a regimen that has never gotten my pain below a 5 is what will happen from now on.

For fuck’s sake.

If anyone not-ita ! is feeling advocate-y (and is good on the phone, because I’m so not...) here's what I could dig up.

The CA Medical Board's guidelines for pain management are here [link]

These Guidelines are intended to improve effective pain management in California, by avoiding under treatment, over treatment, or other inappropriate treatment of a patient's pain and by clarifying the principles of professional practice that are endorsed by the Medical Board so that physicians have a higher level of comfort in using controlled substances, including opioids, in the treatment of pain.

If I’m reading correctly, the reasons for changing previously effective treatment should be documented with more than a shrug and "don’t wanna." Everything I’ve found says that CA’s laws and guidelines about this are basically a model for other states. Doctors have been reprimanded and sued (successfully), for failing to treat intractable pain.

They have a form for officially filing a complaint, but there's also an 800 number for information and they seem open to the possibility of anonymous calls, even if they can’t necessarily act on them. Maybe someone could call and discuss the issue, without naming any names, and see what the reaction is. They might just say "we don’t know, we don’t care, all I can do is tell you how to fill out the form." But on the other hand, you might get "before you file an official complaint, try X and Y to resolve this." And if possible get a feel for whether this the sort of complaint they would take action on, and what kind of action, and what's the timeline, and would that help?

Under-prescribing and delaying treatment are both listed on their complaint form, for whatever that's worth. How those things are defined might be another question to ask. Anyway, the contact info is here: [link]

Oh yeah, and

I'd be sticking a battery in my ass and getting a remote control for my neck and not reducing the migraine count (or, really, the ER visit count--just the required dosage from 3x to 2x).

A patient who suffers from severe chronic intractable pain has the option to choose opiate medications to relieve severe chronic intractable pain without first having to submit to an invasive medical procedure

There are a lot of pain management orgs & advocacy groups also, but it's hard to find the practical info; I'll poke around some more tonight.

Who wants to lend me a million and a half dollars so I can buy this house?

[link]

I hope things go well with Bailey.

Spanish and Portuguese kids in an all Iberian Horseball showdown.

Good stuff, Strega!

Those cookies are $40 a dozen. I was gonna buy some, but, seriously?

If you really cared about political advocacy.... you'd probably give that $40 to a candidate, huh.

I bet Romney made them raise the cookie prices in order to skew the results to favor him.

So I have three things on my ita ! gives a fuck due diligence list (because if I don't jump through the right hoops, I don't deserve help, clearly):

• acupuncture (not covered, weekly, between 9 and 5)
• water therapy (not covered for the first $500, three times a week, between 11 and 2:30)
• electrodes in my neck

Well, will you look at that? Electrodes just jumped to the top of the "I can fit that into my schedule" list. Because 5 days off work for the test implantation is easier to schedule than 6 weeks of driving up to Culver City three times a week for a long-assed wet lunch.

Go, go Gadget ita ! (?)

Strega, thank you for looking that up for me. I don't know how effectively I can wield the law of "you can't make me undergo surgery instead of/prior to being given pain meds" but it does make a difference at least knowing the system isn't supposed to work that way. It feels a little bit better that I'm only being fucked over by people, not paper.

Strega, well done.

Check out these awesome wildlife photos: [link]

Timelies all!

I'll be so glad when this election's over. I'm tired of hitting the mute button/turning off the radio whenever political ads show up. Most of the ads are aimed at Virginia voters, anyhow.(Except the pro/con Question 7 ones. A pox on both their lying houses.)