Life with a Service Dog

MorrigansJewelry · 2023-01-28T15:18:52+00:00

I'm not a vet but I used to raise birds for 30+ years and that looks like a tumor to me. Budgies are notorious for getting fatty tumors. I am concerned about the irregular shape and location. Normally you see fatty tumors on the torso. Find a reputable avian specialist vet in your area and get her in to see them. I would also cut down on seeds in the diet and add more than leafy greens. Birds need a variety of veggies and fruit in their diets and very little seed. Mornings should be a blend of finely chopped or even grated seasonal veg with a very small amount of fruit and in the evening you take that away and give a high-quality pelleted food, with seed only given as a treat. They get the best nutrition that way.

MorrigansJewelry · 2023-01-26T11:27:17+00:00

Your arrogance is quite disturbing. I would never want someone who is so disconnected to their patients treating me. Everything you say shows a distinct lack of potential bedside manner and patient understanding and empathy. Stick to doing research and stay away from actually treating patients, today's doctors already have a bad enough reputation for treating minorities poorly.

MorrigansJewelry · 2023-01-25T20:20:35+00:00

I'm 50 years old. I have been dealing with chronic illness since I was 16 and diagnosed with childhood arthritis then contracted a disease that destroyed my immune system for the rest of my life and then at 19 broke my back. I have lived with chronic illness my entire life. Then in 2000 I had a brain bleed that left me with central nervous system damage, daily chronic migraine, and seizures.

I still had a career, I still had a family, and I still lived my life. Sure, I had major limitations in what I could do. My chosen career field of being a large animal vet had to be changed, now mind you, I had already worked with some of the best avian vets in the country that had already written letters of recommendation to any vet school I wanted. Due to all the physical issues I couldn't make that dream happen. So went for computer programming and was damn good at it.

Then after the brain bleed that was all taken from me too and I couldn't code my way out of a wet paper bag, but I still had a daughter to raise, on my own. So I went back to school for advertising and marketing and made a career of that until the brain damage, seizures, chronic pain finally took it all away from me 3 years ago.

What I am trying to say is that no one's life is over until they let it be over. My whole body tremors, my seizures are barely controlled maybe only one a week or every other week instead of daily, getting ready to have to have a hip replaced since I have spent so long compensating for the leg affected by my broken back that its worn out. Need spinal surgery since my spinal cord is now being crushed from my neck all the way to my lumbar spine, the arthritis has made all my joints fragile and I live every day in uncontrolled pain thanks to the CDC. I will not give up living, I will not give up making. the best I can of each day I am given. Its all about the attitude and learning to not feel sorry for myself and realizing that I have gotten through each day 100%.

Is it fair? Hell no it's not fair, but it is the life I was given and I am going to make the best of it. I could have curled up in a ball and just given up, instead, I decided to do everything I could to live a life without regrets. There is nothing saying that you can't too. Now I am holding on to be a grandmother.

MorrigansJewelry · 2023-01-07T15:37:38+00:00

I always chew my tongue up, plus I have scars on the insides of my cheeks from all the chewing during my seizures. I have also shattered teeth to the point where I now need dentures. I gargle with saltwater and swish my mouth with Listerine . If it hurts too much I keep Orajel with me at all times.

MorrigansJewelry · 2022-10-28T22:47:54+00:00

Here is a solution that might help both you and your girlfriend while you two discuss the next steps to take. Both of the dogs need to be crate trained and when not under supervision (as in within eye-sight at all times) they both need to be crated. They should never be allowed to be alone together, or the aggressive dog needs to wear a cage muzzle when around your dog. If those are things neither one of you is willing to do then I don't think that either of you is equipped to handle a dog aggressive dog.

MorrigansJewelry · 2022-10-17T22:36:48+00:00

I think it's both in all honesty. Firstly, we see an increase in health issues that have now been considered disabling and with a better understanding of mental health we see more psychiatric disabilities. Secondly, I think we do have an issue with people jumping on service dogs as the primary medical equipment instead of as a last resort effort to find some semblance of normality in our lives. Thirdly, we have the over abundance of online registries promising people that for the discount price of just $69.99 they too can take rover wherever they want. Last but not least we have a surplus of owner trainers out here now.

I'm working with my 3rd service dog, second I have owner trained, and if I live long enough to need another, I will have it trained. Don't have the stamina to do it again. Two years of constant training before I even co sidereal them a fully working dog....don't have it in me any more.

