be rid of you.

Hang-in there, both of you. A problem like this is very difficult to live and deal with. He's lucky to have you as his advocate!

A combo of marijuana and valium take down her pain. Neither one does it alone. She said the pain is still there but at a level she can deal with. She also takes low dose naltrexone at night. She said if she forgets to take the LDN, her pain is higher the next day.

She also notices that certain foods like chocolate up her pain level.

health was important. He used those resources to try to manage and conquer his reliance and still failed; why we expect everyone else to do so on bootstraps and a strong will is beyond me.

and there are millions of people with less support and resources who are suffering the same fate right now.

My God, he had access to any country he wanted to go to for goodness sake. So no other country could help him if not the US?

I wish they'd get on with the Tox report. No way it takes this long.

he should have had surgery long ago, but refused to do so. he was worried he would need a transfusion.

I've also heard that he DID have the surgery. Smh. Autopsy will tell us. Not that it should be our business, really.

nt

Thank you very much. I for one appreciate it.

This sort of thing makes life even more difficult for persons that have legitimate pain problems (as it seems Prince did as well) even more difficult.

I dread my next visit to the medical place I go to after all of the crap being unloaded against pain patients since this has occurred. Every politician out there is on this issue now, now that Prince is dead.

What about those that are in pain, taking MEDICATIONS that are legally prescribed and have to suffer the awful stigma that now seems to go with it?

*sigh*

Thanks again.

no true dental care for an entire county's poor, and what do poor people do when they have a bad tooth?

They buy something strong on the black market because that's down the road and affordable. Dental care might as well be on the moon.

Then we lock up people who are in possession of even ONE pill. ONE pill is a felony crime without a prescription.

No one, from our billionaire governor to the inbreds in our legislature can put two-and-two together, but more likely, those Good Christians are happy to see the poor suffer unimaginable pain and then be locked up for trying to manage it with no resources.

In Prince's case it's another situation where we ask too much, even of ourselves sometimes, because of this weird dynamic we have going that insists drugs are wonderful in TV ads but you're a moral failure if you actually use any of them.

Excellent post.

Being demonized for being sick 'effin sucks! Damned if you do and damned if you don't!

YET HE HIMSELF got into trouble with Oxycontin. Now, if doctors that know that this person can get on the air and call for your head can still f** up with impunity, what chance does anyone have?

As others have been saying, the rest of us have no chance if these guys don't.

thank you for extending sympathy.

"Rush Limbaugh called for the punishment of drug pushers YET HE HIMSELF got into trouble with Oxycontin..."

from the War on Drugs, and needs to be reformed to serve people with compassion. Almost everyone I know my age is dealing with pain issues, and some are having great difficulties with the new opiate laws, it is sad. I have turned to cannabis, but know there are some conditions that need more.

He died from an overdose of opiates.

The rhetorical point is noted, but he did not literally die of pain.

.. double-talk and false concepts I didn't even finish it.

Guess what, Prince was almost 100% certainly addicted to opioids. The fact that he took them for a legitimate reason is moot.

I'm not judging Prince or anyone else who is addicted to these things, but making up nonsense words isn't helping anything.

NO one yet knows what he died of.

did you tell this OP to pump the brakes, too?

because Prince died of Chronic Pain per the link.

Not you, not TMZ, not his supposed "drug dealer", and not the author of the article.
All of it is speculation at this point.

Odds are good you're going to be disappointed when the cause of death is not "Chronic Pain".

I will accept the toxicology report it for what it is and move on.

Doctors may refrain from prescribing an effective dose of painkillers due to the fear that a patient may die of an accidental overdose and they will be prosecuted. Just over the border, in darkest Brownbackistan (Formerly the great state of Kansas), a doctor was accused of murder when his patient died of an overdose of morphine; I didn't follow the case, so I don't know how it came out.

