The Dangers of Being an “Un-Informed Pain Patient!!” Getting Familiar With Your Pain Pills: It Could Save Your Life!
Lately, I find myself writing articles on subjects having nothing to do with war crimes and the Balkans. But they are just as important; reading it could save your life. That is, if you are an uninformed “pain patient!” Recently, I can really relate to what it feels like being an elderly, disabled senior citizen in America. Why? I personally survive on the American Social Security Administration’s Governmental Income Program for over 20 years now, and, I am a 100% certified “permanently disabled,” by the United States government. Perhaps this is wherefore I became an independent “Democratic voter.” Previously, before becoming disabled, I always prided myself on being “a true blooded Republican.” However, after previous United States President, William Jefferson Clinton, used the NATO, to illegally bomb Serbia and Montenegro (back in 1999), I vowed never to become a “Democrat” again! However, many things changed in my life, after being discriminated against for being permanently disabled, illegally discriminated against, and thrown out of both, the New School for Social Research in New York City, and also, Fairleigh Dickinson University in Hackensack, New Jersey. They say I don’t write well enough to obtain with their greatly coveted, “M.A. Degree.” This so overtly, is untrue. Even my former college professors’ witnessed both colleges dismissing me owing to the matter of fact: (1) The New School for Social research refuses honor the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) considering themselves a private institution although accepting Title Four tax moneys from the U.S. government to fund student’s such as myself. Also, both institutions confess dismissing me privately because of my anti-NATO political opinions in 1999. But this is off topic. The point I am discussing is that, I, Miss Jill Louise Starr, greatly empathizes with elderly American’s, whom like herself, must deal with and take a lot of different medications and/or pills, to survive.  Last week I wrote about the experiences I underwent with the new anti-depressant drug named “Cymbalta” and you can read what I’ve said here at this link-> http://sites.google.com/site/jillstarrsite/the-dangers-of-taking-the-drug-cymbalta-buyer-beware-from-someone-who-almost-died-from-this-drug .” This week I can’t help but write about my recent close experiences with “death” due to being an uninformed pain patient taking both Oxycodone and the Fentanyl pain patch in order to manage uncontrollable pain.
Taking tons of medications just can’t be confusing, it is! Especially, pain patients often, much too often, rely personal health care professionals, to give us up to date lifesaving information regarding medications prescribed us. At very least, those professionals ought offer us the most important information about prescribed medications such as do not drink grapefruit juice and sit in the sun while using a Fentanyl pain patch or you could die by dinner time! Is this asking too much of them? Maybe it is in America because most doctors only receive approximately 10 to 14 hours of pharmaceutical training altogether in medical school! This is especially true being a pain patient possessing other health care problems such as cancer, causing them to take additional medications with their pain medications in order to merely, stay alive. Sometimes taking various medications together can cause death owing to poor interactions between them. I found this out personally last week while taking the newly released anti-depressant drug Called, Cymbalta.  But how many of us really read the entire drug manufacture information insert after picking up our scripts? Usually, the answer is “never!” I never used to, but I certainly do now! Today I want to discuss, Fentanyl. It is not as strong a medication as what killed Michael Jackson, Propofol; but it rates up there on the scale of strongest pain killers. And, remember, Michael Jackson also took Demerol in addition to other pain medications and medicines together. Let us not let his death be in vain!  Getting right to the topic, ever since becoming a pain patient, about six months ago, I’ve been prescribed 30 to 60 mg of Oxycodone every four hours along with Fentanyl pain patches 50 micrograms. Thank goodness because the pain I suffer is not dissimilar from that of a cancer patient; bringing me literally to tears on my knees at times and certainly before I began receiving treatment from my current pain specialist. I can NOT function at all without my, pain medicine!
