I was denied sedation/effective pain meds before a procedure pretty recently. Despite the fact that I spent the entire time literally screaming in pain, they dismissed it as “anxiety” and did nothing to help.
I also received very little when I first came into the hospital - as my body was flooding with literal shit and I was fucking dying. They let me writhe and roll around for hours before they mercifully knocked me out for my operation.
I’m traumatized to the point where watching movies where people experiencing pain is upsetting. I was watching fucking Avatar the Last Airbender and wincing every time someone got punched or kicked.
I also go back to getting my IUD put in - again, another extremely painful procedure that is “not supposed to hurt” so there is no option for sedation or effective pain meds.
It feels like asking for pain meds gets you labeled as a drug seeker/addict too. I made the mistake of mentioning that I smoke weed (because I knew the anesthesiologist needs to know that) and it feels like it was instantly assumed that I’d be a pill popper too.
And I have extremely high pain tolerance. I’ve literally had people whip me until they’ve drawn blood. I’ve worked a fast food shift with a second degree (even a bit of third degree) burn going down the majority of my arm. I’m not a wuss, I know how to breathe in ways that help, I know how to go to a mind palace, but Christ, when you start digging around in someone’s guts with sharp objects, that’s not really something you can meditate away!
Is it training? Is it the fact that becoming a doctor in the U.S. requires the kind of upper middle class upbringing that doesn’t tend to help people develop empathy?
Seems like an easy to fix problem: safe consumption sites
Not all junkies are homeless.
Plenty of high earners get addicted to pills of one sort or another.
Michael Jackson died after being shot up by his private MD.
That only works if you have a plan in place for these people’s futures like mental/physical healthcare, affordable housing, and stable careers.
Nah even without that, it’s a massive improvement for people: it helps gets people off drugs & stops them ODing.
Yes we should do all of those things, but we have to stop pretending we need to boil the ocean in order to make progress.
All independently have a huge impact and while they amplify eachother’s impact we shouldn’t wait on all 4 before making progress on each one individually.
Snidenote: YIMBYs (who ironically enough oppose building affordable housing) often use lack of safe consumption or jobs as an excuse to oppose affordable housing built near them.
I live close to a few safe consumption sites so without seeing a study on this, this is just my observations.
There’s an increase of homeless people around (or perhaps they are more visible?) but since they have nowhere to go they get shifted around town by the police force every now and again. There seems to be a fair amount of violence amongst themselves as well, occasionally bleeding out into the general populace when we have big events nearby. I’ve also got friends from back in HS that went to these sites to “try” a variety of drugs they were curious about and now they’re full blown addicts that I don’t hear from anymore. Maybe they would have tried this stuff anyways but the whole draw for them was that it was “easy” and nobody would stop them.
Definitely aware of the YIMBY’s, I remember seeing their signs posted around before the sites went up, hence why the site got placed in my area despite not having the better infrastructure of the higher income neighbourhood nearby.
Not against safe consumption sites by any means it just feels like a bandaid on a festering wound situation. My neighbourhood safe consumption site hasn’t seemed to improve in the many years it’s been here- worsening conditions I’m chalking up to an increase in the general homeless population. The only time familiar faces seem to disappear is if they pass away.