The Fentanyl Files: A Conversation with a Chronic Pain Patient

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[00:01:41] The fentanyl crisis is real and it's costing lives. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids other than methadone drove drug overdose deaths in the United States higher and higher between 2015 and 2022. Between those two years, drug overdose deaths saw

[00:02:02] an over 7.5-fold increase. With all of the awful news about these countless deaths and shattered lives, about the illicit fentanyl pipeline from precursors in China to production led by Mexican cartels, and of course the ravages of addiction linked to fentanyl and other opioids, it can be

[00:02:20] really easy to forget that fentanyl and other opioids do have a legitimate function. They can be very effective pain management tools. When it comes to the human body, there are different types

[00:02:30] of pain. Nociceptive pain is what happens when we bang our elbows or touch a hot stove. It's the pain that goes off because our nociceptive nerve fibers are responding to an injury. Neuropathic

[00:02:44] pain comes from damage to the nerves and that usually comes from a disease or an injury. Now, malignant pain is a symptom of cancer. Two other major categories of pain have to do with temporal

[00:02:56] factors. How long does the pain last? Acute pain refers to pain that is temporary and not long lasting, at least relatively speaking. So if I say embark on an ill-advised and foolhardy attempt

[00:03:11] to move a bunch of loose picture frames and end up dropping a large sheet of glass on my foot, the pain I experience from the ensuing laceration would most likely be acute because when that cut

[00:03:23] heals in a few days, I will not have any more issues with the pain. Meanwhile, if I suffer from an underlying condition that leads to severe muscle pain and chronic migraines, my pain is

[00:03:35] chronic. The muscle pain may be constant and the strong headaches may be intermittent, but both are chronic because they are recurring issues that come back and stay for years. There are a lot of

[00:03:48] people dealing with chronic pain out there. A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the percentage of adults in the United States living with chronic pain or pain lasting over three months went from 20.5% to 21.8% from 2019 to 2021. Specifically, high-impact chronic

[00:04:11] pain went from 6.9% to 7.8%. The study defined high-impact chronic pain as a level of pain that made it hard for people to go on with daily life and work on most days. We should note that chronic pain is also linked to mental health issues like depression, substance abuse, anxiety,

[00:04:30] and even a higher risk of suicide. Some chronic pain patients have voiced frustration over measures taken to reduce the risk of opioid deaths. They say that a widespread movement against prescribing has made it more difficult for them to obtain the medications they need to function on a day-to-day

[00:04:49] basis. They say that physicians are losing the ability to use their own knowledge base and discretion in prescribing potentially risky medications. The threats of legal repercussions for over-prescribing have had a chilling effect. They say that physicians are being undermined by

[00:05:09] an increasingly corporatized system that disincentivizes personalized focused treatment and instead emphasizes quick in-and-out interactions. Now, in past years, some physicians were indeed over-prescribing. In some cases, that was simply due to greed. We have all seen the headlines about pill mills where unethical doctors would scratch out prescription

[00:05:33] after illegitimate prescription for addicts. These prescriptions did not serve a real medical need. The mills were more like an assembly line for drugs. But chronic pain patients have argued that in an effort to stop such abuses, the medical world has gone too far in the other direction.

[00:05:51] Here on the Murder Sheet, we always seek to cover a complicated issue from as many sides and perspectives as possible. Today, we are fortunate enough to speak with Toni Collins. Toni is a chronic pain patient who was taken to speaking out about her experiences.

[00:06:08] She believes the response to the opioid crisis has gone too far in one direction and that the current environment undermines the patient-doctor relationship. Toni believes that while precautions ought to be in place to prevent abuse, physicians ought to be able to use their discretion and

[00:06:26] training to assess patients as individuals and take diagnoses and medical history into account in evaluating risk. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is the Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting,

[00:06:45] interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet. And this is The Fentanyl Files, a conversation with a chronic pain patient. Toni shared information about her diagnosis with us. She says that recent magnetic resonance imaging from February revealed that she has

[00:07:50] three levels of spondylolisthesis and that her lumbar spine is going through degenerative disc disease and facet arthropathy. She's even got some spinal herniations pressing into her spinal cord. Spondylolisthesis refers to when a vertebrae slips forward and starts jutting up against the bone

[00:08:09] below it. DDD happens when one's spinal discs start to wear down. And facet arthropathy is a type of arthritis of the spine. Toni says that all of this means there is no surgical fix for her pain.

