one woman’s journey navigating a new normal
Macy’s new book “Raising Lazarus” focuses on many of the same themes she covered in her book “Dopesick”, but with an important new addition. She recognizes that opioid hysteria and fear of addiction went too far, depriving many people in pain of the medications they need to lead functional and productive lives.
People with Intractable Pain Syndrome (IPS) experience major health problems throughout their lives because of the physical and psychological toll that pain takes on the brain and body. Treatment for this complex and disabling condition must be taken seriously and done correctly.
Every day, our Research and Education Projects hear from persons with a serious pain problem who can’t obtain enough relief. There are multiple reasons, but a major one is that they are trying to relieve their pain with oral opioids. It appears to us that there is a gross misunderstanding and ignorance about the inability of oral opioids to ever provide good pain relief in many persons who have Intractable Pain Syndrome (IPS).
All Intractable Pain Syndrome (IPS) patients have nerve damage somewhere in their brain, spinal cord, or nerves. Consequently, IPS patients will either need extra GABA or a GABA surrogate to force damaged nerve tissue to correctly function and relieve pain.
On the good days when our pain level is low, we try to catch up on doing all the things we couldn’t do when the pain was bad the previous day. But this can cause a flare-up and the natural response is to rest or take a pain medication. Once the pain eases, we might try again, only to repeat the pattern of overactivity, flare-up, rest, easing of pain, then overactivity.
You Don't Look Sick Blog 