MountainMornings

I remember when Great Grandma Ada broke my ribs.

We were in Target and she was newly arrived in Nashville; she was rolling along nicely on a motorized red shopping cart, heading towards shorts for Hudson. Suddenly, instead of going backwards, she plowed right into me. I found myself on the floor covered in clothes with red shirted people gathering and gawking. My chest hurt and a foot was aching too, but I managed to walk out of there and straight into an urgent care.

After looking at my chest Xray, the doctor apologized for not being able to prescribe more narcotics! The law had just changed in TN, and the government was trying to control the opioid epidemic by limiting the number of pills a physician could give his/her patient. It wasn’t the first time a doctor had apologized to me for some aspect of care gone wrong – a spinal tap done on my newborn, the path lab mess after an amniocentesis, the West Nile conjunctivitis diagnosis. You can see why I am a skeptical healthcare consumer.

I’ve been thinking about this since I read that two doctors were charged in Matthew Perry’s ketamine overdose death. DO NO HARM takes on new meaning when it pertains to drug addicts. Addiction has touched just about every family I know, including my own. For years we didn’t know where Bob’s middle brother was living, and by the time we intervened and got him into rehab it was too late. He left a couple of days later and died of an overdose just a month before the Rocker’s Bar Mitzvah. He was the sweetest of three brothers, but he was caught in the trap of our medical community with its rules and regs around methadone and a secret underbelly of drug dealers.

And btw, read Barbara Kingsolver’s book “Demon Copperhead” if you’d like to understand Appalachia and the scourge of drug addiction. JD Vance’s book doesn’t hold a candle to Demon.

The Bride told me that ketamine, on its own, would not usually result in death, that Perry’s death was most likely caused by being in a hot tub while also taking a cocktail of drugs including ketamine. Emergency physicians may use ketamine while doing surgical procedures. It supposedly produces a dissociative experience, or as my daughter demonstrated with a whirl of her arms, “The mind separates from the body.” Psychiatrists have started using the drug in treating depression. But why someone would think it was a good idea to abuse ketamine is beyond me, then again, I don’t have an addictive personality… unless you count shoe shopping.

In a combined public and private effort, we have made a dent in the numbers of drug overdoses in our country. By taking drug manufacturers to court, smarter foreign policy measures, enforcing policy at home by stressing treatment, and limiting a doctor’s ability to prescribe narcotics, and of course the availability of over-the-counter Narcan we may be turning a corner. We have life-saving Narcan nasal spray in our house, do you? Oh, and legalizing marijuana nationally would probably help as well.

The new data show overdose deaths involving opioids decreased from an estimated 84,181 in 2022 to 81,083 in 2023. While overdose deaths from synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) decreased in 2023 compared to 2022, cocaine and psychostimulants (like methamphetamine) increased.” https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/20240515.htm

But this all came too late for my brother-in-law.

I spent an hour this past week getting an infusion of Reclast, a bone strengthening drug in the hospital. I sat in a plushy recliner and contemplated the beautiful, verdant landscape outside the picture windows. Except for the occasional bleep from the machine, it was blessedly quiet. Bob sat beside me reading his book on his phone, occasionally the nurse would come in to check on me. Medicare paid for this treatment…

Still, most insurers will not pay for treating the disease of addiction. We are a puritanical country and we expect people to “pull themselves up by their own boot straps.” But this would be like telling me to build my own bones, or telling a diabetic patient to watch what they eat. I read this morning that Matthew Perry paid $55,000 for 20 vials of ketamine. All of his enablers should be held accountable.

And maybe we should all learn to live with a little pain. Yesterday I went to the first Bug’s volleyball game of the season and got hit in the face with a ball during warm-up. My glasses went flying off and I found myself surrounded by kids asking me if I was alright. The Pumpkin and his friends sat in front of me for the rest of the game, my guardians against incoming fouls. Of course, I didn’t cry, until last night’s opening salvo for the DNC.

Also my pearl stringing for Kamala is coming along. Night Night DT

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