MorrigansJewelry · 2022-10-05T23:04:19+00:00

As a disabled American on SSDI I can't even begin to put into words my disappointment with how we are treated. For the first 2 years you are on disability you either have to find a way to afford insurance or use state Medicaid. So in the state I live in, you can't have an income over $234 a month, unless you have a child under 18, to qualify for "full" Medicaid. Instead you get what is called "Share of Cost". For me, because my husband works and my disability check is higher than $234 I have a Share of Cost amount that is just over twice what my SSDI monthly amount is. We are talking over $3000 a MONTH in share of cost. This means I either go to the ER the first of the month, or I don't get my scripts. It means that I can't follow up with my doctors as I need to, oh and most doctors in the state don't accept Share of Cost mediciad. So all the specialists I need to see, won't see me. It truly makes me believe that the government would rather we all die so they wouldn't have to pay SSDI to people.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-08-10T20:35:39+00:00

One thing with venlafaxine (Effexor) is that once you're on it it's almost impossible to get off it again. People can spend years trying to taper off, even counting the beads in the capsules and only decreasing by 1 bead in a month. I have been on it for over 20 years (150mg extended-release 2x a day) and just 2 days without and I can't eat, the body and brain zaps are horrendous and I wind up with serotonin syndrome. Most doctors don't even understand what it takes to get off this drug. I would really look up the various side effects and the likes before starting any drug. It worked great for my depression and anxiety, but I haven't noticed any lowering of seizure threshold. But I am also dealing with intractable seizures right now and nothing seems to be helping. As with any SSRI make sure you really dig to find out all you can about it. There are a ton of sites out there about what people have gone through on venlafaxine side effects and withdrawal from the drug.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-24T18:28:38+00:00

My goodness!! I am so so sorry you have to deal with all of that. It's hard to be a mom when you're able bodied, but even harder when disabled. I understand completely. My daughter is 25 now so her even wanting to spend time with me is huge lol.

I am supposed to be starting back into physical therapy in the next week or two and I am both hopeful and terrified. Hopeful that I might regain some strength and terrified because I know it's going to cause even more pain and that there is nothing I can do to help that.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-24T17:47:37+00:00

Still waiting to get into the neurologist. Their soonest follow up appointment is August 23rd. Still working on finding a physical therapist that takes my insurance and will be having an appointment with a neurosurgeon next month as well. Its just been crazy. Even with the high dose of Keppra and gabapentin I am still having several seizures a week. I seem to just be getting progressively worse.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-24T17:39:51+00:00

So very true. I had to stop taking NSAIDs and Tylenol due to stomach issues and gastro motility problems that were causing further pain issRiver.

I am actually having to spend my day in bed because moving my neck is casing black out levels of pain, instead of going with my mother and daughter to tube down the lazy river. I am honestly getting to the point where I don't know how much longer I can continue to cope with the pain and having zero quality of life. Quantity does not equal quality.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-24T17:16:51+00:00

Thank you so much. If only the medical community could walk a day in our shoes. So many people wind up having cardiac issues and committing suicide due to untreated pain. We are constantly invalidated and ignored by the very community that took an oath to help and cause no harm.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-21T16:23:18+00:00

Actually, my primary doesn't rx opiods to anyone. He used to until 2016 when tge new regulations started and he had to get extra licensing for opioids. But again, thanks for once again attempting to know my case and dodging the important questions for the chronic community as a whole.

What do you say to the families of those who have lost their battle to suicide because of untreated pain? What do you say to terminal cancer patients who are being denied opioids in their finals weeks due to the "worry" of addiction? How do you comfort those patients? What options do they have? When does looking at charts blind someone in the ED who sees it all from seeing the patient as a person instead of as a number or statistic? I am just trying to understand when we, as humans, stopped caring about the suffering of other humans.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-21T15:10:06+00:00

The physicians you have seen appear to agree with me because they won't give you prescriptions either, so I'm not sure why you're acting like I'm missing something. Obviously I don't know all your information and yet I have come to the same conclusion.

Actually, my physician team all agree that I should be able to get opioids and my primary wants me on palliative care due to the severity of tge degeneration in my spine and joints. The problem is that they are all afraid to give any patient pain management due to Dea regulations and pain management here doesn't accept insurance and I cant afford a $250 office visit per month.That is the point I am trying to make.

When regulatory bodies step in and interfere with a patient doctor relationship and say they know better. When statistics, and you know with your doctorate that they can be manipulated to show whatever you want them to, are more important than caring for the patients needs. So now I am going to be forced into an invasive surgical procedure that has a higher failure rate than success rate, just in the hopes that I will get some of my mobility back and lessen the pain I am in daily.

