The constant tiredness I can live with. That’s quasi-normal for a narcoleptic anyway. It’s the way I’ve got a semi-permanent low-grade headache and feel like my head’s been stuffed with cotton wool that I hate most. It totally screws with my reaction time and perceptions
So yeah, the DEA can collectively fuck itself with a cactus. Without the medications they’re so keen to keep the rest of us away from in case someone decides to use them for fun instead of controlling a debilitating condition.
The DEA can have the VA for a “dance partner.” I’ll go in on a bigger cactus with you.
Reminds me of my worst VA ER experience. I was in pain from a (thankfully) short term, but bad, upper back injury. The pain had kept increasing until it was actually beginning to interfere with my breathing. The punk-intern lied straight to my face. “We’ve done all we can…”
I actually held out my (trackless) arms. “I know that’s untrue. I’m no junkie, run any test you want.”
Eventually (48 hours+), exhaustion and larger than recommended doses of non-prescription pain meds at home (supervised by a CNA relative) got me to sleep.
Here’s hoping the powers-that-be don’t protect us all to death!
Ugh. That totally sucks, Hans. I’d love to see these pettifogging pieces of shit trying to deal with the stuff we deal with on a regular basis. They’d shit themselves, possibly before they collapsed into a weeping mess.
Early in the Obama administration, the government banned the manufacture of all the asthma medications that helped me. It was OK for me to breathe them directly in to my lungs, but if I breathed back out, I would destroy the ozone layer.
The government’s ban of medications to people who are helped by them is unbelievably cruel
You’re not wrong. Chronic conditions are miserable enough without deliberately making them harder for the people trying to live with them.
I’m guessing you probably have already, but just in case – have you been checked for sleep apnea? That sounds a lot like me before they gave me a CPAP machine.
Yeah, I have. More than once – being narcoleptic I get the lovely sleepiness without sleep apnea. The sleep clinic checks for sleep apnea every few years when they rerun the sleep tests to check that everything is still working correctly.
It would seem you have coined a wonderful phrase.
I intend to appropriate it and use it as often as appropriate, and sometimes when especially inappropriate.
Thank you, sir! I appreciate your appreciation, and you are most welcome to appropriate and reuse it wherever you see fit.
Kate, you’re assuming that government agencies give a rat’s patootie what their rules and regulations do to regular folks. They don’t care. Not one little bit. I’m starting to run into the same problem with getting pain meds to deal with a severely arthritic hip and lower back because of the opioid hysteria sweeping the country like what you’ve hit with your narcolepsy meds. They just flat don’t give a rip about the consequences of what they do to us.
Best of luck in dealing with it, but don’t expect anything to change. Not for the better anyway.
No, they don’t care. This is why I don’t like have unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of things like the medications people need to be able to have a halfway decent quality of life.
To them we’re just numbers in a balance book somewhere. If our doctors screw us over, we can at least find ourselves another one.
Idiot bureaucrats need a pointed reminder that *we* are their bosses. If they don’t figure it out soon, I fear they’ll be learning by the time honored method involving rope, lampposts and a little self-assembly.
“Unelected bureaucrats are running our lives.” That’s the title of Glenn Reynolds’ USA Today column this week.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/06/12/unelected-bureaucrats-running-our-lives-glenn-reynolds-column/102750080/
Yes, indeed they are. And this is yet another example of it.
No Kate, fuck all over schooled undereducated governmental
fools who think all the peasants are too stupid or to lazy to be trusted to take care of themselves. And as an extra, the same to all those who believe that just because someone is highly
schooled (“educated”) that they know what they are talking about.
You can ignore reality , but (as your head can attest) you cannot
ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
Amen to that, jim! I’m a damn sight safer to all concerned when I’m properly medicated. I can’t *afford* to just stay home until the meds arrive, so I’m driving to/from work and taking extra care about it.
Of course, it’s the same kind of pettifogging bureaucratic bullshit that killed a paraplegic friend of mine. She ultimately died from an infection she couldn’t get rid of – which she couldn’t get rid of because the authorities decreed she didn’t need enough single-use catheters to use once. So she had to try to sterilize them for re-use and kept re-infecting herself.
I’d guarantee her stays in ER (averaging 2-3 weeks a year) cost them more than enough bloody catheters would have. But do they look at it that way? No…
So busy looking for the dropped penny they miss the hundred dollar bills flapping in the breeze.
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” 
- Thomas Sowell
I had a close friend killed by a double dose of government stupidity. He lived on the East coast of FL. A cousin of his on the West coast of FL had a heart attack. So he went to stay at the cousin’s place while the cousin was in the hospital. So, the first dose of government stupidity occurred at this point: there was contamination of the fresh water supply caused by there being no back flow preventers at the sewage treatment plant. Back flow preventers are simple and inexpensive devices that would have prevented this contamination. Government stupidity dose number 2 involved some government idiot being unable to read the piping map and determine that the complex where the cousin lived was affected by the contamination. So they weren’t notified of the boil water order. My friend was one of 6 people to die of the contamination. None of the idiots involved in either of these doses of stupidity lost their jobs. There is a lawsuit, but even if it is won, the idiots involved won’t lose a dime, it will be the taxpayers of the county that lose out. One final irony: my friend was a master plumber and was instrumental in the county were he lived on the East coast requiring back flow preventers.
They won’t care until we are able to MAKE them care by actually being able to hold them accountable. In my friends case, 6 convictions for negligent manslaughter might help encourage whomever replaces these idiots to do a better job.
Oh, hell. I’m sorry to hear that. IT completely sucks.
No, they won’t care until we can hold them accountable. A few convictions for negligent manslaughter just might prevent a much larger round of conviction and rough justice.