First, I want to say that I absolutely love my pain management doctor. He’s an extremely well trained and respected doctor who really cares about his patients. I can always tell when it’s not good news for me when he walks into the exam room, because it visibly hurts him to be unable to help his patients.
I have fibromyalgia, arthritis everywhere, torn and bulging cervical vertebrae, and had a total replacement of my left knee. I haven’t done the right knee yet, which I’m afraid to even think about.
Earlier this year my doctor explained that he was required to reduce my pain medications. I was shocked. He explained that new opioid prescribing guidelines were requiring patients to be reduced across the board, regardless of their condition. My pain medication was cut by a third and I wasn’t happy about it at all. Especially when I’ve signed a pain contract, never went to any other doctors seeking meds, followed their procedures, taken drug tests, etc.
Since the weather was warm, I figured I had time to adjust to the lower dose before it started getting colder. Little did I know, this was only the beginning.
A few months later, the doctor had the same face and the same news. I had to be reduced again. Now I’m only getting about half the Percocet and morphine I was getting before. I could barely manage my pain in cold rainy weather even with the old doses.
I’ve gone from being a mostly well-managed pain patient to a woman living with the very real fear of one day going in and being told that I am not going to get any pain meds. Just take some aspirin and deal with it.
In addition to the two opiates, I also take gabapentin, a muscle relaxer and Celebrex to offset the reduction in opioids. They don’t work!
I have done nothing wrong, yet I’m being treated as an addict or criminal. I’ve been seeing the same pain management specialist since 2011. They know me. I don’t abuse my meds, I take them as instructed and never had anything wrong with my drug screens. And yet I’m still being punished.
I’ve been out of work since 2017 and just got my medical retirement approved. I wasn’t able to work even at my old dose. There have been emotional issues to contend with as well, like the sudden death of my husband.
Why are politicians making healthcare decisions for patients? Don’t they know that this is going to cause the exact problem that they’re trying to avoid? People who have been at the same doses for years who are suddenly not getting what they need will be desperate. They’re going to resort to dangerous street drugs mixed with who knows what. Or risk breaking the law and use cannabis. They have no choice.
Yes, there is an opiate epidemic. I don’t disagree with that. But chronic pain patients are being treated as addicts. They’re being mandated into forced reduction by politicians, not doctors.
This must be dealt with another way or the statisticians will have another number to deal with: Suicides by pain patients who are unable to get relief. We would never limit insulin to a diabetic or heart medications to someone with heart disease. But it’s okay to keep cutting pain medications because they’re dangerous?
The black market street drugs have not been reduced at all. Just the legally prescribed pain meds. The war on drugs isn’t against the illegal side. The real war is against people in pain.
fun game: if u listen to a weird variety of things reblog this with 3 bands u like that are completely different from each other and probably shouldnt even be in the same library
also half the people on this post………. y’alls picks are in the whole ass same genre wyd
Like, I already wrote a post on this, but Alec was a shitty father at best.
There’s a lot of options where Ryder can go “we weren’t close” but where is the unapologetically hating Alec?
None of this “my dad” stuff; Alec isn’t a father to Ryder, he’s just Alec, and that’s the only thing Ryder ever calls him.
When he pulls you aside to talk about your sibling, you can’t say “s/he dies, and it’s on you” because he’s the one who dragged you to this galaxy in the first place.
When Liam says “you sound like your old man”, Ryder mutters “don’t insult me like that.”
And then you arrive at the Nexus, and Ryder’s just throwing curses, and wishing Alec was alive so they could punch him, and they just start yelling, “He fucking ignores me my entire life, and then pulls this shit?”
Or when Cora says “what the hell was he thinking”, Ryder can’t snap back, “I don’t know, he didn’t ask me” or “You know him better than I did Lieutenant” or make a bitter joke on Alec being hellbent on ruining their life, and later Cora says “he was right to make Pathfinder instead” Ryder responds “No, he wasn’t! This was my life, and Alec didn’t have the goddamn right to make this decision for me!”
Or later after Ryder Family Secrets, Ryder bitterly remarks to Cora after she talks about how great he was “You clearly have no idea what kind of man Alec really was.”
Drack pretty much earns their friendship for life when they criticize Alec for giving an AI that much access to their own child, and Ryder’s just glad to hear someone else say how fucked up it was for Alec to do that.
Vetra and Ryder bond over their fathers’ fuck-ups coming back on them, ruining their careers and making sure they weren’t welcome anywhere, and having to take care of their siblings.
Ryder wants to sympathize when Liam and Suvi when they talk about missing family, but they really can’t because they don’t know what it’s like to have a father who loved you.
