Walmart Will Implement New Opioid Prescription Limits By End Of Summer

originally posted by: 3n19m470
a reply to: Phage

it wont let me quote.

Just an FYI. If you wait it will eventually load. Sometimes it takes 30 seconds or so. Pass it on.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
I went to see my Dr. yesterday and doctors are scared because if they get pulled before a review board it will cost them $30k in legal representation just to help prove they did nothing wrong. This comes out of their pockets. Things that will get the feds interest are levels of pain meds that are pretty damn low, patients over that limit doctors have to be able to show why they are on higher levels. For me that meant losing weight, I've lost 10 lbs since my last visit (8% of my total body weight). So after having my medications reduced 4 times over the last year I was given the choice to go back to where I was a year ago. My jaw dropped but I've been seeing the same doc for 10 years and he tries to do what he can to help.

Doctors are under the gun.

I had the same thing happen with my pain management doc. He got pulled in front pf a state review board and while they didn't censure him or do anything to his license, they made him stop doing a couple of treatments that were non narcotic based, which to me seems ludicrous. The end result of that was that my meds got cut almost in half (thanks Chuck Schumer!) because they're making him limit the daily dose to the equivalent of 100 mg of morphine. Like you, I've been under the care of pain management for over a decade. My doctor is awesome and I will genuinely miss the guy when I move out of state. But after 10 years, my tolerance is through the roof. What I take just to get out of bed would kill the average patient who is opiate naïve, so cutting it back by 40% leaves me in constant pain, hence my lack of driving.

As a side note, Wal-Mart isn't the only chain screwing with peoples scrips. Because of how screwed up my hip and spine are, I drastically limit my driving these days and typically can only get to the pharmacy at weird hours because the local CVS is 24 hours. I just called to see if my medication was ready and it is but I can't pick it up for another 5 hours and 20 min because their registers lock them out between midnight and 6 am. My only saving grace is that it's mothers day and my wife isn't heading back to our other house in Maine for a couple more days so I have a ride there in the AM but it just seems really dumb to me to tell me 'yeah, your medication is sitting right here but I cant even get into the system to tell you what it costs under your new insurance'. At this rate I'm going to start growing my own poppies next to my other legal garden friends.

originally posted by: muzzelfuzz
As someone that's been on opiate pain killers for almost a decade this whole war on opiates is only hurting those that need this medicine to have any semblance of a quality life. I've been going to the same Dr for my prescriptions for over 3 years and just last week was informed I would need to find another pain management Dr. I've tried every other available option to try and ease my pain as I'm sure many others have also. Lets see, I've tried all forms of medical marijuana, nerve blocks, physical therapy, electro therapy, every new and old type of injection known to western medicine etc. and nothing except opiate pain meds have even put a dent in my pain. I've had to have DNA testing done to prove that I am not getting high off the high dosage I am currently on and that my body metabolizes these meds at a fast rate. Yet next week I'll be forced to pee in a cup, give my detailed history of all the multiple surgeries, accidents aches and pains etc and made to feel like all of this is my head. I fear the next step will be outlawing these helpful meds and a mass increase in suicide as most can't and won't live with this pain.....if you can call it living. Sorry just venting

Damn what about the withdrawals if you can't find the pain management clinic in time or what if this place won't help you?

originally posted by: intrepid
a reply to: Asktheanimals

Sorry ATA but this abuse is real. I had a tooth out last month and was given a prescription for 20 Oxyneo's. I later asked myself "Why". The pain wasn't that bad. Easily tolerated. Didn't need the meds at all. If doctors are going to throw meds at anyone then there's a problem. Of course there are people that need opiates but by over prescribing so easily it creates a backlash such as this. Not that this will work. people that are abusing opiates will still get their fix. Addicts find ways. Different doctors. Different pharmacies.

Oxyneos for getting a tooth out? ?? That doesn't sound right? That's not even the type of pain this type of drug is used for!!!

originally posted by: TheOnlyBilko

originally posted by: intrepid
a reply to: Asktheanimals

Sorry ATA but this abuse is real. I had a tooth out last month and was given a prescription for 20 Oxyneo's. I later asked myself "Why". The pain wasn't that bad. Easily tolerated. Didn't need the meds at all. If doctors are going to throw meds at anyone then there's a problem. Of course there are people that need opiates but by over prescribing so easily it creates a backlash such as this. Not that this will work. people that are abusing opiates will still get their fix. Addicts find ways. Different doctors. Different pharmacies.

