February 11, 2009 6:50 PM
- Text
Prisoner Of Pain
- By
- Daniel Schorn
Treatment for chronic pain remains one of those medical mysteries. Each of us deals with it differently. One person's minor ache is another's agony. The main relief comes from a variety of drugs that are often abused by addicts and have their own international black market.
As a result, in this country, doctors tend to under-prescribe painkillers because of their addictive nature and for fear of attracting the attention of authorities. Their patients are also often under suspicion when they try to alleviate unrelenting pain -- when they become prisoners of pain.
Correspondent Morley Safer reports the story of one man's ordeal.
At the Tomoka Hills maximum security prison just outside of Daytona Beach, Fla., barbed wire and constant surveillance are meant to keep its hard cases from escaping. But there's at least one inmate who poses no such threat.
Richard Paey is in a wheelchair because of a severe spinal injury. Without constant medication he is in excruciating pain. It was pain that put him on the path to prison.
"I felt like my legs were being dipped into a furnace," says Paey. "They were burning, and I couldn't move them. It's an intense pain that, over time, will literally drive you to suicide."
Paey says he tried to kill himself twice. "And for me, death would have been a form of relief."
Pain-killing drugs were his salvation but pain-killing drugs put him behind bars for drug trafficking.
How did this Ivy League-educated lawyer and 47-year-old father of three end up as a convicted drug trafficker?
It began in 1985, when he saw a promising future shattered in a car crash outside Philadelphia. A failed operation left him with metal screws in his spine and unrelenting pain.
To add to his problems, he was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Paey says doctors could do little for him beyond prescribing painkillers, including Percocet, Vicodin and Acetaminophen with codeine. The drugs worked, but only briefly.
"As I got worse, I developed a tolerance also with the medication. And so I needed larger doses. Higher doses," he says.
He says he needed the higher doses to live daily life.
"Yes, to relieve the pain. To be a father. To be a husband. To be a member of the community," he says. "I mean, the choice was to almost lie in bed and be a vegetable."
Paey's wife, Linda, worried about his growing dependence on the drugs.
"We were fearful of addiction. We were always worried," she says. "He was afraid to take too many pills. He would play these mental games to try to decrease them himself."
But without the drugs, Linda says there was no relief.
When the Paeys moved to Florida, getting the drugs was the problem. Paey says doctors were fearful of attracting police attention because of his high doses.
"One was quite frank and said that I was, in a word, he said, 'screwed,' " says Paey. "And I was in that medical nightmare zone where you've gone through all the treatments, and nothing works. And what does work, what does help, no one wants to prescribe because it attracts attention, and no one wants that attention."
Copyright 2009 CBS. All rights reserved. 2 As a result, in this country, doctors tend to under-prescribe painkillers because of their addictive nature and for fear of attracting the attention of authorities. Their patients are also often under suspicion when they try to alleviate unrelenting pain -- when they become prisoners of pain.
Correspondent Morley Safer reports the story of one man's ordeal.
At the Tomoka Hills maximum security prison just outside of Daytona Beach, Fla., barbed wire and constant surveillance are meant to keep its hard cases from escaping. But there's at least one inmate who poses no such threat.
Richard Paey is in a wheelchair because of a severe spinal injury. Without constant medication he is in excruciating pain. It was pain that put him on the path to prison.
"I felt like my legs were being dipped into a furnace," says Paey. "They were burning, and I couldn't move them. It's an intense pain that, over time, will literally drive you to suicide."
Paey says he tried to kill himself twice. "And for me, death would have been a form of relief."
Pain-killing drugs were his salvation but pain-killing drugs put him behind bars for drug trafficking.
How did this Ivy League-educated lawyer and 47-year-old father of three end up as a convicted drug trafficker?
It began in 1985, when he saw a promising future shattered in a car crash outside Philadelphia. A failed operation left him with metal screws in his spine and unrelenting pain.
To add to his problems, he was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Paey says doctors could do little for him beyond prescribing painkillers, including Percocet, Vicodin and Acetaminophen with codeine. The drugs worked, but only briefly.
"As I got worse, I developed a tolerance also with the medication. And so I needed larger doses. Higher doses," he says.
He says he needed the higher doses to live daily life.
"Yes, to relieve the pain. To be a father. To be a husband. To be a member of the community," he says. "I mean, the choice was to almost lie in bed and be a vegetable."
Paey's wife, Linda, worried about his growing dependence on the drugs.
"We were fearful of addiction. We were always worried," she says. "He was afraid to take too many pills. He would play these mental games to try to decrease them himself."
But without the drugs, Linda says there was no relief.
When the Paeys moved to Florida, getting the drugs was the problem. Paey says doctors were fearful of attracting police attention because of his high doses.
"One was quite frank and said that I was, in a word, he said, 'screwed,' " says Paey. "And I was in that medical nightmare zone where you've gone through all the treatments, and nothing works. And what does work, what does help, no one wants to prescribe because it attracts attention, and no one wants that attention."
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- by AdequatePainControl4all February 27, 2012 8:57 AM EST
- This story is appalling! In our small town, in one very small support group of chronic pain patients, 4 people here have committed suicide because of inadequate pain control, in 2 cases, the same doctor thought these women were "taking too much medication" and they killed themselves. When I lived in central California, a lady I chatted with regularly online had under-treated pain and went to Dr. Kevorkian. Her name was Janice Murphey from Nevada, and I believe it was 60 Minutes that did her story as well. At that time, a doctor close to where I lived was in the fight of his life in court for adequately treating chronic pain patients. He lost his home, his family and put himself on the line for doing exactly what he was trained to do - treat chronic pain patients.
Not long after this, the "other vital sign" (pain) was adopted, and is now used world-wide, although a 1 to 10 subjective scale still seems rather inadequate.
I don't condone the prescription forgery, although I have seen the desperation. Had this man been adequately treated to begin with, had his doctor had better training, or others had better training, especially the public and law enforcement, then this man, a lawyer, would have never been placed in the position.
I can't help but wonder how many others would have simply committed suicide, not knowing how to navigate the legal system.
Far too many chronic pain patients commit suicide, loose their families, and so on. This includes cancer patients, fibromyalgia patients, arthritis patients, those with autoimmune disorders and the list is almost endless. (I can't help but think of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and past presidential candidate that messed around on his wife while she underwent chemo. - this is equal opportunity and sadly affects women far more than men, thus it is not a priority in research. If a men had to endure half the pain many women do, they wouldn't make it through the 1st week, yet men are also affected, only not as often as men's diseases are funded far more than women's.
The prosecutor in this case should have hardware put in his spine, have to live with something like failed back syndrome, then be prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license, as that is exactly what he and the rest of the team did to this man, who ironically got seemingly adequately treated in prison.
This case illustrates where our research funding needs to go. Most RA and similar medications ironically depress immune systems in women. We need to look to other types of drugs that get to the cause and in the mean time, we need to treat pain adequately so no one has to ever suffer like this. The "War on Drugs" has become a war on our aging population.
I pray we are just piled in ditches like those in the camps in WWII. - Reply to this comment
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