Graham, a med student and blogger at Over My Med Body, writes about an encounter with a patient in the ER:
“‘I usually get Dilaudid and Phenergan’ [said the patient]. These are the words that start to change my diagnosis from ‘kidney stone’ to ‘drug-seeking.'”
Check out the whole story in Graham’s post, entitled “I Usually Get Dilaudid and Phenergan.”
[via Kevin, MD]
My experience (comparing to the article) is that I do have severe anxiety even with lower body scans and with severe headaches. I’m sure if I were to go to the ER I’d be seen as drug seeking by some : /
Thankfully the meds I’ve had eventually do work and I haven’t had to go to the ER. But it’s a shame that my asking for meds I know that work (as opposed to the 15 or so that don’t) and being a partner in my own health care might threaten some doctors.
I don’t like having to take meds–they don’t even make me “high”–they just help me have a little bit better quality of life.
It find it very interesting to see the ER from a doc’s perspective. It’s easy to forget how often they face the “drug seeker” question in practice when you only deal with it from a patient perspective. Of course, that doesn’t justify the way many of us have been treated, but it’s still good to see things from another viewpoint.
It’s folks like that who give the rest of us a bad name…
wow….
the few times that I have had to go to the ER in extream pain, I was careful not to request a specific med, and just let them give me what they want to give me, for fear them thinking that my pain is “all in my head” or worse, “I’m a pill seaker”.
From the sounds of things, this lady obviously is a pill seaker, but I fear there is more to her story that we don’t know….