[lostlogin]

I know that you have likely shortened the story for reading, making the phone call sound different to how it really went, but if you want to set off alarm bells, ringing around asking about a script for strong pain meds is a way to do it.

[mgkimsal]

when you're in intense pain, it's difficult to drive around to too many places (wife drove me to one), she called a few others, no one would even agree to schedule me to come in for a consultation/exam.

one office offered to schedule an appointment for about 4 weeks later, which I didn't take.

This situation has happened to me twice, both times this pain came out of nowhere, and first time it took me out of commission the better part of 4 days. Tried to get any medication (per above story) - nothing. Second time this happened, 2 years later, it lasted about 3 days, and I didn't even bother trying to get anything - just took a lot of OTC stuff. If this happened regularly, I might be able to figure out if there's some trigger to avoid, but... 2x in the last 6 years - hard to pinpoint!

I should add that this gave me a little bit of insight as to how people who live with chronic pain might feel all the time. Just a few days of that was maddening. Thinking it might be the 'new normal' - constant intense pain that rarely lapses - would really have been difficult to cope with, and I probably can emphathize (or is it sympathize?) a bit more with the prescription drug abuse situation.