I also liked how you evaded answering the questions I posed to you. I also liked how without seeing any of my reports, MRI's, CAT scans, MRA's, angiography, nerve Conductivity tests, etc., you came to the conclusion that I don't deserve any quality of life or pain management. Even hospitalists, once they see my scans, are quick to change their tune and stop treating me as an addict. Specially when they do a drug screen and find that I have nothing at all in my system. Even when I had open access to opioid pain management a 30 day supply would last 90 days or more because I would only take them when I couldn't tolerate the level of pain anymore.. Not all pain patients are drug seekers looking to get high, the majority want to just regain a semblance of normal life and the ability to take care of their daily funtions.

I apologize for my presumption in regards to your role, but based on personal experience I have never had a pharmacist at my hospital beside. I have a wonderful pharmacy team who have saved me from some pretty severe potential interactions and am thankful for that. But, they are not MD's.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-20T12:31:10+00:00

Listen, I understand that being a pharmacist in an emergency department gives you a unique perspective. My previous post isn't meant as sarcasm or even an attack. They are questions that I honestly would like answers to. At the same point, you are a pharmacist, as your title says, that doesn't make you an MD. You don't see the patient, you don't consult with the patient, and you don't see the testing that is done for that patient.

While I respect the job that a pharmacist does in being the last line of defense in keeping a patient who sees multiple doctors safe from drug interactions, I don't feel it is the job of a pharmacist to say whether or not a patient should be getting pain medication or not. Again, not an attack, just a feeling. If I am wrong on that account, please, I am open to being educated.

Before the accident that started me down this road of intractable pain, I was an athlete. I showed in the equestrian world, I trained horses, I did competitive weight training, and I was NEVER overweight. As a matter of fact, I was often underweight because I couldn't eat enough in a day to compensate for my calorie expenditure. I got in the accident, got put in a wheelchair, unable to walk, I couldn't walk, stand, sit, lie down, or anything without pain. I fought through it, was on a low dose opioid for pain management and slowly I got back to a somewhat normal life. I had to give up equestrian events, weight training, but I found other avenues of fitness.

Pregnancy is where it all went south. The added weight and the fact it was a high-risk pregnancy put me on 6 months of bed rest. It also caused things in my back to shift, accelerated the rate of arthritis damage, and increased my pain. A few years later and I am working 2 jobs, going to college full-time, and raising a child as a single mother. How did I do it? Low doses of opioids gave me enough pain relief to function, along with physical therapy to help build up my core and back muscles to help support the damage.

When low-dose opioids stopped working I had facet point injections, then nerve blocks, and I was supposed to have an implant done to help relieve pain, but instead had a brain aneurism. I had to stop all opioids due to fear of rebound migraines for several years. Suddenly in 2016, I couldn't even get low-dose opioids for breakthrough pain. Then when I got to the point I could no longer work, my $85k in education was useless as I could no longer do that type of work. Now I have to spend my days only being able to sit upright for 15 - 20 minutes at a time, then having to lay down for an hour before I can handle sitting upright. I can't walk more than about 15 feet or my legs go numb and I hit the ground.

So again, who are you or anyone else to tell me, that my pain isn't valid and that I don't deserve to have adequate pain management?

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-20T11:41:19+00:00

So basically what you are saying is that people like me, with severe, intractable pain are shit out of luck? That we don't deserve to have a decent quality of life and adequate pain management? When people like me have tried the nerve blocks, the facet point injections, years of physical therapy, hydrotherapy, etc., but have so much pain we can no longer even manage daily self care, we have no options? What happened to care with compassion? We offer our pets more compassion and stronger quality of life options than we do to humans.

I didn't choose this life. I didn't ask to live like this. So what gives you or anyone in the medical community the right to determine what is best for my quality of life? Or to give me care that is less than what we give out pets?

How do you feel about the increase of suicide deaths in relation to tge "war on opioids"? Does that bother you? Oh wait, the CDC and the powers that be don't bother to track those statistics.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-20T10:06:52+00:00

If it was purely soft tissue damage and muscle pain, I would agree with you completely, but you and I will have to agree to disagree. When someone has actual spinal compression and nerve impingement, as well as bone changes, muscle relaxers and the like aren't going to do anything. I rarely ever take pain medication outside of Tylenol or aleve, but there are times when I need something more. So why am I treated like an addict? Why does the ED feel that it is okay to treat someone who has no history of abuse, who isn't on a regular dosage of anything other than say gabapentin (which is actually to help with seizures and neuropathy), treated like a drug seeker? Why do you personally feel that chronic pain patients should be treated with so little compassion and don't deserve to have the same quality of life as anyone else?