[00:08:23] She thinks it is important for people to understand that there is a difference between medical-grade fentanyl and illicit fentanyl created by cartels with no quality control or regulations. She believes that media coverage ought to highlight the differences

[00:08:39] between the two to avoid maligning fentanyl and opioids used correctly under the guidance of a doctor for a legitimate attempt at pain management. Are you trying to lose weight and feeling like you're getting absolutely nowhere? Well, weight loss can be a uniquely challenging goal, one that

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[00:09:49] Go to rowe.co.msheet. Sign up today and you'll pay just $99 for your first month and $145 a month after that. Medication costs are separate. That's rowe.co.msheet. Tony has been speaking out about these issues in a number of spaces. On TikTok, she posts under the handle tonycollins0024,

[00:10:16] and she has also joined up with advocacy organizations like the American Pain and Disability Foundation and the Doctor Patient Forum. Tony, tell us a little bit about yourself before we get started. I am a 42-year-old mother of two. I'm married. We moved to Indiana in 2020

[00:10:33] during the pandemic. We're originally from California, and that's where my journey starts is in California. I was an active, active child in every sport that I could do in my tiny, tiny town, and I decided that I fell in love with cheerleading. When I was 15 years old,

[00:10:56] I had a cheerleading accident, and I didn't know what happened. I just knew I had a lot of pain. For three years, we took the original x-rays, and these doctors said, oh, you're just a teenager. You're just being a wimp. You need to toughen up.

[00:11:13] And when I was 17, we finally went to an orthopedic spine surgeon down in Los Angeles with the original scans. They did additional scans, and he showed us the comparison of the two. What had happened to my spine in that cheerleading accident? One of my vertebrae

[00:11:31] had cracked down the middle, and in that three years of being untreated, undiagnosed, it had shifted. So it went from here around like that and was pinching on my spinal cord.

[00:11:44] This doctor was like, we need to fuse your spine now or you're going to be paralyzed by the time you're 22 years old. I had a scholarship set up to do cheerleading in college. I had continued

[00:11:58] doing cheerleading the whole time. I cheered at the 1999 Hula Bowl in Hawaii with a broken back. I still did all those things. I went ahead and had the surgery, which was a pretty tough surgery, being 18 years old and going through something this major and life-changing. But it helped.

[00:12:18] It helped so much. I was able to go back to work. I worked with children in early childhood education. I worked there for four years. Unfortunately, my body does not like to do what it's supposed to. I started having calcium buildup on the hardware.

[00:12:35] I went back to the spine surgeon. He did a bunch of tests. He said, this is the cause of your problem. We need to take the hardware out. When they fuse your back, they take some bone, either

[00:12:46] a cadaver bone or bone from your own hip. They put it in there and it grows. My spine actually has pieces of bone on either side of the vertebrae to keep it from shifting right or left.

[00:13:02] The problem is I can't bend or twist. With the hardware removed, that makes that area completely unstable. They told me I would have a lifetime of pain. I knew this. I expected it.

[00:13:15] But to be managed, for me to still have some semblance of quality of life and functionality. When I was 24, I ended up having the second surgery. They removed the hardware. The doctor came back and said, I broke three vice grips on your back trying to remove those screws.

[00:13:38] That just blew my mind. I was like, really? He said it was like cement. That started the journey of, okay, I can't do anything to fix the anatomy of my spine,

[00:13:51] but I can manage my pain and get healthy. I lost a lot of weight. I was active, went fishing, camping. I ended up coaching high school cheer and dance. After that, I was able to do some

[00:14:05] of the choreography to teach the girls. I was able to keep them safe from experiencing the same kind of accident that I went through. Around 2006, 2007, I started having an increase of pain and my functionality completely went away. I was having issues walking. My right leg will go numb

[00:14:30] and I have a drop foot when I do walk. This started in 2006. I had just started seeing a new primary care doctor. She was amazing. Sent me straight to her husband who was a pain management doctor.

