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Patient Story of Pain and Addiction
The Realities of Chronic Pain and Addiction: A Patient’s Story

Released: June 24, 2024

Expiration: June 23, 2025

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Key Takeaways
  • Although medication for addiction treatment has its benefits, it does not address pain management in those with chronic pain and addiction; we need additional support. 
  • Healthcare professionals must educate their patients fully on the risks and benefits of opioid therapy before prescribing opioids. 
  • In particular with back pain management, investing in comfortable chairs for your office will help patients not suffer more than they already do.

I am 39 years of age and the mother of 2 beautiful daughters. I have a bachelor’s degree in mortuary sciences and embalming and an associate’s degree in occupational studies with a focus on embalming. Later, I passed the national board exams for funeral directors and embalmers with flying colors and moved to Maine from New York City to become a fully licensed funeral director. Shortly after, in 2010, I became pregnant with my first daughter. I was thrilled. I had achieved everything I had worked so hard for. Both my family and I could not have been more proud. 

In the following 10 years, my life went from full of possibilities and on track to fulfilling my dreams to revolving around chronic pain. Since 2018, I have been living with chronic pain, and 3 years ago, my pain took a turn for the worse: I was unable to work and forced to go on disability. As someone who rarely needed to see doctors early in my life, I have since spent more time in medical appointments than at home. For example, there was a time where I would wake up before sunrise to be a daily patron at the local methadone clinic.

How the Pain Started
About a year after my first daughter was born, I joined a gym to shed some of the baby weight. After about a month of treadmill work, I developed excruciating pain in my right thigh. Every time I took a step, there was pain. I started with my primary care provider (PCP) to address the pain, and they prescribed injections and referrals to physical therapy and psychiatry. The psychiatrist simply told me, “The pain is in your head.” At some point during these series of appointments, my PCP finally ordered an x-ray. Lo and behold, the cartilage in my right hip was completely gone! You read that right—I needed a full hip replacement at 29 years of age. As devastating as this news was to me at the time, I was also relieved to hear that the pain was not “just in my head.” 

However, because of my career and short-staffing issues at work, I waited 2 months longer than I should have to do the hip replacement. My PCP told me that I was now a chronic pain patient and proceeded to prescribe me fentanyl patches and oxycodone for the breakthrough pain. Little did I know of the future damage these prescriptions would have on my life. 

After My Hip Replacement
I was back full-time at work only 5 weeks after my hip replacement. At that point, I was taken off the opioids (not tapered) and told that I was in control of the remainder of my medications. I thought I had this in the bag and would be good to go, no problem. Oops! It was 2013, the rise of the opioid epidemic for the nation and the start for me. In hindsight, I should have done more research on these prescriptions rather than just trusting my doctor, but I was either in denial or incredibly naive of the power opioids held. 

My story is like so many others, I got addicted to a prescription medication that is known to be highly addictive . . . weird.

I continued to live in denial. My thoughts surrounded this idea that I could get better at home and handle the situation on my own, without telling my friends and family the truth. I was mortified by my situation and knew that addiction and its stigma was a dealbreaker in my support circles.

In 2014, I left my daughter’s father, who was and still is dealing with his own addiction. Reader, I am certain you can guess that things did not get better, knowing this, and in fact they got worse.

Followed by More Pain and Surgeries
After some years of floundering and trying my best to navigate the world of addiction on my own, I was hit with an all-time low: My daughter was put into foster care because of my and her father’s addictions. At this point, I enrolled in my first methadone clinic. I wanted to own my addictions and the journey of recovery that accompanies them.

As the bad gets worse, in 2016, my hip replacement became infected. How? Well, because of the condition of my teeth. For those who are unaware, opioids, including the ones used to help mitigate addiction, are damaging to your teeth. In my case, I had to deal with advanced, painful, and embarrassing teeth and gum problems that eventually led to having all my teeth pulled. The damage done to my teeth spread to my replaced hip joint. Moreso, if I had waited an additional 12 hours to going to the hospital, I would likely have needed my leg amputated.

