An agonized death that didn’t have to happen. Dawn Anderson was 53 years old, and a former Registered Nurse. Her family has granted permission to share the story of her last days. The story is both horrifying and highly representative of many others in social media, related by surviving family of deceased pain patients. These are patients who – in effect if not from deliberate intent – have died in entirely avoidable agony because of the 2016 CDC Guidelines on prescription of opioid pain relievers to people with chronic pain.
Dawn was diabetic. She had also suffered from kidney disease. She had lost both legs and one eye, resulting in severe pain for many years, which until recently was managed with opioid pain relievers. However, her physician – Dr. Paul C. Madison — appears to have had offices in as many as eleven US States, from which he dispensed very high volumes of opioids. His difficulties with regulators go back to at least 2012. He now awaits sentencing for operating pill mills and billing Medicare for millions of dollars in services he didn’t deliver.
When Dr Madison was barred from further treating patients, Dawn sought help from multiple pain management doctors in her area. However, she found that many were no longer accepting new patients. Among the few who would see her, none would treat her with opioids at the dose levels that had been effective for her in the past. Several were transitioning their patients to Suboxone programs, or recommending steroid shots. Her most recent pain management doctor refused to prescribe above 90 Morphine Milligram Equivalents (MME) per day, citing the CDC “guidelines” as a de facto maximum allowable dose level.
Like many patients with chronic pain, Dawn’s medical situation was complex and involved several interacting medical disorders and issues. She had a history of MRSA – a highly aggressive antibiotic-resistant staph infection. She had also personally observed many patients in whom spinal injections had led to worsening pain. She refused both Suboxone and steroids.
On March 4, 2019, a family friend spoke with Dawn. She was very tired and not feeling well. Her husband was calling from work throughout the day. When she did not answer, he called the police department and asked for a wellness check. When police arrived, they found Dawn had fallen out of her wheelchair and was unconscious on her living room floor. She was transported to a hospital. When she regained consciousness, she was very confused.
Hospital physicians determined Dawn had a severe urinary tract infection and her kidneys were failing. She was admitted to ICU and a doctor ordered a dialysis tube. Staff also forcibly started her on Thorazine injections, as she was refusing dialysis. They asserted that she was mentally incompetent. Family members observed that she was covered in bruises due to the force used when pinning her down to administer the injections.
On March 10th, Dawn was moved from intensive care to a regular room. Her daughter called a family friend so that Dawn could talk to someone she liked and trusted. The conversation was very difficult. The friend asked why Dawn was refusing dialysis. Dawn replied “I just can’t take it anymore.” She anticipated having new issues with the dialysis, but most important was her unbearable pain. Hospital staff had again refused to provide adequate treatment with opioid pain relievers.
Both Dawn and her friend were in tears, but Dawn was adamant: “Honey, I love you, but I can’t suffer any more. The pain is unbearable and I just can’t fight any more. If you keep begging me to, I will hang up.” She and her family had talked about Dawn entering Hospice care, where she would at least be treated for her pain. She was released from the hospital that day to go home. Her friend spoke with Dawn an hour later. She was tired, but had at last been placed on comfort care.
Dawn died a day later, on March 11, 2019.
What can we learn from this deeply disturbing narrative? Would Dawn have lived much longer if she had been treated adequately with opioid pain relievers? That is impossible to say with confidence. But what is clear is that this woman died in needless agony. She should never have been forced to see a pill mill doctor in the first place. And she should never have been forced to taper from effective dose levels because legitimate doctors were intimidated by CDC and State regulators into refusing effective – and largely safe – therapy with opioid pain relievers. By any other name, this is State sanctioned torture.
It is not accidental that the American Medical Association has recently repudiated the CDC guidelines. But the government dinosaur’s bureaucratic brain is in its tail and it hasn’t gotten the message yet. CDC has merely doubled down on the mythology that doctor over-prescribing caused our “opioid crisis”. They are running away from their own data which demonstrates the falsity of this assertion. There is very little relationship between physician prescribing and either opioid addiction or overdose deaths. But the only metric CDC seems willing to use to measure the success of the war against drugs is reduced prescribing to people in pain.
It is time for this madness to stop! Opioid prescribing guidelines need to be taken out of the CDC and rewritten from the ground up by more truly competent Agencies, or by professional groups within medicine itself. And this time, multiple patient advocates need to be voting members of the writers’ group.
By Richard A Lawhern PhD: The author is a technically trained non-physician patient advocate with 22 years of experience as a moderator and medical literature analyst in social media and peer-to-peer patient support groups. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ATIPUSA/, My Publications: http://www.face-facts.org/Lawhern, Personal Website: http://www.lawhern.org
8 comments
The CDC 2014-16 opioid guidelines have been a disaster for chronic/intractable pain patients. They need to be revised or thrown out. Pain patients are suffering more with these so called guidelines than without them. DEA has appointed themselves as the inforcers of the CDC guidelines, making doctors targets who prescribe pain opioids. Doctors are losing their medical licenses, practices and pain patients are left to suffer without pain management. Pain and suffering has gone on way too long and needs to STOP NOW!
