This past December, a woman named Jessica Fujimaki died of complications from opioid withdrawal . Her doctor was suspended by the DEA for helping pain patients and she was unable to find another doctor to prescribe her opioids before the lack of adequate and necessary medication killed her. This is a fundamental example of why pain kills.
She is not the first. She will not be the last. Whether it’s suicide from lack of sufficient pain relief ; overdose from using illicit opioids unknowingly laced with fentanyl ; or death from complications due to withdrawal like Jessica Fujimaki — pain patients are dying. People continue to discuss overdose deaths from addiction, as they should, but the plight of the chronic pain community is overlooked so that only addiction related deaths are covered in the news.
How can so many people be dying and it doesn’t make the news? For starters, because of the nature of our condition we often have no energy to properly advocate for ourselves. I have tried to advocate for myself, but even what little I can do is so damn hard. The fact I can’t even post more here is just one example of this struggle.