When Doctors Don’t Care: The High Cost of Untreated Pain
/By Neen Monty
I just returned from seeing my GP.
I explained to her what happened while she was away — that the doctor who filled in for her refused to prescribe the full amount of my pain medication. As a result of being shortchanged, I went through four days of untreated, severe pain.
My GP said nothing.
I asked why the other GP said she couldn’t prescribe. My GP responded with, “I can’t comment on that.”
I was wondering who was lying to me, and assumed it wasn’t my GP. My GP believed my medications would be prescribed, in good faith.
They weren’t. The other GP lied to her.
And in doing so, she knowingly left someone with a painful, progressive, incurable disease to suffer in agony. Because she could. That’s not medicine. That’s abuse.
That GP should not be practicing.
The most fundamental job of a doctor is to relieve suffering. To relieve pain.
We are now in a world where doctors refuse to treat pain -- and most other doctors say nothing about it. There are no consequences for being derelict in their duty of care.
We’re in a world where people with long-term diseases and permanent disability are being left in agony, discarded by a medical system that sees us as burdens, not as patients. We are not being treated, we are being tortured.
Doctors who refuse to treat pain in people with serious, documented illness are not neutral. They are sadists. And they have no business practicing medicine.
I’m not talking about someone with a mild headache or a sore knee. I’m talking about severe, constant, intractable pain. Pain from MS, RA, Parkinson’s, adhesive arachnoiditis, spinal cord injuries, cancer, and many, many more horrible diseases. Diseases that destroy lives.
And yet, doctors are allowed to ignore us. Abandon us. Deem us unworthy of relief.
Like I was.
My own GP, who knows me and knows my history, did nothing. She simply "fixed" the problem by giving me the rest of my prescription: 90 tablets. Enough for 14 days.
But where was her anger? Her outrage? She promised I’d be looked after while she was away. I wasn’t.
She was betrayed by this other GP as much as I was. But she said nothing. She will accept that this other GP decided not to treat my pain and won’t mention it at all.
And next time my GP goes away? What then? I can’t see the other GP again.
Insult to injury is that I’ve now had to pay for three GP visits this month. That’s $180 I didn’t have.
I endured four days of relentless, unmanaged pain. Because one GP decided I don’t matter.
Because she looked at me and saw garbage. Not a person. Not worthy of her time. Her disgust and disdain towards me were open and palpable.
And no one held her accountable. No one will hold her accountable. She is a law unto herself.
If you ever wondered what it feels like to be dehumanized in real-time, to be made invisible because you're sick and in pain, to be deemed worthless, this is it.
I am very unwell. And I’m in a lot of pain. When pain goes untreated for many days in a row, it is not so easy to get it back under control again.
Treating pain patients like garbage has to stop!
Neen Monty is a writer and patient advocate in Australia who lives with rheumatoid arthritis and Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP), a progressive neurological disease that attacks the nerves.
Neen has created a website for Pain Patient Advocacy Australia to show that prescription opioids can be safe and effective, even when taken long term. You can subscribe to Neen’s free newsletter on Substack, “Arthritic Chick on Chronic Pain.”