Gil brings up “Alec died for you” and they snap “yeah, and then he hooked an AI to my skull, and I almost died anyway.”
When their sibling wakes up, and they ask “you’re the Pathfinder?” And Ryder mutters “Alec’s final ‘fuck you.’”
And then, shit, man, it’s a bad day to be kett or raiders when Ryder finds out their mother is alive, because SAM Node was almost reduced to circuits.
They bring their sibling to Ellen, and Ryder promises themselves that they will never be Alec and that if he was still alive, they swore they’d kill him, and there is no amount of saving them that could undo what Alec had done.
Just…where is hating Alec, because holy fuck, he deserves it.
I understand where op is coming from with this, but I have to say that ones opinion on Alec seems to stem from what one believes a good father to be.
You see, my father has always been a closed off man. He doesn’t often say I love you or share emotions at all and he’s a workaholic. Most of my childhood I would spend my time at his job with him, or he’d be gone working a tournament. To most that seems like a semi-abscent father, but my father was raised in the 50’s to him this is just what you do.
Even through this I knew my father loved me. He didn’t have to say it for me to believe it. Often times when he went out of town he’d come back with books he thought I’d like, sometimes he’ll send me random text with out of focus pictures of birds and asks me to identify them because it’s something we both enjoy, and just because he doesn’t agree with some of the things I do he still accepts me.
I feel like Alec is this kind of father, and to most people it isn’t what they see as a good father. For example, Ryder’s twin openly hates Alec. Often cursing him and his actions. Ryder seems to be a bit more understanding to me. Alec was doing his job; everything he did was for his family, even if it didn’t seem like it. When he sacrifices himself for Ryder and makes them pathfinder I think it’s a major show of trust. He knows Ryder is up for the task.
Just because Alec is distant and neglects to show a lot of affection doesn’t make him a bad father. Yeah, when he creates SAM and it ruins his kids careers it’s a horrible thing, but to me he is the person who would have hated himself for it, and when they came to Andromeda there is no real moment that says the twins didn’t decide to do it themselves. Not that I’ve experienced that is.
I think Alec is a different kind of father than most people expect. In my opinion I think he’s okay father, he could have done more, but he’s not horrible for it.
I remember my wife often saying how exhausting it was for her to have to tell me what to do all the time. It’s why the sexiest thing a man can say to his partner is “I got this,” and then take care of whatever needs taken care of.
I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.”
But she didn’t want to be my mother. She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.
She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.
I wish I could remember what seemed so unreasonable to me about that at the time.
It’s not just about equal division of labor. It’s also about, “this thing is important to her. If he ignores it, he’s saying that what she wants is irrelevant to him.”
And that’s a guy saying, “I’m only spending time with you because it’s pleasant for me.” He’s already decided what’s “really” important, and her input is not welcome.
If he won’t do the dishes and laundry, he’s looking for fun, not a partnership. And his “leftist” ideals will be the same–something he studies because it’s interesting to him; a form of activism that he thinks will bring him a better life. If he can’t do household tasks that matter to a person he loves, he sure as hell can’t support policies that help people whose struggles he doesn’t even acknowledge are real.
The salarians in ME3 seem really focused on the world post-Reaper War. They’re really thinking long term, while everyone else is more or less saying “who cares if it goes downhill in a few centuries? let’s solve our bigger problem now!” I suppose the salarians are so scared of what the krogan could do, it makes sense that they wouldn’t have this “yolo” attitude. It’s just interesting because they have such a short lifespan. You would think krogan and asari would think more like this.
I think the salarians being aware of krogan repercussions later on, makes sense, but I also wonder if their attitude is because their lifespans are so naturally short? Species like the asari and krogan are used to having time, & the threat of the reapers completely rattles that up for them. Salarians on the other hand are probably already pretty used to planning things out across generations & are probably pretty meticulous about it, they’d have to be to ensure things are actually carried out properly. I want to say it was Cora? Who said something along the lines of an asari planting the seeds for something and not seeing results until she was a matriarch a few centuries later, and then all of the sudden it’s a very real possibility that they may not have those centuries to wait.
Yeah, agreed. I think the salarians are actually more likely to plan out for generations than krogan or asari–culturally they had to do that to play ball with the asari, who hold the real galactic power. To have any hope of not being steamrollered, salarians would have to plan out for *twenty five* lifetimes to an asari’s single life. The asari have the luxury of direct experience and learning, and an individual can draw on that to respond to whatever circumstances they find themselves in. Salarians have to raise a whole new generation every couple decades and teach them how to be people before they can join in. They have to pass everything down in a game of telephone and trust that future generations will follow through, see the pattern, and agree and continue the plan they have to the end game. None of that is guaranteed.
Captain-Radioactive-Mentality 