On top of this, I herniated my L5-S1 disc while my daughter was in foster care. That brings me to my first back surgery. As soon as I woke up from this surgery, I felt better and relieved. I thought I was in the clear. I could not possibly have anything else go wrong as a young adult working to get their life back to where it was. I was wrong, again. A few years later, the same disc herniated. Unfortunately, this was also during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the surgery was rescheduled, canceled, and later rushed. When I woke up from this second surgery, I was in far worse pain.  

The Birth of My Second Daughter
In March 2022, I had enough with the methadone clinic and the problems it created. Please do not get me wrong, I am incredibly thankful for all the help it provided—but it was not a long-term solution for me. Further, medication for addiction treatment does not help with the pain. So at 110 mg, I quit cold-turkey. It was as bad as you may be imagining. Thankfully, my boyfriend was incredibly helpful and supportive during this time; I would not have been able to do it without him. In addition to stopping the methadone, I also chose to move away from any drug connections I had. And just after getting settled, I was blessed with the news that I was pregnant. 

There were a lot of complications at the beginning of this pregnancy. At one point, we thought we lost her. Thankfully, we did not. However, this news had me reeling, so I turned to old habits and coping skills, which means I used. When I saw my baby alive and well on an ultrasound in the emergency department, I knew that I could not continue to put her and my safety at risk. Therefore, I enrolled in a suboxone clinic. A few months later, our beautiful daughter was born healthy, perfect, and not in withdrawal.

Me, Today
This brings us to the present. My disc has since herniated for a third time, with surgeries no longer being an option. My current options are a spinal cord stimulator or spinal fusion. Although I am glad to have an option, I am sure you can agree that neither is all that enticing. Further, how does one wrap their head around going through a major spinal surgery where the healing time could be 12-18 months? I do not wish for chronic pain even on my worst enemy.

In addition to these surgical options, I was introduced to a 12-week comprehensive pain program and was very excited to attend the classes and learn of the different treatments available. It has been an eye-opening experience in many ways, especially considering its treatment design. My main takeaways include:

  • Most of the treatments offered by this program are only available during the 12-week period. This does not make sense to me considering many of the available treatments, such as hypnosis and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, can take 12 weeks to even start making progress. Therefore, we need greater access to care or resources to seamlessly continue the treatments that help after this 12-week program. 
  • This program comprises a group of many others who suffer from back pain, but the chairs we sit in are not padded. Although this may be such a small detail to some, it makes a world of difference to others. My advice is to invest in comfortable chairs for yourself and your patients, especially when the topic of concern is back pain. 
  • This program is a huge time commitment, and I do not feel that I was made aware of this upfront. As a mother of 2, it has been incredibly difficult to prioritize myself and my progress in this program when I have 2 little lives depending on me showing up for them at home. Yes, the program is intended to help me show up for them in the long term, but it was incredibly hard to do so in the short term. I am currently on a fixed income and this program requires a minimum of 3 appointments per week, each being about 30 miles from my home. Although the time commitment makes sense, given the overall goal of pain relief, I do think this needs to be made clearer to people before they enroll, so all options and details are provided up front. I think I could have benefited more from the course if I had known this in advance and had the time to plan around it, rather than trying to figure out my scheduling problems in the midst of it.

I will need more surgeries in the future and will likely enroll in this pain management course again. I am not happy with the situation, and at times, it feels as if I am failing even though I follow all the given instructions. But I also know that I am one of many people who feel this way. It is not fun to be a statistic, and if it must be me, I want it to make a difference in the way pain is approached in healthcare and society. My final message to all healthcare professionals: Educate your patients and yourselves, and remember that we, patients, are not just a statistic and face in your office—we are people with lives filled with accomplishments and dreams that we want to get back to.