chronic pain | Loudoun Progress

At the Vietnam wall of remembrance

We have had another Memorial Day and remembered the sacrifice of the men and women who served this nation.

But we really should be doing a lot more than simply – “remembering them.”

We must do better and demand that our elected and appointed officials “do something.”

My late uncle, Charles Flannery, served in the armed forces led by General Patton when the Allies attacked by way of Sicily, landing on the beaches of Italy.

Charles was shot in the chest, lifted off his feet, spun around, knocked unconscious, and taken prisoner. He returned home quite emaciated.

Years after the war, Charles died in a hospital in the Bronx that, according to my elders, refused to give him more blood, to save him from that earlier chest wound.

Ours was one family, as young as I was, that resented the nation’s unfulfilled promise to our Uncle Charles.

Our nation has been long on promises to vets when leaving our shores to serve our nation abroad, and quite uneven, often indifferent, falling way short to meet their needs, upon their return home broken and damaged by their service at war.

One clear indication of how we are currently failing our service men and women is the statistic that we lose so many soldiers upon their return to suicide. Continue reading →

Arguing that a chronic pain patient is not a criminal for taking his meds

I have argued for the right of patients with relentless and chronic pain to get relief – and that means pain killers including opioids.

I have represented pain doctors who are healing not dealing when they prescribe pain killers to chronic pain patients.

But we have a national campaign and citizens up in arms who are endangering those in pain –because there is no nuance in their anti-pain medication campaign.

There’s pain in America — and our government is making it worse certain that pain medication can only cause addiction, when dependence on medication is not the same thing as addiction, and relief from pain is all that stands between many people and suicide.

We have politicians across the nation, who know less about the medical science than my Jack Russells, arguing that we must withhold opioids from chronic pain patients, despite the fact that this medication allows these men and women to function.

I was a federal prosecutor in New York in the “war against drugs” in the 1970s, along with then AUSA Rudy Giuliani, and we fought the good fight against drugs. We were chasing organized crime drug kingpins who were importing hundreds of kilos of pure heroin. We thought we were doing more than just imprisoning bad guys. We now know that taking these drug kingpins off the street did little to push back drug use in this nation.

Now we are chasing pain patients and their doctors. Continue reading →

Loudoun Progress

Tag Archives: chronic pain

Remember Vets – By Doing Something!

We Hurt Those We Claim to Help