A nurse told me, “she called the clinic and she was ranting.  She must have been drunk.” I did not think she was.  She was a born-again Christian who did a lot of Bible-thumping, not that Bible-thumping by itself actually prevents anyone from drinking. She was in her fifties, trying to go back to school to get a college diploma she had missed earlier in life, with marriage and children. Something spiritual and faith based.  I didn’t care what she wanted to learn about, for I truly respect people who are trying to accomplish things. I just didn’t think she would want to be seen buying a bottle of anything, for she was so sensitive about a public image that did not mean very much to anybody else.  I think she was sensitive about it because she lived alone and her church was her surrogate family and they lived near her.  All her life was in walking distance.  Somehow I just did not see her as a drinker.

“I think she did something she usually does not do when she calls us. I think she just took everything her pain doctor prescribed for her.”

I had seen this woman in the office a few days before.  She told me she had not yet taken any of her pain medications that day.  She was awake and alert and pleasant, really pleasant.  She told me she did not sleep and so she needed some sleeping pills. She had been in the hospital for something unrelated, some kind of a minor surgical procedure.  Somehow, a nurse I work with had done the research and talked to someone who had taken care of her in the hospital. She slept.  Lots.  Late.  Missing breakfast and eating it when it was cold.  She had been on a relatively low dose of pain medications for her chronic pain problem.  As far as I could figure, and I had taken care of her for a while, her pain was what you call “benign” pain.  I mean, and she had told me the truth on this one, she had osteo-arthritic pain..  So how did she end up on so much pain medicine, and asking me for sleep medicine which she had not received, since in the hospital she had been taking the same thing I had prescribed. Read more on It Was All Prescribed…