“No painkillers, please – we’re British”

This article paints a strange picture of the NHS – and not an accurate one at all.

I live in the UK (have been here for the past 3 years), and have had severe chronic pain for the last 8 years. Before that, I lived in my native country of Canada. My husband has fibromyalgia. You can read what that’s like here.

Both Canada and the United Kingdom, unlike the United States, have socialized medicine. I believe that socialized medicine is far superior to the American medical system, despite the complaints I see online every day. I believe this because I have dealt with it since I was born and had to be rushed to the NICU of a Winnipeg hospital because I weighed only one kilogram.

Whoever wrote this article needs to be shot – look at the last paragraph. “These days, [the patient in question] manages his pain with ‘occasional’ use of acetaminophen, diazepam, and MST, a type of opiod drug.”

Apparently the author of the article thinks his readers are idiots.

For those of you who don’t know, MST is a sustained-release form of morphine, taken in doses every 12 hours. Under no circumstances is it an “occasional use” form of medication. So they’re trying to paint a picture of it being the situation of him “being off all drugs but it’s OK he’s just on morphine“. Do they think their readers are really that stupid that they’d not understand how much pain he’s in? You cannot, I repeat cannot, use MST “occasionally”. If that were the case, the patient would rapidly suffer dangerous and acute withdrawal symptoms. It is very important to take this medication on a strict schedule: every 12 hours. Patients on this drug, however, are not properly called “addicts” – this is most correctly termed “dependency”.

This article is complete and utter GARBAGE!

(I know about morphine specifically because I was prescribed MST for two years in Canada and the UK, from 2007-2009, before we dealt with my hydrocephalus-related headaches at that point. That is a very long story which I won’t get into in this post. Suffice it to say that I’m having those sorts of headaches again, but this time I’m refusing opiates until we can try and get the shunt malfunction sorted. MST side effects are often more unpleasant than any relief it might give me). I am quite sure that at this point, if I asked for it, I would be given morphine. But I’ve been down that road before, and I would really rather not go there again until we have absolutely exhausted all other avenues. And we’re not there yet.)

Another error that the article makes is the impression it gives of how physicians in the UK treat their patients. It gives the impression that British doctors are cold, uncaring, and deny suffering patients painkillers and tell them to suck it up. That’s not true either.

If your doctor agrees that your condition warrants it, you can get paracetamol (Tylenol) and ibuprofen by prescription, in larger quantities, contrary to the impression the article gives. For instance, I have painful inflammation in my lower legs, for which I take sustained release Tramadol (150 mg, twice a day)  and ibuprofen (400 mg, two to three times a day as needed). Without either, I am literally in so much pain that I cannot walk.

Instead of making me pay for hundreds of boxes of ibuprofen at Boots each month, my doctor writes me a prescription for 84 tablets of 200mg ibuprofen each month. Since prescriptions on the NHS (The UK’s National Health Service – socialized medicine, like Canada has) are free to those families like mine who are receiving a Working Tax Credit,  I don’t have to pay for them.

Morphine is available in a format that is taken every 4-6 hours. This is *not* called “MST”. “MST” is the British trade name for sustained-released morphine; the American trade name for sustained-release morphine is MS Contin (I was on this in Canada, and was switched to MST when I moved to the UK). Cavalier misconceptions about chronic pain patients really piss me off, because on the whole, they are usually stated by people who are not suffering from these problems and so have not the faintest fuck of an idea what it entails.

The article perpetuates the ridiculous stereotype of the British “stiff upper lip” in its title: No painkillers, please – we’re British.

It has been my experience that doctors, no matter what country they live in, do everything they can for their patients who are in agonizing pain. They don’t want to have to give their patients opiates or to perform major, risky surgery, but when it gets to the point where nothing else works, then relief must be given.