Misconceptions on Drug Use and Dependency

Pain is unbearable, even for the strongest warrior and soldiers. The measurements health officials put on pain are totally unnecessary if you ask me. Why? Whether the pain is at a 3 or 9 pain remains pain.

Scaling pain

The idea that if the pain is not at least a 6 it does not require a high dose of pain medication is nothing but a facade because. The bottom line remains that all we want is for the pain to go away so we can go on with our normal lives and routines.

I keep telling people that are not warriors that they can never endure the pain we do endure for hours even for a minute. They think it’s a joke. Well, jokes on them because sickle cell pain is not normal pain, it’s a 10,000 times regular pain. Yes, it is! So this is not something to joke about or rate.

You can compare it to broken glass

If you ever got cut by a broken glass then you might be able to picture what it feels like. It feels like broken glasses flowing back and forth in your bones and veins. This is why we can’t wait for the pain to go away and demand the drugs that can do that like morphine, pethidine, or medical marijuana.

The facts

The fact also remains that:

1. Sickle cell disease is a blood disorder that the patient did not cause.
2. Warriors suffer lots of verbal abuse because most people do not understand sickle cell.
3. The pain during a crisis is never learnable so a warrior will want the pain reduced instantly. This explains why one may self-medicate or ask for medications known to have helped in the past.

Unfortunately, other things we must consider include:

1. By law, no sick person is permitted to determine what drugs or dosage to take. Only qualified medical professionals are allowed to diagnose and prescribe drugs following specific procedures. Sometimes a medical person may even seek a second, third or fourth opinion before giving a prescription.
2. If a patient attends to themselves without recourse to a doctor, it is termed self-medication or drug abuse. This refers to all patients including sickle cell patients.
3. Because of the peculiarity of sickle cell, doctors are extra meticulous when attending to them since no sickle cell situation is similar to another. This particularity makes doctors check and recheck a warrior in crisis before confidently issuing a prescription. A good doctor will put such patients on simple over-the-counter medications while investigating and awaiting lab results. Meanwhile, the patient is in pain. They forget that the pain is enough to kill the warrior.
4. Every other piece of knowledge about your condition is only an opinion you share with your doctor. Your doctor may implement your opinion or reject it outright.

The reality

1. There is no way a doctor who only studied sickle cell for a maximum of 10 years would know better than me that has lived with it for 29 years. Experience is the best teacher we were taught.
2. Pain is rated by the patient because only they can really tell the truth about the pain they are feeling. Whether you believe it or not is none of the patient's business. If you are a healthcare provider, your job is to make it go away, full stop.
3. Your right as a doctor ends when the patient is in severe pain. All that matters is for the patient to feel better. Whether you are at your best or worse, you still need to do your job. Your mood should never affect your duty. The number of times you’ve seen a dead body as a doctor should not make you careless. Learn to control your emotions especially around the death of your patients (strong ones you thought had a better fighting chance) to destroy the pledge of service to the people.
4. A survey conducted here on sickle-cell.com shows that 96% of warriors have never experienced drug dependency or abuse.

In as much as I’d like to defend my point till I win, the fact also remains that all the above, although very valid points are not perfect, as both parties could choose to abuse it. Free will is a gift from God but also manipulated by the evil one.