I will not say her name what I will say is that she was innocent of any crime but living in pain. This pain was brought on by the unenlightened War we’ve been waging for decades. A war that none of us really asked for but were thrust into by our birth. This is not a plea from a drug user whom wants drugs legalized for recreation but a plea from someone who needs medications to function daily. It is also a plea from an innocent woman who may die soon because of doctors that are now too afraid to treat their patience with kindness and empathy. Doctors so wrapped up with fear of losing their license to because of government overreach. So afraid, that their sacred oaths have been lost in time and wrapped in red tape.
It’s sweltering hot in this car, I feel it drip down my spine as a take another long drag from a cigarette I feel guilty for smoking. Alone in the car, I watch her stand in front of the CVS, no hope shines in her eyes. I can not tell you her name but for these purposes we will call her Mother, because she could be any of our mothers. She could be our mother, grandmother, daughter, sister or wife. She stands aside her husband, sobbing on his shoulder. It’s been four hours since I began my frantic search to help her. It seemed simple, at first. As the moments dragged, each interaction, each phone call, became more heartbreaking. Each doctor and nurse we faced seemed an enemy to conquer. A fight of wills. Human hearts fighting rigid policies. It only took us four hours to lose hope. She makes her way slowly lurching to the car as my heart yarns to comfort her. Her husbands arm and leg brush against mine as we sit squished in the back of the sedan, a stray tear drifting down his cheek. Mother speaks, with the lurching speech of one speaking past tears, “I just, I want you to know. I have a Do not resuscitate order, if… if, I have another episode, keep him (she points at her husband) away from me, don’t call the ambulance, please… please.. just let me go.” Her bravery is stoic and proud as only a mothers can be, but in her eyes, I can see fear, I smell it on her. For a Woman who believes so strongly in God, she wonders how he could let this happen to her. In my mind I think, it’s not God who has caused this war, it is man, it is man greedy for money and doctors afraid of persecution for helping their own patients.
In the last fed days, this is what I have learned about Mother. She suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. It is so rare that many doctors in the Southern United States have never even heard of it. It usually only found in infants but for some reason at only 53 years old, she has one. There is no treatment or cure. She has several degrees that line her home in her small cabin in Alaska. She has worked as a holistic doctor and was quite a ways through medical school before her diagnosis. She had a 4.2 in med-school and won one of only three scholarships to do so. All she’s ever known is how to use her brain. She is not beautiful, she is not old, she has nothing much to offer but what is in her mind, and her heart. The tumor is taking away the only thing she knows, her ability to think, to process, to help people. She made her way with her husband, we will call him Papa Bear, all the way from Alaska to Texas even though she probably shouldn’t be traveling. She came here to help her children and to see her family for what will most likely be the last time. She selflessly made this journey at her own sacrifice to be able to leave this world with a clean conscience.
She had her doctor write her multiple prescriptions for the medications she needs to stay alive, to stay functional. Her doctor is a DO or Doctor Osteopathy. According to Medline Plus, A Service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine a DO is described as “A doctor of osteopathic medicine (D.O.) is a physician licensed to practice medicine, perform surgery, and prescribe medication.” Doctors of Osteopathy treat patients on a holistic level, not just treating symptoms but looking at a patients history and treating them to their personal needs. Source: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002020.htm .
During her travels to the southern United States she has encountered many problems in every state she has been in. She had hard copies of prescriptions written by a certified doctor. It didn’t matter, NO pharmacy she has encountered would fill them. Each state has required that she receive a prescription from an instate doctor due to the level of narcotics she is prescribed even though they are authentic prescriptions from a real doctor. In Washington they would not fill them because he was a D.O. and not an M.D. even though the qualifications are the same and the degrees are equivalent and by law he is allowed to write these prescriptions. Due to the laws enacted because of this war on drugs she was unable to receive her medications. She ran into a similar issue in California. In each case she was able to somehow get in touch with someone who could fill those prescriptions, but not before she was hospitalized for a seizure for not getting them in time. During her time in California, she slipped into a coma. Papa Bear made a coffin like liter in the back of the car so that in a comatose state she could still be transported here, to Texas. Luckily she woke up just a couple of days before crossing over the Texas border.
