I just got an e-mail from my dad asking me what happened and was it someone he knew. He never reads FB and doesn't know about b.org (well, roughly, he knows I have online friends, just not where to find them).

Sigh. Now to craft a response.

Omg, there is Jesse again with her supportive people are different bullshit. You and your rational logic consideration of others.

The last thing we need to be doing right now is beating ourselves up over feelings! Sheesh.

Betsy, thank you for that. I've wondered how you've been (as well as your other family members who have migraines).

I get that addiction and drug diversion are huge problems; I'm certainly not downplaying that. But inadequately treating patients with chronic intractable pain should be considered malpractice. It's fucking criminal.

As long as I can beat you up, Jesse.

I'd like to legislate "ita's Law": If a doctor doesn't prescribe a person in pain adequate pain meds, they get a solid kick in the nads and tasered while they're down, and then two doctors stand over them, one to ask them to rate their pain on this frowny-face chart, and the other to write them a scrip for one Tylenol.

PLEASE create this on change.gov. I will sign it a million times.

I'd like to legislate "ita's Law": If a doctor doesn't prescribe a person in pain adequate pain meds, they get a solid kick in the nads and tasered while they're down, and then two doctors stand over them, one to ask them to rate their pain on this frowny-face chart, and the other to write them a scrip for one Tylenol.

Yes, please.

And Betsy, it's wonderful to see your pixels again, even if I'm sorry for the reason.

I feel very fortunate that my oncologist writes my hydrocodone script whenever I ask, and even occasionally asks me if I have enough. I don't know what I'd do if he didn't, since the ulcer knocked out NSAIDs and Tylenol is a cruel joke. I thought it might just be that doctors are more willing to do that for certain cancers, but I've found that many women on an advanced breast cancer Facebook group I'm on have trouble getting more than an aspirin from their doctors.

Oral chemo, on the other hand, remains a giant clusterfuck. I've been trying to figure out the status of this month's prescription for several days, although yesterday probably doesn't count, because I couldn't even. Last month, I found out the pharmacy hadn't put in the order after I requested it online, because they wanted to explain to me first that it was very, very expensive. They expected me to intuit this need to explain. I had been on this drug for five months and had not previously been explained to.

It will be interesting to see what it costs, because Georgia passed a law that oral chemo can't cost more than what the insurance company charges for chemo infusions. Last year, they could have charged me $2,000 a month for an oral chemo that I take at home without the aid of nurses and special equipment or $100 for infusions.

In short, medicine as practiced in this country is stupid.

If we started treating addiction like an illness and not a sin that would go a long way.

Someone comes to you for pain meds. You treat them for pain or you treat them for addiction. Possibly, you treat them for both. But you effing treat them.

It's very good to see all of you, too.

I actually have two pieces of awesome migraine news. My husband discovered that alcohol was his major migraine trigger, and that if he cut out alcohol entirely, he stopped having migraines. And my son, as we all hoped beyond hoping for, did what some male adolescents do and mostly outgrew his migraines. He's just turned 21, and got an A in his first community college class after missing all of high school.