Cannabis legalization would probably help quite a bit.

first one, used to manage a fairly large retail operation....think he is up to 17 knee surgeries and a couple replacements, shoulder redone and now his back is giving out...my age, weights half as much as i do.....do not know underlying problem....guess god just made him with bad parts.

2nd one is just a young pretty thing...rheumatoid arthritis ...trained as a nurse...she obviously can not do that anymore...has some implant in her back? that gets sent electrical impulses to lessen discomfort but it pretty much shuts off all feeling from waist down.....

i really do not know how the hell they do it.....If it were me i would have made the quickie trip to cabelas for am more lasting solution.

Mental illness is so much kinder.

To say he did is misleading at best, but certainly dishonest.

... so if he did not pass from chronic pain, what did he die form? A "drug overdose."? You deny his pain altogether?

His chronic pain didn't kill him. Did he suffer from chronic pain? It sure sounds like it. But "pain" didn't kill him. Likely, it was an overdose of opioids that killed him, but it certainly wasn't the "pain".

.... I myself in the last few years suffered through some serious serious pain that the Drs didn't seem too upset over. I wondered at times just how much pain I could suffer, if the pain would actually kill me. How much pain could I stand? (They never once prescribed anything for my pain!)

They finally got off their butts and did carpal tunnel surgery on my hand and got me some physical therapy for the herniated cervical discs and scoliosis in my spine.

I just don't think it's moral for people to suffer in this day and time.

But pain did not kill Prince.

... the pain caused him to overdose, to over-self medicate. He was lost in the pain-drug cycle. The pain was the reason for the overdose.

Most people think that those who "overdose on drugs" do so because they choose to be in a blissful or high state of mind. I guarantee you Prince was not taking those meds for a high. He took them for pain relief, like I do a couple of Aleves from time to time when my pain finally gets the best of me.

but the unrelieved, unrelenting pain (if that turns out to be true) and the shitty, obscene, greed driven way big pharma and the medical community fails to address it contributed. big pharma started pushing these opioids on drs years ago, since it is much more profitable to them than getting to the root of the problem.

so while an accidental od might turn out to be COD, the unrelieved pain drove him to those meds.

i am fine with the headline as is.

Doesn't make it any less misleading or dishonest.

that in the immediate, no one actually dies from chronic pain. it was to make the point that the pain possibly led to a misuse of meds rather than him being a pill popper who wanted to get high.

untreated pain is a big problem and is causing many deaths like this

Dishonest is correct.

Let me say that once again: Chronic pain is a DISEASE.

Either that or Insurance companies are disallowing treatments that cure the reason for the pain in the first place. It's a tad confusing to comprehend, isn't it?

One would think that pain just does not occur out of the wild blue yonder without a reason. That for every pain, there is a reason. I.e., bone rubbing on bone, nerves pinching, a blood or fluid build-up unable to traverse it's way through the vessels of our bodies in a normal way, a fracture, etc. etc. etc.

It doesn't matter if insurance companies are standing in the way of treating the underlying reason for the chronic pain, or if it is organized religion that is standing in the way of a blood transfusion, chronic pain must be treated. A patient shouldn't be allowed to just suffer.

This is 2016. No one should suffer with chronic pain.

with no stop ever, it is hard to understand. Add to that worried doctors who are afraid to treat the pain realistically and you can forget anyone else truly understanding. When you can only 3-4 hours sleep each night due to the pain and still have to get up and go to work, day after day trying to concentrate on what you are doing without biting off people's heads, you might start to understand.

When pot can take away the pain for a few hours of relief and sleep, but you cannot take it because it is illegal in your state, you tend to get very angry. You also cannot take it because the insurance company insists that your doctor drug screen you almost every visit to hopefully catch you with a "dirty" test to avoid paying for your treatment. You also get really mad when some politician says it needs more study to see if it works!

Americans in general have little empathy and are quick to judge things they know little about, until it happens to them!

