thewilltolive

I've been a chronic pain patient for 2 years now. Recently it feels like the close relationship that I've had with my parents my entire life is close to being destroyed. I really feel like they have no idea at all what I go through on a daily basis no matter how many times I explain it to them. I have good days and bad days. Without my consent or agreement they recently decided to give me only half my pain management medication for the month when it is refilled and to keep the other half until it has been 15 days. I have always stated that I hate the medication I have to take to function. I hate how to some extent any chronic pain patient treated with such medication has their life "controlled" in a way. I always try to take as little as I possibly can and they know this. I've tried various times to live my life without pain management by weaning myself down off of the medicine and trying to do my daily routine but unfortunately for now at least it seems that it's a necessary evil and they know all of this.

Today I called them (today was my birthday by the way....) because I had some really really bad days in the first part of the month and it required me to use a bit more of my medication a day than usual to control my pain and keep it at a level where I can function. If I ever have to do this I always end up compensating for it. Obviously, so that I'm not short at the end of the month. Meaning Today they threatened to not give me the other half of my medicine early and they told me that I'm an addict. This was meant beyond the dependence I have on the medication to physically function and the physiological addiction my body has to it because of the two years I've been prescribed the medicine. They told me this because when they made that threat I started to cry out of fear due to what my body would do without the medicine during that time. I feel that's a perfectly understandable fear. My Mother said, "Stop crying that's what addicts do they cry!"

I feel that this is simply due to the fact that they don't understand my pain at all. I'm engaged and my fiance who lives with me understands my pain and what I go through perfectly fine. The worst part of it all is that today on my birthday, my parents accuse me a diagnosed chronic pain patient who is prescribed these medicines of being some kind of "junkie" basically.