ita did, ironically, make that dickhead's job easier. Sometimes I still have to remind myself there was no Seamus for ita to meet, isn't that stupid?

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.

That is WONDERFUL.

Good God, some of Hubby's infusions were charged at $50,000 a shot or more!

The law covers the charge to the patient, not the insurance company.

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.

In a nutshell.

When I'm less angry - I'll never be less angry - when I'm able to modulate my emotions better, I might try to draft a version of ita's Law into a petition for Change.org. Or even one to put on the whitehouse.gov site, about changing the way pain medication management is handled. It probably won't do much, but if it gets enough signatures, they have to respond to it, which means they have to read it. There are so freaking many people on migraine and cancer support sites who are surely wrestling with this very same problem, I bet it could get enough signatures in a week.

Betsy, that's such great news, especially about your son.

I was so, so sad and stunned to get this news last night from javachik. (And I'm sorry to have worried her so. I guess it was not the day to take a media break).

It looks like I've unintentionally been on a media break from the board for some time since I had to drag out my old laptop to be able to log in. I need to remedy that. I miss you guys, and I will really miss ita.

Thanks and love to Allyson, Polgara, Kristen, and Burrell for being there for her. It is so very much appreciated.

There are so freaking many people on migraine and cancer support sites who are surely wrestling with this very same problem, I bet it could get enough signatures in a week.

Add invisible illnesses and you'll get even more. I guarantee CFS, FM, and autoimmune sufferers will sign a petition for ita's Law.

I might try to draft a version of ita's Law into a petition for Change.org. Or even one to put on the whitehouse.gov site, about changing the way pain medication management is handled. It probably won't do much, but if it gets enough signatures, they have to respond to it, which means they have to read it. There are so freaking many people on migraine and cancer support sites who are surely wrestling with this very same problem, I bet it could get enough signatures in a week.

I've talked about this before, but legalizing medical marijuana would go a LONG way as a first step. It's already clinically been shown to reduce pain AND therefore reduce the need for opiates in some patients. That leads to fewer overdoses and fewer opiate prescriptions that can be diverted.

It's certainly not the whole of a solution to treating chronic pain, by itself it's not a perfect solution, but it's fucking ridiculous that people can legally buy an arsenal of firearms but they can't legally be prescribed pot for proven medical treatment.

Hubby always laughed that he didn't have the Marijuana box checked on the "drugs in bloodstream" test. I told him it wasn't Bingo.

Anyhow, I'm emotionally in a much better place than I was when I was working

Holy shit yes. I lost my job the Monday before Thanksgiving, and while the not having a paycheck sucks, the not being miserable part outweighs all of it.

Almost all my best friends, even if I didn't meet them here, I met because of you.

Echoed right back at you, Plei.

But various of the other meds I *do* take are creeping up the Schedule charts, so it could all happen all over again.

This has been an incredibly unnerving part of my own medical progression, Betsy. You're thrust into a different world, almost. It's kind of like a scene in The Wire.

I wouldn't be here, on this couch, in my jammies, without all of us.

Thirded, Juliana, +dog.

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.

This is now my favorite. God, the stupid frowny-face chart. Such a useless thing to evaluate something that can't be objectively evaluated.

I jumped back into William Gibson's book Pattern Recognition because it has been the only book to ever fully capture the idea of an online message board community for me.

Cash, me too! I remember reading it on an airplane (with that bit about how the soul catches up with you) and thinking that Gibson had lurked on WX or something to get it so spot on.

Betsy, that's wonderful news.