Pill Popper

I take pain medication. I have been taking prescription pain medication for probably two years. For most of that time, I was taking the medication maybe once or twice a week, as needed for pain in my hip. Usually I would take it when I got home from work, but mostly I tried to deal with the pain by changing my activities and spending a lot of time laying on my good friend, the heating pad.

I still spend a lot of quality time with my heating pads, three heating pads. At times I use all three to cover all the areas of my body that ache. About 6 months ago, I had a bit of a cold. On Sunday, October 18th, I noticed that my sternum, just the right side, hurt. I thought I had pulled a muscle sneezing or coughing or something. That Monday I still had sinus drainage and my sternum hurt though the pain was starting to expand a little farther under my chest, so I called off work. Tuesday, I got up, got ready, and went to work. By 11, I knew I was in trouble. I was having extreme pain basically exactly where my gallbladder was. By the time I got to Urgent Care, I was in so much pain I could barely see straight. The Nurse Practitioner suggested I go to the ER for quicker test results and I knew there was no way I could drive there. Adam came to pick me up and we made our first of what would be many ER visits for this unexplained upper right quadrant abdominal pain and swelling.

We may finally have an idea what is going on with me, but the last six months has seen me taking more pain medication than I am comfortable with. But, now that I am on medication to keep my nerves from flaring as they have been and have had one round of trigger point injections, I am taking less pain medication.

For six months, I was a pill popper. Now, as then, I am only taking the medication as I need it to keep the pain at a bearable level, but thankfully that means less pills now.

I say all this because of the stigma that has been created around people who take prescription pain medications. Not everyone who takes pain medication is an addict, just as there are many people sitting in casinos all over the world who are not serial gamblers, and people sitting at bars and pubs or stag/hen parties drinking alcohol who are not and will never be alcoholics.

I have been warned by many people and in the warning is implied shame and guilt that I refuse to accept. I've even been told that I might not actually be in pain, it's just the pain medication making me think I am in pain. Again, that might be true for a few, but that is not me and many others like me.

I understand that opiate addiction is a problem, but not every opiate taker is an addict. It would make my day so much easier if those who love me could accept that.

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