D.F.P.S.

Imagine you are ill and in immense pain. You go to your General Practitioner of choice expecting to obtain a diagnosis and some pain relief for your condition. However, you find that when you get there, you need to be referred to another doctor to get a second opinion. Your doctor prescribes you some medication and pain relief that you already have tried and it simply doesn’t work. So you lie in your bed for days on end awaiting the next appointment.

DASSA have just won the first battle and that is to get you steered/directed away from opiate drugs. They don’t need to report to a government minister to get further direction, because they govern themselves!

You then are sent to Waranilla, a drug rehabilitation clinic, where you instantly feel threatened, embarrassed and not exactly safe. You feel as though you are about to get asked for money or hassled for drugs as you walk in. You eventually get a prescription, which may or may not relieve your pain.

They now want to try and get you away from the drug that gives you pain relief. So you are referred to another doctor at Flinders Medical Centre, the Royal Adelaide Hospital, who assesses if you’re a drug addict or mentally unbalanced. He advises you and your GP that you are indeed nuts and the pain is all in your head. He looks at your X-rays, chest MRI’s, Brain MRI’s and all sorts of scans but doesn’t understand your condition. Your condition may be rare, or common.

It’s a pain that only you can truly understand. You try to tell this doctor your problem, yet he and others believe it’s not there and that “it’s all in your head”. The only reason you could get to the doctor today was because for once you were having a “good day”. You and your carer are there together which is a rare outing. Most days you are in bed close to tears (if not already in tears) wishing that you were dead. This doctor has not seen you at your worst, so what right has he got to call you nuts?

Eventually, you cannot bear the pain any more. You are not getting the pain relief that you are entitled to. As far as you can see it, there are 3 solutions to your problem:

1) Scout the drug market for illicit drugs
2) Take your own life
3) Stand up and fight for justice

 It just seems too inhumane, doesn’t it?

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