This is happening nationwide. I just may be next… – Rhonda
This is another heartbreaking tragedy that could’ve been avoided if we didn’t have an agenda driven CDC Director, Robert Redfield, whose son overdosed on fentanyl tainted cocaine. His personal mission became sinister when he violated FACA laws allowing a biased panel of advisors (PROP) in to help write CDC guidelines. Outside of the conflated fake numbers used to declare an epidemic of Prescription overdose, the voluntary Guidelines themselves are not all that bad for primary care and opiate naive patients. However they’ve taken on a completely new torturous meaning when State Boards, PBM’s, Insurance co’s, VA, CMS, Bureaucrats, politicians and DEA began weaponizing them adopting them as a rigid law – punishing chronically ill patients by turning them into nothing more than a statistical overdose liability, viewing legitimate patients as drug addicts, rather than individual patients with unique genetic variables and circumstances.
We can thank Apriss/Narxcare PDMP profiling software developed by Brandeis (yes, Kolodny’s school). Does this all smell like conflicts of interest?? Prescriptions are at a 15 year low yet overdoses from illicit street drugs are soaring. PROP’s agenda is to win lawsuits against Purdue/OxyContin. So Kolodny has been on media including 60 minutes telling the country that opioids do not work for chronic pain. As an “expert witness” in Purdue lawsuits, of course he would say anything necessary to secure a win even if demonizing and invaliding chronic pain kills patients. He uses the umbrella term “opioids” to confuse people, as Tylenol Codeine is an Opioid so is Carfentanil – 10,000 times more potent than morphine.
Mass media indoctrination of confusion and lies has swayed public opinion to believe in junk science. It is now spreading to Europe. I have family in Netherlands and I’m being told the hysteria has hit there and their media is using the ‘catastrophe’ of deaths in the US as a reference of the dangers of these so called “heroin pills” PROP Drs enjoy disseminating the false analogy throughout the country, lies that are killing more people than they will ever save.
This is tragic. I’ve been a pain patient for 24 yrs now. I know what it’s like. A man on Mark Levin show last night was the 1st Drug Czar. He worked for Reagan to battle the War on drug’s. He said what is happening now is awful and wrong. That 3/4 of people dying as we know are from the Heroin Fentanyl street drugs. The others are people that have stolen or bought high doses of pills. As we know it’s extremely rare for a CPP to Overdose or become an addict. What happened to this poor woman is tragic. We must fight this. So many are committing Suicide. I’ve got a good Dr. I’ve been on same dose the past 5 yrs. It doesn’t work. I’m over this limit they have. I won’t ask for an increase. I’ve lived in bed the past 3 years. I wrote the WH email to President Trump. I got a call. The woman said I’m calling because of your emails to the President. I thought WOW. They may listen. I told this woman my whole medical history. At the end of thr call she informed me she was from a suicide prevention hotline. I was furious. I had mentioned the suicide rate would skyrocket because they didn’t invite real Pain Patients to the round table discussion with Chris Christie and the girl that became an addict from a hurt ankle. Anyhow. My doctor wants to help fight. I told him on my Twitter I have seen many suicides recently. He had a patient hang herself also. He doesn’t cut patients meds. He is a great doctor. Very strict. He also does addiction help 2 days a week. God Bless this poor lady and her family. I think I will sign up to write my story. If I can help just 1 other person. That will make it worth while. We Need to FIGHT THIS. They have Angel parents. We need to think of a Name for CPP that are suffering and for people who’ve lost someone to suicide. I have lost 2 good friends to suicide. 1 this year. 1 last year. Enough.🙏💔 God Bless her Husband and friend’s. Gone to soon. Katie
I see this type of neglect destroy more people than overdoses.
Many overdoses are actually suicides.
When you can take the pain anymore your last act may be to gather enough drugs to just go to sleep forever.
I never thought medicine would go backwards but it has.
for other reasons, followed by an inability to find a new one. Today, March 19, 2019 I learned of Dawn T Anderson, a former Registered Nurse with multiple medical problems who died as a results of those, but more.
I have been treated successfully for chronic pain for 20 years. What is happening now is the result of too much government oversight with no intelligence governing how to stop the opioid crisis, a poor label at best. The crisis would be better served if it were named a fentanyl, heroin crisis. Chronic pain patients need to work together to help doctors CONFRONT governmental tyranny. DEA busting into pain doctors offices without any warning is police state tactics and need to be addressed as such. This “tactic” happened to my pain doctor, a wonderful and concerned physician who has now been intimidated to reduce dosages of her pain patients. Final thought: why should chronic pain patients be punished for other people’s poor choices?
[…] for other reasons, followed by an inability to find a new one. Today, March 19, 2019 I learned of Dawn T Anderson, a former Registered Nurse with multiple medical problems who died as a results of those, but more […]