Un-fucking-believable

Unbelievable day, I'm still in shock, and it raises a number of questions.

Unsurprisingly, the replacement prescription hadn't arrived, and the Tesco pharmacist could not have given less of a shit. I was feeling able to drive this morning, so I called the doc and asked if he would give me a new prescription, even though there was one outstanding somewhere in the post. He said yes, and seemed completely unmoved by my pointing out how much upset this had caused over the past three days, the terror of facing this pain with no pills. He claimed the pharmacist shouldn't have rejected the original script.

So they're blaming each other, and I'm stuck in the middle. I tend to think the doc was at fault; there's a dispensary at the surgery and I think he's so used to being able to put any old shit on the orders because they're going direct to a pharmacist, that he's out of touch with what's required externally. That's the first bit of disappointing news about him today, and by far the most minor.

I drove straight over there to get the script, well, once I'd stopped crying, which meant I got there after surgery had finished and he was off duty. Initially the script looked fine, but as I was driving away, I realised I hadn't checked the quantities, and then discovered that he'd halved the OxyNorm (quick release), so I only had two weeks' worth. Since they now won't post a script, that was no good, so I went back, relieved I'd spotted the error before I got too far away.

He agreed to see me, then stunned me by telling me it was too much morphine, and I couldn't keep on just increasing it all the time. I couldn't believe it. That's exactly the opposite of what he said last time.

I pointed that out, and said that I'd happily not take it, if someone could come up with a viable alternative. He just kept repeating 'it's an awful lot of morphine', 'we can't keep on increasing and increasing it'. He told me that keeping on increasing it wouldn't necessarily help; that the pain wouldn't be any better with increased levels.

I was speechless. I said 'that's complete rubbish, of course it's better, that's why I take it. Days like yesterday, where two pills were no good and I had to take three and that stopped it for a couple of hours; it made it better.'

Over and over, we went round in circles. Him saying it's too much, me demanding an alternative, him just sitting there and staring at me. I was in floods of tears and yelling at him, but still he had no alternative to offer. I said 'What do you expect me to do when the pain gets bad, just sit there and scream?'. He had no answer.

I told him that everyone's so focused on keeping the wrong people from taking morphine, or taking it for the wrong reasons, that they forget there's a patient behind there, someone who actually needs the medication. I said I didn't understand how he could have been so understanding last time and now just refuse to understand. I said 'I can't believe I'm having to have this conversation with you of all people' and 'I spend half my life in agony and the other half having to prove I'm in pain'.

I couldn't understand why the sudden u-turn, why he's suddenly so unwilling to understand something that a week ago he seemed to get. Why he seems to have completely misread my freak out over the prescription cock-up. He kept talking about yes. it would be horrid if I was left with no pills because of the withdrawal. I kept saying never mind the withdrawal, it's the pain I'm terrified off. But he just wouldn't get that - he was fixated on withdrawal.

I think they misread my freak out as being a junkie wanting their pills. All I want is to be pain-free. All I'm scared of is what the pain will be like without the pills, given what it's like with them. I also think that the cock-up brought me to the wider attention of the surgery, and this is 'medicine by committee'.

He was completely fucking useless. He's now no better than me, chasing my tail for answers and coming up blank. But when he does it, it affects my life.

Eventually I managed to convince him to give me a post dated script for the other half of the pills. I also said I'd be happy to take more slow release to reduce the quick release, if he thought that was better, but I pointed out that the reality is that these '12-hour' pills last at most 5 hours; after that you have to do something or the pain becomes unbearable.

He agreed to that, and next time I'll suggest a higher denomination of pill, so I'm not taking physically as many pills. But he's left me terrified that each time I see him, I'm going to have to fight him for the meds I need. I told him that. Surprise, surprise, he made no response.