But, since beginning taking, Fentanyl, although my pain has largely ceased from harassing me, and I normally function again, I’ve literally almost passed out driving, and falling asleep while typing on Facebook and hitting my head on my computer desk have become, daily occurrences! They ought not to be.  Furthermore, I was becoming increasingly curious with each passing day, wherefore after my morning walk, I become so sleepy, I’m totally incapable of staying awake for another hour to type “good morning” to my Facebook friends online before falling asleep until 3pm, or longer. Many of my Facebook friends recently wondered where I have been lately…the answer is simple…I’ve been sleeping; this is why. Last Friday, my egregious sleepiness combined with constant nodding out came to a head when after my morning walk at 7am, and undertaking lots of heavy housework, all of a sudden while IMing my friend on Facebook, I had to tell them, “Nikola, I feel so sleepy and sick, I have immediately sign off and leave owing to my being incapable of keeping my eyes open another moment!” Most certainly my Facebook friend remembers me saying this. I am certain my friend remembers this. Anyway, after signing off of Facebook, I lied down and immediately became dizzy, had increasingly shallow breathing and became nauseous. Having an anxiety attack at this point, I called my pharmacist because I’m extremely familiar with the bad side effects of taking pain medications; this definitely felt it. Actually, it felt more like I was quickly overdosing on pain medications. Remember, I also take up to 60mg of Oxycodone with the Fentanyl pain patch every four hours also; similarly to Michael Jackson’s taking both, Demorol and Propofol, before dying. I also take additional medications i.e., Xanax with my pain medicines. At this point last Friday, I had an anxiety attack! I can’t remember what the pharmacist told me but I hung up from him, immediately calling my close friend, Arnold Stark. Since he knew me and my medications over ten years, I asked him if he thought I ought to call an ambulance, he replied “no Jill, you are merely having an anxiety attack,” telling me to take even more medication. Arnold, suggested I take a one mg Xanax to counter my anxiety attack, so I did. This placed my life in additional danger of drug overdose. For those of you wishing I was dead owing to my writing my, Mladic book, no such luck though; sorry (lol)! I am still alive. I small personal joke. I only felt worse. I didn’t want to do it, but I called my Pain doctor next. I always feel like I am bothering my doctors about something silly and they become annoyed with me when we eventually find out I just had a mere, anxiety attack. This was usually the case. But I called him anyway because I really was scared at the way I felt. He was busy but his nurse asked me what was wrong. I asked her if a person can overdose by perspiring too much because of undertaking heavy housework activity while on the Fentanyl pain patch.
Luckily, before calling her, I decided to read the inner pain patch insert information with all that small fine print about Fentanyl. I discovered from reading it, when using Fentynal, a person can overdose on it, by allowing their body temperature to rise over 100 degrees or so. This can easily occur while cleaning a house and/or jogging in the sun. But the nurse told me inversely, if I was not taking too much of my pain medication, she strongly felt that the way I was feeling, had nothing at all to do with my pain medications. So I was at a loss wherefore I felt like I was having a pain medication overdose last week. Leaving me to my own device, while overdosing on Fentanyl, I immediately returned to reading all of my drug medication informative inserts, discovering all alone, while on Fentanyl, one ought NEVER USE A BAND-AID TO FULLY COVER THE PAIN PATCH IN ORDER TO KEEP IT FROM FALLING OFF WITHOUT IT MELTING INTO YOUR BODY, RELEASING MORE MEDICATIONS THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE AND LEADING TO AN OVERDOSE AND/OR DEATH! There was also all kinds of other important information like one could also overdose within hours if mixing Fentanyl with grapefruit juice, lying in the sun with it, or taking a hot bath! The type of really great information every pain patient needs to know in order to stay alive while managing their uncontrollable pain!! But no one told me. 
In fact, my pharmacist told me, “Jill if you are having trouble keeping the pain patch on, just throw a band-aid on top of it and this will help!” After this experience, I wondered how many cancer patients in the immediate area were going to come as close to death as I did owing to this faulty advice. No need to say that I immediately became aware the problem I was having stemmed from the photo you see above of my placing a band-aid over the patch in order to keep it on! I immediately removed it, or shall I say, I immediately ripped the entire pain patch off of my arm completely! As soon as ripping the pain patch off my arm, I felt almost instantly better! Bare in mind only five minutes prior, I could not keep my two eyes open. Now I was becoming increasingly awake! What a relief for someone accidentally overdosing on Fentanyl!  You can witness for yourselves how melted and overused this patch that was on my arm last Friday looked. Now look at one I wore for two days over this past weekend and it is easy to see the difference.   I quickly recovered from this incident. But are we asking too much of our health care professionals to inform us regarding seemingly something as innocent as this about wearing a pain patch, or taking our other medications that could possibly cause us death? NOT AT ALL! What do you all think?
By Miss Jill Louise Starr (Bloomingdale , New Jersey USA) lpcyu@optonline.net (Send replies to)
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