[00:14:45] They were my doctors. They got me through it. We tried so many things on the market from physical therapy, aqua therapy, cupping, massage, holistic, and then injections. I ended up with a spinal cord stimulator implant in 2015. Unfortunately, around 2018, it started malfunctioning. The battery pack

[00:15:09] would shock and burn me. I just stopped charging. I stopped using it. It was supposed to minimize the nerve signals, the pain signals going from the area of my back up to my brain. It was supposed

[00:15:21] to block that. It never did. It never worked for me like that. When I left California, I had already tried so many medications, so many therapies. The last thing that we landed on was opioid pain

[00:15:34] medication. That wasn't the first line of defense for my doctor. It was never that. It was the last hope. I got functional again. I had fertility issues and after 14 years on successful opioid pain

[00:15:49] medication, I got pregnant. I got pregnant with my daughter and I came off of them right away. The doctor was like, well, that was kind of dangerous, but I still did it that way.

[00:16:03] My daughter was healthy. Of course, my pain was horrible during pregnancy. I was on bed rest for the majority of it. But once I had her and I stopped nursing her, my pain management doctor was seeing me throughout the whole pregnancy every month anyway. We couldn't do much

[00:16:20] because I was pregnant, but he still saw me to see if there was anything he could do. After I had my daughter, we went back on opioid pain medication therapy with injections and those

[00:16:33] kept me functional. I was maybe level four out of 10 pain most days back in California. When I would have flares, they would get up to a six or a seven. Then in 2020, the pandemic happened.

[00:16:48] Unfortunately, we had to leave California. It was so expensive. My husband's in the construction industry. We moved to Indiana where his family is. Ever since I've moved here, I have been completely untreated for my pain. The only doctor that I have seen in this state that has even

[00:17:07] bothered to request my medical records from California was my OBGYN. I had my son in March of 2021. No other doctor, no primary care, no pain management, even the neurosurgeon that ended up taking out my spinal cord stimulator did not get any of my records from California.

[00:17:31] I ended up having to send off for physical copies. I have these big giant manila envelopes that I carry with me now because I had issues with them sending them digitally to me.

[00:17:42] I have those hard copies there so I can pull up whatever I need because these doctors are not telling me continuously. Now, I've been on six different doctors here in India between pain management, neurosurgeon, and primary care. I keep being told I'm too complex of a case

[00:18:04] or they don't treat long-term pain patients or what have you. They have a lot of different excuses and they keep passing me on to the next doctor or the next clinic that my insurance might not take.

[00:18:19] And that's been one of the biggest hurdles that I have come across in this state. Also, back in California, I had access to things like cannabis and kratom. I don't here in Indiana.

[00:18:32] So, what are my options? Delta 8s and alcohol. That is not a healthy way to treat chronic pain, especially when you have a medical history backing you up. A lot of the problem is a

[00:18:48] lot of doctors nowadays are either falling in line with the anti-opioid stigma where they were taught in school that opioids are bad. We're not going to use them. There's no place for them. And it's like, well, this medication has been on the market for so, so, so long.

[00:19:13] Yes, there are risks, but with every medication, there are risks. And if you have a patient that has a well-documented history and success with the medication, complete compliance, you kind of want to believe that patient instead of saying,

[00:19:27] oh, well, just the name of the medication is enough to turn the doctor away. Now my functionality is kind of gone. I can't take my kids to the park. I basically have to

[00:19:39] do what they need and that's it. I have very, very little for myself left over. So, self-care, it's going to the doctor. It's going to pick up prescriptions. It's driving my daughter to school. Most of the time, people who don't have any experience in the chronic pain community,

[00:20:01] you don't understand that there's a lot of roadblocks right now. So, say someone goes in right now to have a surgery. We're encouraging patients and I say my chronically ill social media friends and everything. We encourage patients when you go in for a surgery, get your post-op pain