Now we are here, to today, she was assured that in Texas she would be able to fill her hard copy prescriptions with no trouble when she initially spoke to someone over the phone. She went to the pharmacy early in the afternoon to have them filled. She was informed that because they were not written by a doctor in Texas she could not have them filled. I thought I had a solution, it seemed simple enough. Call a doctor, have her seen, give them her medical records and diagnosis and have them rewrite the prescriptions. I was assured by four nurses on the phone in the facilities that this would not be an issue even after telling them the caliber of medications that she was prescribed. So I made the phone calls, set up an appointment, and comforted her while she cried, assuring her that all would be okay. Telling her that we would have her medications by tonight and that she wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. What a liar those nurses made me.
I had my coffee and dressed. My dear Charles, Papa Bear, Mother and I all funneled into the car. It was a group effort to try and help a helpless woman. I called every pharmacy to find the medications she needed, to make sure they would have them when we had the “Texas Legal” prescriptions in our hands. We were all nervous, all knowing in a part of us that at any moment something could go wrong. We arrived at the Doctor and I was assured by the nurse that the Doctor had received the fax with her medical information. She filled out her paperwork, went through the door and I waited. Moments later, the doctor comes out of the office to ask me questions about her paperwork, he claimed to not have received it. He even claimed to not have a Woman by the name I addressed the fax to in the office. I went back to the counter to address the nurse and she assured me that the paperwork was in his file and she personally was with him when he reviewed it. They went back to the office and moments later Mother and Papa Bear return from the office her crying and the doctor unconcerned and uncaring. Mother even informed me that he spoke with her doctor on the phone, who they contacted all the way in Africa because he is participating in the Doctors without Borders program. Still he says “There’s nothing I can do, I don’t feel comfortable prescribing these medications.” To this I replied “She might die because you refuse to write a prescription she has already been given. His reply followed, “I’m sorry she’ll have to see another doctor, one for pain management.” I argued with the nurses to talk to another doctor, the same doctor whose nurse I had spoken with that morning that assured me it would not be a problem. Again the response was that the doctor was “uncomfortable” prescribing such medications. They told me to take her to the hospital to see if they would but assured me the response would be the same. So in the car we wen and I was back on the phone. I called many doctors, all of which assured me that it was an impossibility, no one had even heard of the type of tumor she had. She tells me to take her home, she tells me she wants to go home, she just wants to die, she just wants it all to be over with. God took her brain, what else does she have to live for. Her doctor tells her to avoid stress and stress is all she is given. She could die within days without these medications, and for what? Because a doctor is to afraid to prescribe them to her. Why? Because of all the laws enacted to fight a war on drugs! She is not an addict, she has a brain tumor! So now I sit, writing a story of a woman I just met that I already love. They have taken her will to fight, they have taken her will to live. How do we fight these atrocities against our own countrymen. She crossed state borders with a hard copy prescription, not countries! She has a doctor who has been willing to take time out of his schedule of caring for children across the World to try to help her. Yet these doctors could care less if she dies from a seizure from not having her medications.
So now, all I can see is her face when she tells me to let her die, her shaking voice when she tells me to keep her husband away from her so he can’t bring her back. This strong woman who has done nothing but help others all her life is breaking because no one will help her in her time of need. All I can see is a woman who has done nothing but fight and lose her will to live. I feel a deep sadness at what our country has been reduced to. I am appalled and I am scared for my future and for my family, and friends who could be denied care because of laws that do not protect the people. A country, “by the people, for the people” who will not live up to their own motto’s and standards. I am angry and I want to fight! I cannot fight alone. Today, I have lost the fight and it is draining. “Just keep me comfortable as I go” she says, but how can I promise that when I have nothing, no medications to help her. No doctor who will try. How do we, as American citizens, fight back? How do we ensure that this won’t happen to us someday? She is at the mercy of a medical system that will show no mercy. She is scared and I hold her while she cries.
[footer_copyright] Andrea Curran
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