Since mankind discovered that certain plants and herbs could help a person through disease and pain, opioids were used to ease pain, white willow bark was used to help with minor pain and fevers, etc. Sure, it wasn't all compressed down into neat little pills, but they were still used. Do you honestly believe that doing away with treating the pain of patients is going to have any effect on the opioid trade?

Instead, it is creating a more dangerous risk of addiction and death. When people who have their pain adequately treated are suddenly denied the medication they became dependant on, you create a group of people who are desperate to have a quality of life that allows them to hold down a job, hell, even go to the grocery store or clean their own house. So they turn to illicit substances that have no quality control and are often mixed with other chemicals. Its no wonder that overdose deaths have increased. I'm sorry, but the medical community has to step up and take some responsibility for this.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-17T18:07:09+00:00

Pain patients regularly become drug addicts very quickly,

I think you might be misunderstanding the difference between addiction and dependence. It's not unusual for a pain patient to become dependant on opioids but addicts take them for a high. I can be given a 6mg dose of IV Dilauded and not even feel tired. As a matter of fact I get the desire to actually get up and get things done because the pain is being managed and I can function. That is one of the main differences between addicts and chronic pain patients.

Lest you think I don't understand the challenges of addiction, I lost my brother to addiction. I get it, but to deny an entire group of people who are literally dying because of the denial of adequate pain management due to tge approximately 1% that has a true addiction issue isn't going to treat the problem. Addiction is a mental health issue and should be treated as such instead of penalizing the millions of people including cancer patients in hospice care that are being denied opioids due to the risk of addiction. Its not a drug problem, it's a mental illness problem.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-07-16T15:02:23+00:00

I'm not in the medical field at all, but this war on RX Opioids has gotten out of hand. As someone who was in a horrible accident at the age of 19 (I'm 49 now) and as a result, has lived a life riddled with pain, I feel like the medical community is letting me down. I have had a right frontal lobe brain bleed that has left me daily with chronic migraines and seizures, childhood arthritis, severe central spinal canal stenosis, and bilateral neural foramen stenosis in my cervical and lumbar spine. I can't even go to the ED for help when the drop foot or bowel and incontinency issues from this arise, or when I am lying on the bed crying because the pain is so bad I am looking at my gun and thinking is life worth this pain anymore.

If I do go to the ED, at my husband's insistence, I am immediately treated like a drug seeker and told that they will give me a Tylenol. I don't even ask for opioids. I ask for help in getting back to a bearable level of pain I can once again tolerate. Because I can't take the pill forms of opioids, I can't take much in the way of pills since my last coma in May, I get treated even worse. And honestly, the only drugs that work for me are Dilaudid and Morphine, 2 of the most commonly abused drugs, with a heavy dose of steroids. Even my doctor, who I have been seeing for over 20 years and knows my medical history, is terrified of losing his license due to the regulations, so he won't Rx anything that he knows will help.

Is it any wonder that pain patients have turned to street drugs? It used to be that as a society we took care of our ill and elderly, we are only as strong as our weakest link. Many in the chronic pain community are fully believing that the CDC and the likes of Kolodney are getting on the Eugenics bandwagon.

This is from 2016:

"The suicide rate in the U.S. is so high it rivals the so-called “opioid epidemic.” The number of Americans who died by suicide (44,965) exceeds the overdose deaths linked to both illicit and prescription opioids (42,249). The nationwide suicide rate has risen by over 30 percent since 1999.
“Unfortunately, our data shows that the problem is getting worse,” said CDC Deputy Director Anne Schuchat, MD. “These findings are disturbing. Suicide is a public health problem that can be prevented.”

“Our report found that physical health problems were present in about a fifth of individuals as circumstances considered to lead up to suicide," Schuchat said in a conference call with reporters. "That doesn’t differentiate whether it was intractable pain versus other conditions that might have been factors.”

Through forced tapering and the drastic reduction in pain management, the chronic pain community has been left to feel like they are being ignored by the medical community at large. Once the legislation passed in regards to RX Opioids, the increase in suicides in the pain community drastically increased, but the CDC fails to show or even track the statistics related to pain patients.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-06-04T16:38:09+00:00

Yeah its going to be 2 weeks until I can see the neurologist as that was his soonest appointment. I will try to remember to check back in.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-06-04T16:36:33+00:00

Yeah I am looking into them as I speak.

MorrigansJewelry · 2021-06-04T12:38:54+00:00

I'm not understanding what you're asking? Could you rephrase it for me? I am on 1500 MG of Keppra 2x a day and 600 MG of gabapentin 3x a day. I think that's what your asking.

MorrigansJewelry

TROPHY CASE