One Painkiller Away From Death

Are You One Painkiller Away From Death?

This past week in practice I have heard some rather disturbing stories, unfortunately all of which are true. These disturbing stories revolved around painkillers and death.

The first story one of my patient’s told me was about his uncle. Just before Christmas, his 9 year old niece called his wife and told her that her Daddy was blue and cold and didn’t wake up to take her to school that morning. Unfortunately, as you guessed, he had died. He was only 48 years old, and a single father of a 9 year old. But since he was in a lot of pain he didn’t think twice about popping another pain pill before he went to bed that night. When the coroner saw him, she said it was an inadvertent overdose. What makes this story even worse is that this situation could have been prevented if this gentleman had his core health and didn’t rely on painkillers for pain relief.

This same week another patient came in and told me about her boss. He was within one pain pill of death. It began with low back pain that became severe. His friend gave him some left over heavy duty painkillers his doctor prescribed for him. My patient’s boss went to visit his son and ran out of painkillers. He said he would just deal with the pain since he didn’t want to go to the doctor. That night he woke his son up and said, “the pain is too severe take me to the hospital”. An immediate CT scan was run of this gentleman’s abdomen to reveal a very large aneurysm in his aorta. He was lifeflighted to another hospital and the aneurysm ruptured. Luckily he survived, but he may not have if he had one more heavy duty painkiller left over from his friend. Once again, this is a very sad story and also preventable.

January 15, 2007

Reuters Health

Benefit Of Opioids For Chronic Back Pain Unclear.

December 19, 2006

HealthDay

FDA Calls For Tougher Warnings On Over-The-Counter Painkillers.

These are just two of the many titles of articles recently written about painkillers. I strongly suggest reading about them for yourself to make an informed decision about whether you take them or not the next time you are in pain.