[00:20:17] management in writing. What medications, how often, like have it all in writing because there's been instances where people have gone in for surgeries and they have denied them post-operative medication. Said, go take some ibuprofen, you'll be fine. And it's like double mastectomies, cancer surgeries,

[00:20:38] C-sections. And a lot of people don't know that this is going on. It is in direct correlation to the, I call it the overcorrection of the opioid epidemic. My tagline is pill mills to passive

[00:20:49] aggressive prohibition because what has happened is they went way too easily and readily available to just saying you can't have any of it. And we're not going to outlaw it, but we're going to get

[00:21:02] there. We're going to make it really, really hard for you to get there. And I'm not going to say it's going to be easy, but it's going to be really, really hard for you to obtain this.

[00:21:10] And we now are seeing doctors being arrested for what is classified as overprescribing. They have essentially this thing called a NARCS score and it's essentially like a prescription credit score. Every patient has one and it's your risk assessment tool for the doctors

[00:21:30] risks. They have opioid risk assessment tool kits that the doctors have you fill out at pain management. They used to include a very, very upsetting question about if you had any childhood

[00:21:44] sexual abuse. For women, if you answered yes to this question, you got three points. If you were male, you got one. So, and this goes towards your risks. So, women were more at risk just based on

[00:21:56] that one question. And they've since, a lot of doctors have since taken that question out. Thank goodness. But there's just so many hurdles and now DEA is cutting the production of medications and so many medications are being halted in production because too many government entities

[00:22:16] are involved in healthcare and it takes the personal experience away from the doctor and the patient. And that's kind of one of the big hurdles right now. What are some of the things that people who don't have chronic pain don't understand about

[00:22:31] the physical and emotional pull, not only of living with that pain, but having it be untreated and having to go through some of these hurdles in the medical system? Yeah, it's hard to try and explain. We have like the spoon theory and the way that people explain

[00:22:48] it is every day, every human gets a certain amount of spoons. And if you do a shower, then that takes a certain amount of spoons away. And if you cook dinner, it takes a certain amount of

[00:23:00] spoons away. And once you're out of spoons, you can't borrow from tomorrow. When you're dealing with chronic pain, it's not only just feeling the intensity of the pain, but it also, it's frustrating mentally. I've been in therapy for years, thank goodness that's the only way I'm able

[00:23:20] to get through being untreated. We talk about tools to where I can breathe through when I have huge flares. You can't force this pain to go away. You can't wish it away. You can't think it away.

[00:23:32] And when, and it's small tasks, it's things that normal people would never even imagine. For instance, when I'm in a huge pain flare, my husband has to wipe me after I use the restroom.

[00:23:46] My husband has to help me bathe. Some days you have great days and I can conquer my whole house and clean my whole house. But then I'm down for three days. So it's a give and take with yourself,

[00:23:58] your brain, your social circle goes away. There's a lot of things that suffer because you're kind of in a prison in your own body. Why do you think it is so different state by state in terms of what doctors are willing to do?

[00:24:18] Honestly, I think it has to do with geographical and the way people are raised because a lot of doctors around here have gone to college here and have been raised here. And so they have,

[00:24:33] I don't know how to put it without sounding harsh, but they do have the mindset of their generations before them. So what their grandpa thought they're going to think, what they think is what their kids are going to think. And so a lot of people,

[00:24:47] the second I in my social media have brought up needing opioid pain medication, oh, you're just a pill popper, a drug seeker. You're just looking to get high. You're just looking to get fixed. No, I'm not. I'm looking to function just like you. But in California,

[00:25:04] I think politics does come into play. I think the legislation in each state does matter because in California you do have a lot of more socially liberal ideas. So recreational cannabis, for instance, it was medical for a very long time. And in 2016, they opened it up to recreational,

[00:25:26] but in Indiana, the people in the government are not on board with things they don't understand or things that they might not approve of. I think that really does come into play. 007.44 It's really interesting because what you mentioned, the passive aggressive prohibition. I mean,

[00:25:46] I think anyone who's vaguely familiar with fentanyl and the opioid crisis understands that there was a time when opioids were being prescribed far too easily and people were getting hooked. I mean, and I guess my question for you, you mentioned the legislature.

