My response to "toughing it out".

Hey Jeff, let me tell you a few things about "aspirin" and "toughing it out."

Multiple myeloma eats away at the calcium in your bones and the protein in your muscles. It weakens those bones and causes lesions and fractures that are the markers of the disease. It attacks various places. In my case, it attacked my lower back, leaving me with two small stress fractures and a number of lesions, all of which were sources of pain.

I wasn't in a lot of pain in the hospital and was able to get by on lots of Tylenol, mostly because I was just in bed or a chair all day my doctors asked me if I wanted some Norco to go home with. I declined.

I did so for two reasons: 1) I don't believe in taking powerful meds unless I really need to; 2) All this talk about opioid addiction had spooked me enough to want to avoid them. It took pretty much 3 or 4 days at home, where I wasn't just spending my days in a bed, for the pain to start to worsen.

Last few weeks, things were really bad. It would take me 10 minutes or more just to get out of bed (including those nighttime bathroom runs) because it was so painful just to get to a sitting position. Even then, walking to the bathroom required holding on to the door frames and walls to keep my balance and to keep my back from spasming and making me shudder in pain. Stepping up from our sunken living room required a wall to balance on to avoid pain.

Sitting down on the toilet and getting back up again was another exercise in pain, eventually forcing me to keep a chair in the bathroom to use like a walker to hold my weight. Taking care of the relevant personal hygiene involved more pain. My worst fear during that period was being found in the bathroom, unable to get up from the toilet or even the floor.

Eventually I realized I was being an idiot and got the Norco. The impact on my quality of life was nearly immediate. Within 2 or 3 days, I was back to about 75% of normal most of the time, with really minimal pain. And with responsible use and consultation with my doctors, I've cut back from 4 per day to 2.

What assholes like Sessions do not understand is that being in that kind of constant and severe pain not only causes unnecessary suffering, it prevents healing. It takes every bit of energy you have to fight that kind of pain, and you have nothing left to use to heal. Once I got the right painkillers, not having to deal with the pain let me sleep, it let me relax, it let me heal. I have NO DOUBT that getting on Norco is a key factor in how quickly I have felt so much better. And I will never again hesitate to take the painkillers. Opioids? I'm a big fan.

Fuck toughing it out. It's stupid and it's cruel and it prolongs pain and illness.

And fuck you Jeff Sessions and the rest of you assholes for creating a climate of fear around legitimate and humane medication that leads people to suffer needlessly. You can't give me back that week I spent in pain. You can't erase my experience of watching my family have to see me in that amount of pain. You contributed to making me needlessly afraid and caused me and those around me to suffer unnecessarily and you're doing it to others. It's time to stop it and stop it now.

I learned all this the hard way. No one else should have to.