Nice to have printer ink available once again, but not nice the way it came about. Yesterday, Pam's doctor gave her a death sentence. Not a new diagnosis, but a refusal to take her back as a patient although three weeks earlier he had agreed to do so as soon as asked.

Not only did he refuse to help with pain medication, which he no longer prescribes for anyone--no doubt due to governmental pressure--but he wasn't interested in prescribing any of her other essential medications, either. He knows my sweetie does not abuse pain pills, not even with her extreme pain levels due to fibromyalgia, but to back off from the cough syrup for her excess phlegm, a congenital condition inherited from her father? Ah, but he would prescribe virtually nothing. Not the methocarbomal which helps her muscles unclench enough to allow her some small freedom of movement. Neither the Effexor which addresses her lack of natural dopamine and seratonin production in the brain nor the Trazodone billed as an antipsychotic but which in her case allows her to combat her lifelong insomnia. Not even the diazepam, i.e. Valium, which does help her find a little calm but also helps her small muscles relax. Not Actonel for her bones or Spiriva for her breathing.

He refused all this...despite being the doctor responsible for helping her to set up this specific regimen in the first place and the first to diagnose her COPD. It almost seems like he wants Pam to be in such emotional and physical agony that she can't eat at all, maybe even ending up looking like the huge but unbelievably thin-waisted insect I photographed this morning.

We now face what could be endgame for Pam's life. True, we don't currently have the income--and absolutely no insurance--to allow purchasing all of the prescriptions even were they to be prescribed as they have been in past years. We were already crossing our fingers on the most expensive items: Effexor and Spiriva each cost nearly $300 for a month's supply, and I'm barely bringing in enough to cover the land payment plus a few hundred for pork and beans, bread, and gas for the car and portable generators. But with no prescriptions forthcoming, she's a dead woman. Even if all we could get for her were diazepam, methocarbomal, and a workable pain pill, she'd have a chance.

There's no question that the doctors are running scared. During our so-called appointment, the errant M.D. specifically stated that he was not willing to go along with Pam's existing medication regimen.

"You had no problem with it before!" Pam shot back.

"I have changed," he admitted.

He's got that right. The PDR (Physician's Desk Reference) warns strongly against going off a number of Pam's prescriptions cold turkey. This particular sawbones is not a stupid man, and he's also pretty sharp when it comes to pharmacology. He knows her life is at risk if her program is suddenly chopped down to literally nothing, and he knows he's committing malpractice by omission. But he's also smart enough to know that if my wife dies from this, and I sue him for a wrongful death (just in theory, you understand)...hey, that's not a patch on what will happen to his life if the Feds come down on him and he loses his license to practice medicine.

Or so he sees it.

A wonderful lady named Lisa saw Pam's agony in the grocery store after the physician's betrayal. She instantly went to my lady, hugged her, and before it was over, she explained that she, too, had suffered from fibromyalgia (one of Pam's many, many ailments). She'd been in five car wrecks. Then one day God healed her. She fell down in church, no recall of it, but when she got up she was healed, or in the process of healing anyway. She told us she could feel that healing coursing through her even after she got home that evening. And she assured us that she would be praying for Pam, for which we thanked her.

Since this is the second M.D. in this county who has most thoroughly rejected my sweetheart, we're agreed that attempting to telephone other doctors or to walk in to ask them about taking on Pam's complicated and difficult case as a new patient...would be entirely fruitless. Besides governmental pressure, we know that part of the problem arises from Pam's appearance: She fakes it so well, fights her pain and disabilities so hard, that to the ignorant eye--and most of these doctors are definitely ignorant--she looks a lot healthier than she is. Since she's still slender and shapely, those who misdiagnose her psoriasis often (we suspect) jump to the erroneous conclusion that street drug abuse caused the sores and also caused her to lose her teeth. There are other factors, but you get the idea

I have not given up trying to find the right physician for her. I've allowed myself the 4th of July weekend to craft a "Health Synopsis for Pamela". Once that is printed (the high priority reason for spending precious dollars on a new ink cartridge), a cover letter will be crafted and added. Using a touch of common sense and a whole lot of intuition, a number of doctors--the number not yet determined--will receive the letter with synopsis enclosed. Each will be advised (a) no need to call if Pam is not a cup of tea worth considering, but (b) please do call us only if they are willing to take on Pam as a new patient without gutting the medication regimen that has worked well for her these past half dozen years.

Do we believe my expert writing skill can make the needed connection when nothing else seems to be working? No. Quite frankly, we do not. We estimate our chances of success at no more than one in a thousand. But we do see this as having some chance of success as opposed to none.

Knowing haste would be deadly in this process, I slept on it last night and woke up with the beginnings of the "Synopsis" wording in place. Additionally, a very clear dream series confirmed our longstanding knowledge that physicians are running scared, especially in Arizona. With the Mexican border as a drug war front and pressures from the Feds running rampant, more and more doctors are shying away from prescribing the more "looked at" meds and rejecting patients who might actually need such.

In the dream, there were no drugs or doctors. The dream censor had it switched around to a city setting in which I was participating in some sort of tournament. The nature of the sport didn't matter. What did count was where we contestants slept at night. All of us were from out of town. The practice had been for three or four tournament types to be put up at a resident's home for a single night, maybe two or three in some cases. But suddenly there was no homeowner or landlord willing to accommodate even one overnight guest. The entire city had decided to turn against us Evil Lowlife Tournament Types.

This does not necessarily mean that there's no chance whatsoever of finding a right doctor for Pam, but it could well be trying to tell me that such a person does not exist in our current hometown and/or county, which is where we've been trying. That interpretation received reinforcement this afternoon as I was buying live crickets to feed our leopard gecko. The lady who always waits on me is a jewel and fast becoming a true friend. She strongly recommended Tucson as a source of quality physicians.

We shall see. Driving to Tucson would add another eighty miles round trip each time Pam had a doctor's appointment, a bit of a pain but really no big. Either way, the results of our last ditch M.D. Search will provide material for a few more Hubs at the very least. To pharaphrase a well known saying, You can't lose 'em all.

Thanks for reading,

Ghost32