[00:26:05] What sort of authorities, I mean, I'm just focusing on Indiana right now because that's where we all are. What authorities would come in to, I guess, help fix some of the problems that you've outlined here? 008.01 A lot of it starts with the organizations that are throwing money

[00:26:26] into the anti-opioid agenda. There is a group out there called PROP, Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, and they say some very, very wrong things in my opinion coming from a patient's perspective because we have groups like that that are coming out and just trying to teach the next

[00:26:50] generations of doctors and prescribers that opioids are bad because of this fentanyl crisis, this illicit opiate crisis. These are why. The addiction is they're pushing the fear. They're pushing all of the overdose numbers, which anybody can do an easy Google search

[00:27:12] and NIH.com or CDC.com, DEA.com, they show graphs from when the opioid crisis started versus where overdose deaths are, and they show a graph, and it shows that opioid prescriptions have not been the cause since 20, I think 2012, they've leveled off, but all of the overdoses

[00:27:36] are still skyrocketing. We have a lot of politicians that they're backed by these big pharma, they're backed by these medical device companies. Nowadays, it's more common for doctors to push pain pumps and spinal cord stimulators than something that is tried and

[00:27:59] true like a medication. They want us to try everything but first. We've got so many, I haven't read up on Indiana's opioid prescribing, but you have a limit to how much you can actually prescribe, be prescribed and their morphine milligram equivalents, MMEs. If you have a

[00:28:19] doctor that is prescribing maximum MMEs per patient, the DEA is going to start investigating and then that doctor could possibly be brought up on charges. Their reputation is squashed. 007.05 Is there a way in your view that we can, as a society, we can prevent unnecessary prescriptions

[00:28:41] that could get people hooked on these opioids, which are highly addictive, while not throwing out and castigating people who genuinely need these opioids in order to function? I mean, is there a balance? Is there a system that you could envision that would allow for both or at

[00:28:59] least maybe maximize the benefits for both groups? 008.05 Yeah, it has to come back to where the doctor and patient are in charge, not healthcare insurance companies, not the pharmacists, not the pharmacy company, not the major network that the

[00:29:23] doctor works for. There's too many irons in the fire and it has taken away the personal relationship from doctor and patient. Doctors go to medical school. They spend thousands and thousands of dollars to become the best in their field. We should be trusting them, but unfortunately,

[00:29:43] we can't do that because they are being told from their higher-ups and higher-ups and higher-ups what they can and can't do. My doctor in California, he was in private practice,

[00:29:53] so he didn't have as many people telling him and all of that. Like out here, a lot of the doctors that I've seen, they've been with these networks in Indiana, and so they have limits on

[00:30:06] what they can do, but if the doctor has these assessment risk tools and they're not these outrageous questions that, I mean, there is no way to tell if someone is going to become addicted.

[00:30:30] It can happen with any substance. It can happen with alcohol. It can happen with cigarettes. It can happen with cannabis. It can happen with any substance, but the doctor needs to be assessing the patient, making sure their patient is functional, making sure the patient isn't

[00:30:49] diverting medication, isn't selling it, isn't getting extras from somebody else. There's no way that you're going to be able to completely track all of that. They've come up with these new pill bottle topper designs that if you open it too early, it destroys the pills in the box.

[00:31:10] That's kind of an extreme, in my opinion, because you have a lot of people with arthritis that won't be able to open those bottles properly, and what happens if they mess up? Boom, their month's

[00:31:20] supply is gone, but there's definitely, I mean, these risk assessment tools are huge and they are important. They were put in place to protect patients, but to also protect providers, but there's, I mean, you can't really tell. I've known someone who was on opioid pain medication

[00:31:40] after surgery for one week and they got addicted, and then you have someone like me who was on it for so long, and when I got pregnant, I was able to stop cold turkey with no

[00:31:51] problems. They do have these new genetic tests that they're trying to come out with. A lot of patient advocates are kind of against those because if you have the risk of addiction, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have your pain treated with a medication that has, you know,

