A friend who has been suffering a chronic and disabling illness asked if I would take her to her pain doctor’s office today to pick up prescription pain medicine. I discovered that medicines of this nature must be given personally from the doctor to the patient. Once she had a hard copy of the prescription a pharmacist was to come over and pick it up and fulfill it and return it to the assisted living facility where she lives.

I left the house around 9am, picked her up with wheel chair and got to the doctor’s office around 10am. As soon as we pulled up to the Pain Doctor’s office a secretary was waiting for us outside the office and told us the Doctor had discharged her, would not see her and we had to leave. My friend sat up in the back seat where she had been lying down and asked if she could talk to the Doctor. The receptionist said No and if we did not leave immediately she was going to call the police. We pulled into a nearby parking lot and my friend via her cellphone tried to find out what was happening.

Her home visitation nurse was not available and her caseworker, who knew about the medication script pickup, did not know what happened. She called her general doctor who monitors her health. He said he had not heard from the pain doctor but we should go to Froedert Hospital Emergency Room. This was upsetting to both of us, my friend who knows that ER’s means a long waiting time and for me that was hoping to get home in the morning.

Once in ER she was seen quite quickly and before too long we were in an ER room being seen by a Physician Assistant, PA, and telling him the story. He looked up the pain doctor’s information and said he would call her and come back. While he was gone I found out the pain doctor was a Ph.D, not a medical doctor, but had the ability to write prescriptions for narcotic medicines. My friend also told me that she had just visited her a few days ago. She waited for over four hours but got a prescription for a new pain killer. My friend lives in an assistant living and the pharmacist came to her with the new prescription.
However, she had a reaction to the medicine and the pharmacist came to retrieve it. That is how the appointment this morning came about.

Eventually the PA returned and said the pain doctor admitted she had told my friend to come this morning to pick up the script for a pain killing medicine that bring her some relief while they explored other options. However, she said that someone from the assistant living place had called to say my friend had woke about 1:30am to take more medication and seem heavily sedated and needed help going back to bed. Therefore she would not give her more medicine out of fear she would be over medicated. My friend explained to the PA she wakes up regularly at about 1:30 to take more medicine, and on occasion, like last night, needs her assistant to come in and get her back in bed. The PA explained that only the pain doctor could prescribe narcotic medicines. He also saw in her record that over the years she had seen a number of pain doctors seeking relief. He thought the story of the pain doctor was unusual but there was nothing he could do about it. He went out to call her general doctor who had told her to go to ER.

While he was gone this time my friend was able to get to the assistant in the home who had helped her to bed at 1:30AM. The reception was bad but he did clearly say he did not call the pain doctor. When the PA came back he said her general doctor who had been her doctor for a long time said he had made an error sending her to this ER since he was not an attending doctor in this system. He had thought the pain doctor was in this system but she was not. Again it came down to the fact that only the pain doctor, who now said she was dismissing my friend as a patient, could only made the decision to give her the medication she was seeking. My friend explained that she had no pain medication in her now and the pain was growing worst. The PA said he understood our frustration but there was nothing he can do about it but give her a general shot, one she has many times before, and send her home. He recommend the pain clinic at this hospital, a place where my friend had been some time ago, after her stroke, but there had been no follow up. A nurse came in and gave her the shot and fifteen minutes later came back to say she was being released. My friend again explained she was suffering severe pain and needed something but the nurse said she was sympathetic but there was nothing she could do and she would come back with the release instructions. I helped my friend get her coats and hats on and into her wheel chair. The ER nurse came back with the release orders which mainly consist of the pain clinic at the hospital and resource for new general doctor who would be able to operate in this hospital’s system.

All the time my friend was working her cell phone with calls and text trying to get help. It is her persistence to find a cure for the severe pain that has kept her going all these years. However, we were defeated for now and I took her back to assistant living situation. She was still working the phone and texting try to get some relief for her pain. She was suffering while I had been inconvenience. After six hours I was driving home wondering if the experience of the day was penance for my sins and faults or was I just building up more grace? Maybe it was both!

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