Has Compassion For Chronic Illness Disappeared? (Vid)

Today's excellent video from dontpunishpain.com (see link below) is a must see for anybody living with chronic neuropathy and feeling somehow 'judged' for being ill. Similarly, friends and family will maybe recognise many of the things said here and be better able to understand and support their loved ones. As Ken McKim says; it's 32 minutes long but not as long as anything with a Kardashian in it but it's never boring, or too technical and is definitely worth a half hour of your time. An important video - don't miss it!


The Slow Death of Compassion for the Chronically Ill
Ken McKim Published on 3 May 2014  
UPDATE: New video up on my channel, "Feel This Pain!" Check it out.________________________

This video, while 32 minutes long, is shorter than anything with a Kardashian in it, and much more important. Please make the time to watch.



A quick summary:

Society has been programmed to view the chronically ill as lazy and not trying hard enough due to an overwhelming amount of inspiring Internet stories highlighting incredible things a minority of people suffering from disease and/or disability have accomplished.

The media has a bias against pain medications, referring to them as "drugs" instead of "medications" more often than not in a concerted effort to stigmatize the medications and by extension those who take them.

Alcohol killed more people in 10 years than died of opioid overdoses: 139,093 deaths attributed to alcohol from 2000-2010 The CDC number puts opioid overdoses at 125,000 deaths over 10 years

The DEA now wants to reclassify any medications containing hydrocodone as Schedule II instead of Schedule III. This will make them harder to prescribe and harder to obtain; in many cases doctors will require more in-person visits before re-prescribing which costs more money for those patients (not everyone has insurance).

The public is okay with this because they now view the chronically is as people who are somehow lacking in motivation and who abuse drugs.The have this viewpoint because they don't truly understand the kind of pain these people are in, every hour of every day.
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Making it harder for those with chronic illnesses such as Crohn's and Fibromyalgia to obtain the pain medications they need to sustain any kind of tolerable quality of life does nothing to prevent accidental overdoses. It increases costs for the sickest of our citizens, and has the effect of stigmatizing both the medications and those who take them. Oxycontin has always been Schedule II and it has done nothing to prevent its abuse. People who want to misuse drugs will do so no matter what their classification; punishing the millions who take these meds responsibly, and who need them to live is abuse. The chronically ill have already been betrayed by their own bodies, and now their government as well. The DEA must not reclassify these medications as Schedule II.
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Of course people always want to know "where do you get your stats?" so here are some of the pages I looked at when putting this together:
http://responsibility.org/drunk-drivi...
http://www.overdoseday.com/facts-stats/
http://www.myfibro.com/fibromyalgia-s...
http://www.cdc.gov/ibd/
http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety...

http://www.dontpunishpain.com/videos/#/slowdeathofcompassion/