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School gives AS girl razor deliberately to self-harm

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Verdandi
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01 Apr 2013, 5:03 pm

Chloe33 wrote:

Those pain scales are troublesome for me, i they boggle my mind.
Could you get to see a Neurologist for your cluster headaches? Maybe a Neurologist could help?
I need to find a new one here. I am on Medicare and they are of the same opinion that it is drug seeking people. It is sad as i am afraid the hospital people will stereotype me.
Is it possible your doctor is afraid of getting you painkillers as he doesn't want you to get hooked on them?
I could understand that, i have seen people have nasty addictions to them.
There has to be another drug that could help you though, you shouldn't have to suffer...


I think the addiction risk is often overestimated and exaggerated.

Anyway, there are other meds that can help but Medicaid doesn't cover them.

As far as cluster headaches go, I only had the one. I have had migraines for a long time, but not so much in the past couple of years. After the cluster headache, they've just not been happening.



Callista
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01 Apr 2013, 5:58 pm

That's a good thing. Yeah, narcotics might help, but the side effects still put you out of commission--it may handle your pain, but you'll still be sleepy and out of focus. I think that even if you do use them it's probably important to look into other options too because they don't tend to be a workable solution in the long term.

There may be other options. Sometimes muscle relaxants help--the kind they give you for muscle strains and back pain--because they keep tension in your muscles from triggering or prolonging a migraine. Approaching it from an angle other than targeting the pain directly can be quite useful, often to the point that you can use lower doses or over the counter meds.

I've been suspected of drug-seeking behavior myself because I couldn't communicate to my ob-gyn just how much of a problem my menstrual cramps were, nor that I didn't want narcotics to begin with because of the side effects I've already mentioned, which would mean I'd be out of commission once a month either way. I had to get a nurse to help me communicate before I finally agreed to try birth control pills, which are known to decrease the severity of menstrual cramps (but also increase the odds of getting high blood pressure, which they did for me, unfortunately).

Anyway, the moral of that is that when you're trying to manage pain, "get a stronger painkiller" is not the only option, and doctors often don't understand that your actual goal is to decrease the impairment caused by the pain--including impairment caused by the side effects of strong painkillers--rather than just to find some kind of high. I guess it might help to specifically ask whether there are treatments other than painkillers available, which might reduce your need for pain medication.


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XFilesGeek
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01 Apr 2013, 6:15 pm

Callista wrote:
Honestly, I think that issuing a clean razor to a girl with an SI problem, absent any suicidal ideation, is a better response than overreacting and overmedicating or hospitalizing her. I don't think it's the best response, but I believe that this sort of over-pathologization of self-injury is probably one of the worst things you could do. It tells the person that their problems are huge and insurmountable and that they are very sick, and that takes away any feeling of control or competence that they might have--which makes things much worse and leads them to depend on self-injury even more. Instead, you have to empower the person, teach them how to deal with their own problems, and even let them hurt themselves if they need to, provided the medical risk is small. Yes, it's a bad coping mechanism, but it's not the end of the world, and you're not going to solve a self-injury problem by tying a person's hands (medically, socially, or physically) to prevent them from hurting themselves. The only way to solve a self-injury problem is to find a way for that person to not need to hurt themselves.


This.


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Verdandi
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01 Apr 2013, 8:06 pm

Callista wrote:
Anyway, the moral of that is that when you're trying to manage pain, "get a stronger painkiller" is not the only option, and doctors often don't understand that your actual goal is to decrease the impairment caused by the pain--including impairment caused by the side effects of strong painkillers--rather than just to find some kind of high. I guess it might help to specifically ask whether there are treatments other than painkillers available, which might reduce your need for pain medication.


I agree with you - I'm not a fan of painkillers in general. I do make use of them because sometimes they really do help and the drowsiness is less of an issue. I could use something for the really bad flare days. Most days I have flexeril (a muscle relaxer) which helps me sleep despite the pain and it seems to help with the pain as well.

I think I also need to ask for a sleep study, as I use anything and everything on hand that will help me sleep, and my sleep cycle seems permanently fubared.



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02 Apr 2013, 9:45 am

Verdandi wrote:
I think I also need to ask for a sleep study, as I use anything and everything on hand that will help me sleep, and my sleep cycle seems permanently fubared.


I've actually heard of an interesting theory where someone has started using a date rape drug (don't remember which) as a prescription for fibro patients because he thinks that the sleep problems are a central part of fibro. Treating the sleep problems has been making drastic improvement for everything else. It's interesting.

----

For people who self injure how I tend to respond to them is trying to help them redirect the injuring to a manner which is least likely to cause any damage, with "need to work on not needing to later, but not actually causing damage is more important first".

Instead of "you're hitting your head, we need to instantly stop this", "you're hitting your head and have actually managed to give yourself concussion with this, can you do whatever you can in order to hit other body parts instead because they won't give you concussion, and then trying to not need to hit will happen after, rather than everyone forcing you to stop now, and how much you're a bad person for doing it at all"



aquatiger1987
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02 Apr 2013, 7:06 pm

yah, ummm.... putting out matches with fingers is much safer

or punching brick/metal walls

or screaming into a pillow



Verdandi
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02 Apr 2013, 7:43 pm

Tuttle wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
I think I also need to ask for a sleep study, as I use anything and everything on hand that will help me sleep, and my sleep cycle seems permanently fubared.


I've actually heard of an interesting theory where someone has started using a date rape drug (don't remember which) as a prescription for fibro patients because he thinks that the sleep problems are a central part of fibro. Treating the sleep problems has been making drastic improvement for everything else. It's interesting.


I found references to trying to get FDA approval for GHB or something like it that the FDA turned down.



Chloe33
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02 Apr 2013, 10:47 pm

Verdandi wrote:
Chloe33 wrote:

Those pain scales are troublesome for me, i they boggle my mind.
Could you get to see a Neurologist for your cluster headaches? Maybe a Neurologist could help?
I need to find a new one here. I am on Medicare and they are of the same opinion that it is drug seeking people. It is sad as i am afraid the hospital people will stereotype me.
Is it possible your doctor is afraid of getting you painkillers as he doesn't want you to get hooked on them?
I could understand that, i have seen people have nasty addictions to them.
There has to be another drug that could help you though, you shouldn't have to suffer...


I think the addiction risk is often overestimated and exaggerated.

Anyway, there are other meds that can help but Medicaid doesn't cover them.

As far as cluster headaches go, I only had the one. I have had migraines for a long time, but not so much in the past couple of years. After the cluster headache, they've just not been happening.


It might all depend on how strong the narcotics/opiates they give you are and depend on the individual. Everyone is different, however all those who have been addicted or are say what a horrible addiction.

If you take narcotics/opiates on a regular basis (for some people one script is all it takes and they're hooked) some people it may take longer. I had a friend who got pills from her chiropractor and she got hooked after 6 months.

Synthetic opiates might be safer somewhat (they aren't as addicting).
Medicaid should be picking up your meds, are they giving you generics or regular versions? I have had problems with medicaid in the past not picking up Ambien.
However i have Medicare now and they pick up my meds, i have a little copay