[00:32:09] the risks. That's when the doctor-patient relationship is important because your doctor is going to be able to read your body language. They're going to be able to look in your eyes and

[00:32:18] tell. They're going to be able to see if you're coming in for prescriptions early or what have you, and then every month pain patients have to take your analysis. You have to, you know, do these

[00:32:30] tests to make sure that you're not misusing your medication and that you have the appropriate levels in there. Like there's a lot of hoops to jump through. I mean, I had a hysterectomy back in

[00:32:43] July and they gave me the exact medication that I was on in California for my spine pain, postoperatively for my hysterectomy because my OBGYN out here, she's amazing. I absolutely love her and she talked to me. We had an open conversation about this and I said, listen,

[00:33:02] you know that I'm already in this chronic back pain issue, the spine pain, and then you're going to cause acute pain by doing this surgery. What are you going to be able to do for me? And she said,

[00:33:16] what works best for you? Only doctor out here that has ever asked me that was what works best for you? And I told her what worked for me in California and that's what she put me on.

[00:33:26] And that was the most normal that I have ever felt in the past four years was when I was laid up recovering from my hysterectomy because my spine pain, I wanted to get up and do all these

[00:33:37] things, but I still had postoperative limitations, but my back felt great. And I was like, well, this is ridiculous. I'm recovering from like a major, an organ just exited my body and this

[00:33:53] is the most normal I felt in four years. It's frustrating because, and a lot of chronic pain patients, you would not be able to tell by looking at us that we are in the amount of pain

[00:34:06] that we are constantly in. We learn how to mask it because when you're walking out in the grocery store, nobody wants to see that and you kind of get this social construct up and you have to

[00:34:19] play your part. You have to, for me being a mom, I can't let my kids see my pain all the time. I can't let my husband see my pain all the time. It's just, it's unfair to me and to them. I

[00:34:32] shouldn't have to hide my issues, but they didn't ask for it either. And that's kind of what a lot of the problem is for most chronic pain patients right now. And there's over 50 million people living in chronic pain, 50 million Americans.

[00:34:52] That's a big number. And we have so many patients who are constantly, everybody uses the term gaslighting, gaslight, gaslit. When you have doctors who won't bother getting your medical records or they do, they see your spinal conditions and they say, you don't really feel that much pain.

[00:35:16] Like that, how do you live in my body? No, you don't. I don't live in your body. And that's one of the issues. The clinicians don't believe that we're in this much pain. I went

[00:35:27] to the emergency room here in Indiana with an acute kidney failure episode. Like all of my, I was in acute kidney failure. Couldn't figure it out why. And the hospitalist, when I was admitted

[00:35:40] into the hospital told me, and I was in a huge spine pain flare. I could barely walk. She said, if you would just get out of bed and do a little bit more walking, you wouldn't have had this kidney

[00:35:53] issue. And I said, do you realize that I have spinal conditions to have created me into this disabled person since 2006? Like I had did not, I broke my back. I've had failed surgeries and it was

[00:36:08] just this big thing. I ended up having to file a complaint with the hospital and with my insurance. And it's just disgusting. You can't walk that off. That's not how it works. No, I have to walk with

[00:36:21] a cane now, you know, like I'm 42. It's not like you're just coming in and saying, give me all the pills. You know, if you know, you alluded to the social media and sort of meeting other chronic

[00:36:33] pain patients on that. Can you, can you tell us a bit about that and where people who might have some of this resonate with them can follow you and things like that? I started TikTok like two

[00:36:42] years ago. I was recovering from hernia surgery and I was in the hospital. I was like, I was, I did not want to join TikTok. I was like anti-TikTok. I'm like, I'm an old lady. I'm not a TikToker.

[00:36:54] But then I joined and I started seeing a lot of people like me and being a former cheerleader. I like to talk a lot. I, you know, I'm, I just, I have a voice and I'm going to use it.

