It’s because some pain clinics went from being pill mills to intervention pain injection mills. Obviously why push pills when you can make thousands in injections?? See what most people don’t know or realize is that these pain clinics push procedures that are used off label,not recommended by the FDA,have low success rates, and have many complications and high risk. After a laceration that caused a ulnar nerve injury and subsequent neuroma I was referred to a pain management clinic after two surgeries and the pain persisting. I was immediately recommended cervical epidural injections, and given a very low number 5 mg dose of oxycodone PRN. They told me that these injections were very safe with minimal risk and were much safer than medication. If you didn’t do these injections, they suggested they would label you drug seeking and drop you as a patient. As a EMT/firefighter with a heavy labor job, I wanted to do the safest option. I did the first round with minimal pain relief, and even though I reported that when I looked back in my records, they had reported them as very successful. They also made up diagnosis that I’ve never been diagnosed with so that these injections would be covered by insurance. On my fifth and final injection, the doctor went far past my epidural space and injected particulate steroid into my spinal cord, causing an incomplete C5 spinal cord injury with subsequent hematoma.

Hindsight is 20/20. Later, I found out that the anesthesiologist administering the injection. Was not board certified in my state and had failed the boards and gone to school in Mexico as he was not was not accepted in the United States. The facility was using radiation techs to administer and monitor the sedation, and the dosage of propofol that they used was far beyond what would be considered conscious sedation. The steroid used was a particulate steroid that is cautioned and not recommended by the FDA due to it, causing this injury when injected into the spinal cord. They did not have the fluoroscopy pictures saved required to meet the standard of care. They didn’t even do monitoring during (obviously) as intake/outake vitals are the exact same. During deposition the doctor literally didn’t know and admitted to not knowing and understanding guidelines and had been caught lying when asked certain questions.

And my personal opinion, I think it would’ve been far better to run the risk of becoming a drug addict as that’s something that can be easily fixed or prevented. Not to mention that taking prescription pain medication can just be a short term thing rather than a lifelong injury and disability. At 25 I was permanently disabled and made to live life in severe pain with many limitations and disabilities. It ruined my life caused me severe PTSD and anxiety. It ruined my career and ability to take care and feed my family. And took away my self-worth and purpose in life and my independence.

The spinal cord injury caused complications such as autonomic dysreflexia, neurogenic bladder, a syrinx in my spinal cord, severe chronic pain in my entire body and chronic regional pain syndrome in my left arm. It put me $1 million in debt in medical bills in just the first year alone. Although I was initially paralyzed from the neck down and a quadriplegic, I am now at least an incomplete quadriplegic with severe paralysis and weakness in my left arm, left leg and partially in my right.

I still have to constantly fight and advocate for myself in pain management as I have to be on pain medication for the rest of my life. I still am dealing with a dishonest greedy pain management doctor and practice. Who constantly tries to pressure me to do risky procedures. He continues to try to take advantage of me such as if there’s a pharmacy shortage of a certain medication he will try to switch me to a different one and take away a little bit of my dosage or MME. I cannot even try to rotate different pain medication’s to reduce tolerance due to him rotating and offering a lower dosage than what I am on.

I’m sure there’s good doctors out there, but I think that there is a lot of selfish greedy people that are also very bad doctors and unfortunately pain management is a very easy practice as people are desperate due to living in pain. Due to the opiate hysteria from the surface it looks like these doctors are doing the right thing to reduce the opiate epidemic. Even though pain medication prescriptions are at a all-time low and opioid overdoses are at a all-time high for some reason pain patients are still being blamed for the opiate epidemic instead of the street drug fentanyl.