Ouch

I have just been reading a Consumers’ Report on pain management, particularly back and joint pain. The article seems to like NSAIDS a little bit, but is more into exercise, massage and physiotherapy, and what read to me like positive thinking.  Today there was an article in the paper on the proposal to drop the strength of acetaminophen tablets to prevent people wrecking their livers with the ’extra strength’ dose sometimes killing themselves.

Makes me very nervous, all this solicitude for my liver. I have osteoarthritis in my knees, hands and neck. I have a sad squished disc in my lower back. These things hurt! Massage and physiotherapy help, but the first is painful to endure and the second requires daily follow-up with stretches and exercises. Which hurt. My hands hurt when I garden, wash things, carry things. So does my back. After I walk, my back and my knees complain like crazy. My response – acetaminophen. I can’t take NSAIDS because they all excoriate my intestinal track. (I even took part in a drug trial for a coated NSAID that was supposed to help this problem. Nope.) If I am going to move, I need my extra-strength Tylenol and too bad if my liver doesn’t like it. I could die of inaction too.

I wish the medical profession was not so worried about pain medication. I really do. I have seen and heard of far too many cases of opioids and other relief medications being doled out in too small quantities to people who were suffering a lot but not quite ready to die. It is a fine theory that palliative care is a better answer than assisted suicide for end of life care, but there come the damn medicos worrying about addiction and someone else getting hold of the drugs and liver damage and whatever it is that prevents them from really providing robust pain relief. Nor is palliative care consistent or available everywhere. Nor are some doctors qualified to provide it.

At least we do have some things that work. I am appending here a recipe for back pain medication that someone gave to my grandmother and that she saved, making me think someone had a problem that did not respond to willow tea. I wish, though, that I thought we are as far along in this area of medicine as we are in others. My grandmother also had her five babies on the kitchen table and one of them died of jaundice from Rh incompatibility. Here is what she mixed up.

Internal or external use?

We have come a long way, eh?