[00:37:08] And I started seeing a lot of people in need of essentially just support and solidarity. When you have disabilities that prevent you from leaving your house, social media is your social

[00:37:21] life. You can't just pop over to a friend's house for coffee. You have to plan things ahead of time. And then if you're in a big flare, you might have to cancel last minute. So social media has been

[00:37:33] a huge thing, a huge positive coping tool for disabled Americans, people living in chronic pain, chronic illness. We have a lot of different foundations and organizations that are starting to gather support. American Pain and Disability Foundation, that one has, their focus is trying

[00:37:54] to get legislation changed in each state. This last weekend, they were in Washington, D.C. knocking on doors, asking representatives, what can we do to get patients back to where they need? Like

[00:38:06] what kind of language do we need to put in this legislation or bill to be passed? But they also focus on children who deal with chronic pain. There is so many kids that are also in my shoes,

[00:38:21] being completely untreated for medical conditions that are very well documented. They're babies. They, you know, and it goes back to even kids with seizure disorders that have had to move states because they needed cannabis access. American Pain and Disability Foundation is doing some

[00:38:38] great work. And then there's also the Doctor Patient Forum. And actually this Friday, we have a little protest we're going to be doing in Indianapolis against a doctor out in front of

[00:38:51] St. Francis. Don't know if I'm physically going to be able to be there because I have my toddler, but it's going to be from 11 to 2. And I'm hopeful because maybe if we show up with signs

[00:39:03] on our walkers and our wheelchairs and our canes, you know, and we're on the corner of a busy intersection in Indianapolis, maybe someone is going to see that and say, hey, we need to look

[00:39:15] into this. You know, we need to check into what's going on with our disabled brothers and sisters. And there's so many different support groups. The Doctor Patient Forum actually has individual support groups for each state on Facebook. And you can search on Facebook, TikTok.

[00:39:34] Both of those foundations are ones I'm closely working with. I'm doing rallies and then I'm also doing, I'm hoping to get with the legislation and help get it pushed through for Indiana. I hope no more patients have to go through what I go through. When I first started

[00:39:51] my social media, it became more heartbreaking to know that how many other people are dealing with this. And I don't claim to be a advocate or anything like that. I'm just someone telling her

[00:40:04] story and sharing my journey, all the good, the bad, and the ugly. I don't share facility names. I don't share doctor's names, but I do share my journey as I am experiencing it. And a lot of

[00:40:17] people, it resonates with them because they're also going through all these things. And just having a bit of solidarity and support is huge for the mental health of disabled Americans and people who are housebound.

[00:40:31] Tony, is there anything we didn't ask you about that it's important, do you think, for our audience to understand this, especially within the context of the fentanyl crisis, the opioid crisis?

[00:40:40] What I have educated myself on is having a safe supply is important because we have so many chronic pain patients that have been cut off or weaned off medication. They're turning to the streets.

[00:40:54] They're turning to taking their own lives because they would rather face that possibility of having their pain treated by an illicit substance than to live in the pain and focus and be in the pain.

[00:41:11] Until we get a safe supply back, more and more people are going to be overdosing. They're going to be getting a hold of the fentanyl pills. They're going to be accessing these black market

[00:41:24] substances. And the only way for everybody to be able to move forward, chronic pain patients, patients with substance use disorder, all of those things come from having access, safe access. The government is withholding. The pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

[00:41:48] It's all because they've limited production of medications. They've limited access, prescribing. Pharmacies are limiting. They're saying, oh, you can't get this medication unless you tell me your medical diagnosis. And that's a violation of HIPAA. So until there's so many

[00:42:07] of those things falling in line, I don't know. It's heartbreaking to know as a chronic pain patient and as someone who has lost loved ones to overdose of fentanyl and other illicit substances, there's nothing that we can do. It's in the hands of our government.

[00:42:30] And until we start speaking out and bringing more awareness to it, fentanyl is going to continue to take many American lives. It's going to continue. 00.26 Really well said, Tony. Thank you so much for coming on here. 00.37 We really do appreciate it. Thank you so much.

[00:42:46] 00.38 Thank you so much. I appreciate you guys. We wish to sincerely thank Tony for coming on our show and sharing her perspective.

[00:43:35] We very much appreciate any support. We ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.