Oxyneos for getting a tooth out? ?? That doesn't sound right? That's not even the type of pain this type of drug is used for!!!

That's my point. It's ridiculous.

originally posted by: riiver
a reply to: intrepid

Wow, where are you located? My family wants to come have dental work done there. We're in SW Missouri and my adult daughter had 5 teeth pulled the other day. 2 had bits of bone hanging onto them and her jawbone was cracked in 2 places...and they didn't give her so much as Tylenol. The said they're no longer allowed to write prescriptions for any kind of pain killer. Unreal.

I just don't believe that any dentist would give Oxyneo's for getting 1 tooth pulled. This is not what the medication is for. It's for moderate to high pain of a long lasting injury or illness (cancer). Not getting a tooth pulled that pain might last for 1 -3 days . A dentist would get his license pulled if he was prescribing this to his patients

a reply to: TheOnlyBilko

You calling me a liar Sparky?

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Too much to say on this subject for time right now, but as long as we continue to speak the truth as in your OP, maybe this will end in a positive way for the non abusers instead of them or us being punished. TY for this thread.

dup post

One more thing, how much have they spent/made in this past year cutting everyone off and sending them to "Pain management"

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
It should be illegal for blanlet policies to be made which override the highly informed opinion of medical staff. What Wal Mart is doing violates the Patients Bill of Rights which requires individualized treatment plans for each person.

I dont shop at wal mart or use their pharmacies. So it wont effect me. But wrong is wrong.

I'm not really sure where I fall on this issue. I just finished living in a very impoverished part of the country (moved out for good last week), I was there for 4 years. Pill mills were invented in that town, and everyone is high on one thing or another. The doctors are all in on it, and give out pain meds because people are addicted and have no treatment options.

Last winter I had severe tooth pain that ended in a root canal. The dentist was so wary about pain meds and not wanting to get another person addicted that I was literally on the floor crying, trying to rip my tooth out with my hands to make it stop. I couldn't do it though because the unberable pain literally shut me down completely when I touched the tooth. So bad I would just become completely incapacitated. After witnessing that, they gave me a 4 day supply of Oxy and no more (the tooth surgery was 3 weeks away)

Pain meds need some real reform. It's important to not create new addicts, and we shouldn't be giving these medicinations out to addicts. But at the same time they do fill a medicial need.

In a town like the one I was living in, I think Walmart participating would do more good than harm. Too many buy unneeded opioids through them.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
a reply to: intrepid

i turn down opiates. because when the day comes that i need them, i want a documented history of declining them when I make a demand.

I was the same way. Always turned them down, then the day came where I needed them for some short term relief and it was denied. The dentist literally told me they had no proof I wasn't a recent addict.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

The people who will suffer most are those with chronic, intractable pain. There are some conditions for which there is no surgery and no alternative to opiate derivative medications. I have had a swollen spinal cord for 10 years and after surgery to remove bone from the back of my cervical vertebrae the swelling was supposed to go down. It didn't. The doctors didn't believe I was in pain until I had dropped from 150 lbs. to 125 over 3 months. I was not even slightly overweight. That was my summer from hell.

That is exactly what happened to me about 10 years ago.

After months of agony and countless visits to all kinds of doctors - GP, Neurologists, Orthopedic specialists and even a chiropractor, I finally went to see a neurosurgeon whom I knew. He had operated on my son the year before after he was hit in the head playing baseball which caused a nasty subdural hematoma. He ordered an MRI which clearly showed cervical stenosis in 3 vertebrae. It was inoperable and so he put me on opiates as that is the *only* effective treatment for nerve pain.

Because it had taken 8 months to finally diagnose, the nerves in the spinal cord itself became damaged (nerve tissue takes months to heal) and the pain had ratcheted way, way up. The only way to knock it down was to prescribe four 80mg Oxycontin pills for 2 weeks, then five 30mg Oxycodone's for 2 weeks and finally five 10mg Percocets a day. I was on this daily regimen for 2 years before the pain finally abated enough for me to slowly work the dosage down and to finally stop taking opiates completely.

I still get flare-ups about twice a year which requires me to take opiates for a month or so.

I feel your pain AsktheAnimals - both figuratively and literally.

The fun never ends, does it?