I can tell you this article is spot on about the racial angle too. If someone like Prince couldn't get fair treatment, let alone effective treatment, what does that tell you? And what about those of us without insurance? We have so much work to do. So much to do.

the media? or his doctors? unless I'm missing something, the article alleges the former, not the latter. the article's ancillary data about racial bias in medicine in tangential - there's no evidence yet that his doctors under-prescribed for his chronic pain levels.

if I may speculate:

he had a Percocet prescription. if you take too many and die, or combine it with other opiods or drugs you don't tell the doctor about, and die, you most definitely died of an overdose - and most are accidental (i.e. all the celebrities listed). it wasn't "we" that did it to him.

the only other people with any conceivable role in it were the staff that left him alone with his drugs at 8 pm the night before a drug counselor was due to arrive, 2 days after he'd already overdosed and was revived with Narcan.

it was not the collective "we" that pushed other celebrities over the precipice. that's some next level blame spreading.

And the racial bias is real. Personal experience talking here, nothing tangential about it.

To clarify, my comment was written outside the context of the thread, I responded to the OP only. As for all the speculation and controversy, I really don't care. I'm just sad he's gone. His medical use or recreational abuse, or what have you, of drugs is none of my business. That's his family and loved ones' stuff, not ours. I'd rather honor his life than think about his death anyway.

But bullshit. And, before anyone goes after me for not knowing, a little history from this disabled 53 year old:
-Played football younger and broke plenty of bones, shoulder and knee leading to surgeries
-Multiple concussions from football and boxing
-Injuries from extreme skiing
-Involved in explosion in 2009 that led to hearing loss, TBI and a very rare brain vascular condition where the vessels constrict and cause strokes out of the blue
-Lower back problems
-Slipped vertebrae in the neck. Not a disc but the bones themselves have become dislocated and have slipped resulting in pinched spinal cord. You don't know pain until you deal with that shit. Will face major surgery this summer for that
-Frequent kidney stones docs cannot figure out

What do I take for pain? Aleve and fucking deal with it most days. Sometimes, VERY RARELY, I take vicoprofen. I got a 90 pill prescription before we set sail this December in the Caribbean and still have like 70 something left. I deal with the pain and go forward with life. Anyone who uses the excuse they have to have a chemical to make it through life has other issues and uses pain as an excuse, IMHO. I have spent many nights crying instead of sleeping because of pain. It would be so easy to give in and take an opiate all the time because it does mask the pain, but then I'm worthless and just kind of drool through the life I have. At least I can still enjoy life, yes even through the pain, without it being masked by some chemical.

Oh, and I only went on social security disability and quit work in 2014. Sorry, but, like I said, there is more wrong with these people deep down who give in to addiction to cover their pain.

I'm sure the hate will come now

I'd gladly trade with you.

My problems. Not being able to use my left arm due to the strokes and shitting myself every couple days because of nerve problems are minor. Yeah, right.

am finding it repellent as it is pure conjecture that Prince died from the effects of pain killers. The sheer volume of these reports turns conjecture into a received "fact" as usual, however. I heard one report (I think on NBC's Nightline) that talked about Prince's death alongside those of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Heath Ledger who both overdosed on heroin. Was also disgusted by the op ed that Jamie Lee Curtis got published in the Huffington Post. She talked about her own addiction to pain killers and even though she said she couldn't be sure that this was also true of Prince, the op ed clearly communicated that everyone just knows that this is the case. Opioid addiction is a hot topic in the "popular discourse" (which means mainstream media) right now and a lot of people are jumping on the bandwagon to anoint Prince as the current poster child for the problem. Nobody deserves this after he or she is gone and can't respond.

much pain that it actually killed him.

It must have been unbearable pain when you think of people who have been tortured, horrible burns, etc - and still have not died from it.

ref: the late Michael Jackson, another victim of this same sort of sh*t.

May both of them Rest in Peace!

He died of his treatment of his pain, not the pain itself.

I do not judge him.

This article minimizes opiate abuse.