Why can't I get help managing my pain? With Bev Schechtman

Don't Punish Pain With Claudia Merandi

In this our first installment of Claudia Merandi’s “Don’t Punish Pain” podcasts, tune in, listen and you will understand why United Patients Group is honored to promote Claudia and her international crusade for the most marginalized individuals. These are patients who suffer with Chronic Pain and Intractable Pain and are now being targeted by our government using the fake opioid prescription crisis and misinterpretation of the 2016 CDC prescribing guidelines.

In her interview, Claudia and her guest Beverly ‘Bev’ Schekman discuss the pain associated with Crohn’s Disease, an autoimmune disorder which attacks the colon and other organs including the eyes with varying severity. Both Claudia and Bev had severe Crohn’s and spent years in the hospital battling this condition. For those of you who don’t have Crohn’s disease, imagine the most excruciating intestinal pain with all the associated intestinal symptoms as the body attacks itself. During the early period of their lives, the ladies were treated appropriately with opioid pain medication, often with Dilaudid (hydromorphone) which greatly helped their pain.

Unfortunately, Crohn’s Disease is merely one of the painful disorders which are falling prey to the actions of our government and medical community. Claudia first began her advocacy when she was accused of drug seeking while suffering from her chronic illness. When she found that obtaining relief with pain medication was getting harder despite her diagnosis, the Don’t Punish Pain Rally group was born. Bev found Claudia as she too had been denied life restoring pain medications for the same reasons. Unbelievably, Bev was in terrible distress and presented to the ER. While taking her history she revealed she had been sexually assaulted as a child. Subsequently, she was denied pain medication because of the assault. This was perhaps the most egregious action by the medical community she had ever experienced or had ever been reported to her. Bev became an advocate with Claudia.

In this podcast they discuss some of the misconceptions about the use of opioid therapy in the chronic pain and often rare disease world of medicine. In 2016 the CDC recommended that physicians not exceed 90 mme (morphine milligram equivalent) without regard to the patient's disease, condition, appropriate use of medicine and severity of pain. Over the past 5 years, this recommendation has taken on a new life as a regulation and treated as law. As such physicians willing to write for chronic intractable pain, have been targeted by the DEA who enters the doctor’s offices, gun drawn, patients waiting and demanding records. Claudia and Bev discuss this travesty against opioid prescribing in long term pain and the targeting of doctors who do nothing wrong except prescribe appropriately for the treatment of their patients.

Watch and listen to the unbelievable. We’ve just begun!