The doctor in the Emergency Room tonight told me that it is now the “standard of care” to NOT treat people’s pain with opiates. Ever. Unless they are cut open surgically or something.

What I should have said and couldn’t because I was so beside myself is this: “’Standard of CARE?’ Standard of care, okay, well that’s not caring for people.

That’s not caretaking.

When someone comes into the hospital and explains that they would like an X-ray of their arm because they fell on it and the pain is unbearable, a doctor of medicine is supposed to give them pain medication.

They are not supposed to immediately assume that this person is an addict that is drug-seeking for opiates to get a fix.

I said to him, “Can I have one pill. One pill so that I can sleep tonight, because I haven’t slept in 47 hours and I want to. Please? I have three children and three dogs to take care of. I have to be functional. My doctor cannot see me for nine days.”

You cannot possibly get addicted or abuse one pill.

One pill is laughable to an addict.

We take these drugs by the handfull, duh, in active addiction.

One pill.

He offered to give me steroids!! A patient with LUPUS. STEROIDS. DUH. When I told him that steroids would make my endocrine system crash like the last time I was on them, he said, “Well, you’re moving it.”

So, you don’t believe me, that’s really what’s going on here.

You saw my history of addiction and you think I’m drug seeking and you’re an asshole.

I’m so tired I can’t even think straight, but, to this man, I am nothing.

An addict.

A hopeless case.

A junkie.

Right.

Asking for one pill? That is laughable. What am I going to do with one pill?

He didn’t “care” for me at all, and so he treated me like garbage.

Trash.

That’s not a standard of care. That’s mean and hateful. That has nothing to do with the word “care.” Caretaking, nursing, medicine, doctoring, healing.

TREATING PEOPLE AS IF THEY ARE YOUR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS.

Standard of care, right.

The new standard of care is to not care at all.