By wendy, on September 6th, 2011%
 Map of Washington State's physical terrain, made by the USGS using their NED dataset. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) By Wendy Burnett
An Open Letter to Washington State Legislators
Dear Legislators,
I understand your desire to reduce accidental overdoses and diversion of prescription pain relievers, but these new regulations are not the way to do it.
Doctors are already abandoning their chronic pain patients, dumping patients who have a legitimate need for opiod pain medications because the new regulations will make it impossible for them to prescribe desperately needed medications without risking their careers and their freedom; and leaving themselves open to malpractice suits every time a patient makes a bad decision and accidentally kills themselves with their medication.
Many hospitals, emergency departments, and clinics have adopted strict anti-opiod policies; so you better pray to whatever god you believe in that you don’t have a car accident and get taken to one of these emergency rooms. If you do, you won’t get pain treatment that works . . . Continue reading Washington State’s Restrictive Regulations Will KILL Pain Patients »
By wendy, on July 18th, 2011%
By Wendy Burnett
Have you ever wondered how safe the medications you take really are? Dr. Bremner’s book is a scary expose’ of how far pharmaceutical companies will go to protect their profits and keep you from finding out about the real dangers of the medications they make. His experience as a researcher, psychiatrist and speaker for the pharmaceutical companies has given him an insider’s view of how drugs are marketed; as well as how their dangers are minimized and hidden in the name of sales.
Dr. Bremner shares the story of his research into the acne drug Accutane, an almost miraculous treatment for severe acne. He describes Hoffman – La Roche’s attempts to prevent the study, their adamant denials of any possibility that it could cause suicidal depression in some patients, and their desperate efforts to discredit him and his findings.
I was so fascinated (and horrified) once I started reading that I finished the book in a single day. Continue reading Review: The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg »
By wendy, on August 11th, 2010%
The latest ChronicBabe carnival is up and ready to go . . . Lots of points of view and helpful information about dealing with doctors, etc. is available for your reading pleasure.
By wendy, on July 14th, 2010%
 Some of the fireworks I missed while in the hospital. I just had the most awful holiday weekend EVER, thanks to my fibromyalgia, not having had insurance in two years, and the prejudice in the medical field against those living with chronic pain.
I got up last Friday(July 2) to start getting ready for work, and started passing huge amounts of fresh, liquid (and very red) blood. Naturally enough, that scared the hell out of me, and when it happened for the fourth time in an hour-and-a-half, I called in sick and headed to the emergency room at our local hospital. Since I wasn’t sure if it was related to one of my pre-existing conditions, and the insurance through my husband’s job doesn’t cover those for another couple of weeks (they have one of those clauses that says they won’t pay claims related to anything that was diagnosed before your coverage started for the first twelve months,) I went to the charity/teaching hospital, just in case it turned out not to be covered.
My first mistake was having the hubby drop me off, rather than calling an ambulance, assuming that even as a walk-in patient I would be seen within a reasonable length of time. (I guessed that it would take three to four hours to see a doctor, since I was bleeding, but it wasn’t VISIBLE. Boy was I ever wrong.) I arrived at the ER at approximately 2 PM Friday afternoon, and was FINALLY moved to a treatment room at 3 AM Saturday morning. That’s THIRTEEN hours of sitting in the waiting room, hoping I wouldn’t bleed to death before they got around to seeing me and watching people who came in after I did get treated and released because they didn’t need a “trauma room.” Continue reading Hospitals, Unfamiliar Doctors, and Fibromyalgia: What’s Your Experience? »
By wendy, on January 29th, 2010%
Who can you trust with your health? For those who are healthy, that isn’t much of an issue. Almost any doctor is capable of treating a cold, a cut, or a sprained ankle without making you sicker. For those of us with chronic health issues, this is a more important question, whether we realize it or not.
I spent years assuming anyone with a medical degree could be trusted to do what was best for my health, Continue reading Who Can You Trust with your Healthcare? »
By wendy, on January 9th, 2010%
Living with chronic illnesses affects us in so many ways that it’s really impossible to even list them all. Each of us lives within our own little universe of illnesses, symptoms, and needs. The one thing that is the same for every one of us; no matter which diseases, syndromes, or disorders we have; is the need for medical treatment in some form.
Because we frequently have multiple illnesses which affect different parts of our bodies, we may need to see an array of specialists on a regular basis. This quite often causes major complications in our treatment, since many doctors try to treat in a vacuum, ignoring the effect of their medications and recommended procedures on any disorder that is not part of their specialty. Continue reading Managing Your Healthcare Team, Part I »
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"The moral test of a society is how that society treats those who are in the dawn of life . . . the children; those who are in the twilight of life . . . the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life . . . the sick, the needy, and the handicapped."
---Hubert Humphrey
Welcome to the new home of Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired. I hope you'll enjoy the changes, and the new resources I'll be adding as I have time to work on the site. Things will look a bit odd while I learn where and how to modify the appearance, so please bear with me.
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