T amera Lynn Stewart had been taking prescribed opioids for 12 years to treat her chronic pain, following some cancer-related surgeries. Then one day

How Fear, Misinformation, Stigma Have Devastated US Pain Patients

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2021-05-22 21:00:02

T amera Lynn Stewart had been taking prescribed opioids for 12 years to treat her chronic pain, following some cancer-related surgeries. Then one day in April 2018, her doctor told her he could no longer maintain the treatment that had worked so well for all those years.

I’m so sorry to tell you, but the state law is changing, and your dose was seven times higher than the dose Oklohoma law is going to [permit], Stewart recalled him saying . I have to have your doses reduced by November .

Over the next five months, her dosage was dropped by hundreds of units, measured in morphine milligram equivalents (MME). The consequence: “My health deteriorated so bad,” she said. She developed chest pain “because my heart was not handling the extra pain,” and her blood pressure soared. To address the additional pain caused by the rapid reduction of the single opioid medication, she says she was prescribed five non-opioid drugs and had to see a gastroenterologist due to the cocktail’s damage to her digestive system.

Additionally, her mental health declined. She was unable to provide for her family members the way she’d like. “I basically laid in bed and cried.”

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