Originally Posted by Dubwon

Woah, you are super duper cool! I bet u haven't heard that term in a very long time. I teach kindergarten, well I used to, and I have a lot of silly expressions that slip out from time to time. In the process of reading your response I remembered what I wanted to respond to you about a few messages back, namely that when you took away your alcohol and marijuana abuse back in the 80's was it (?) that you still didn't address the problem. We take away the substances that we abuse but we don't realize or know enough to fix the problem that lead us down that road in the first place. I think that was the jyst of it no?

I tried to address my problems that lead me to substance abuse back in the 90's, but I think in the treatment centre and the subsequent safe and recovery houses, I did not quite get it nor did I solve the problem.

There are things that happened that I want to write about, but I am going to save it for tomorrow and focus on the present and what happened over the course of the past six days, because it is relevant to how I am feeling, it is most of the reason I feel the way I do right now and it will also provide me with a means to reply to your thoughtful response.

I am super glad to have someone in my corner. I was at the hospital 2 days earlier than I was supposed to be, in order to get my prescription filled and meet with my doctor, only he was out of the country at a medical conference in Germany. The head nurse for some reason took it upon herself to try to teach me a lesson, namely that opioids are dangerously addictive and that I was at the point where I was addicted and I needed to decrease my dose.

She called a doctor to come in to see me and told him that I was an addict and not to give me my prescription. I was listening to her talking on the phone to him in Korean. When she hung up the phone I tried to keep my cool because if one displays "drug seeking behavior" one will be cut off. So I calmly explained to her that I knew it looked bad on paper, but that every morning I wake up in pain and I work very hard to maintain my core strength and flexibility by doing physiotherapy and traction at home almost every night.

I went on to explain that just as my doctor, a neuro surgeon, told me to do, I was keeping a very detailed diary about my pain, every day, my physio, traction, sleep, how much medication I take etc. I work my butt off to maintain it and the reason I am on such a high dose, (240 mg a day is high even for terminal cancer patients here in Korea...they have serious issues with opiates due to an old emperor who had a son who over dosed on opium or heroin or something and he banished it from the kingdom or something to that effect) is that my doctor can look at any day and what I did to cause a certain injury or what combination of circumstances lead to a sharp increase in pain and immediately advise me on how to change my routine.

I have actually made great strides because of this diary, but that is another story, I didn't have it with me and I think even if I did, she was just one of those old school Korean ladies who does not like foreigners and she thought I was abusing the system and she knew that she could mess with me while my doctor was away. So the other doctor came in. He looked at my file, asked me what I wanted and I said, I just want my prescription filled for one week so I can go to the beach in Busan (South Korea's second largest city, down on the southern tip of the peninsula) and he said, OK.

Then I walked out and waited for the nurses to give me my medication forms, its different here...doctor doesn't write prescription and hand it to you, also all opiates are in a National Government Computer Database and are monitored by "police." So if a patient gets meds from a doctor in one city they can't get in another city or hospital, and they can't get more meds until their prescription runs out on the data base. Doctors can re-fill, but they don't like to do it. My doctor understands and does it for me all of the time because I can show him when, where and how I got the pain, and he can see how far I have come with my traction, and the yoga / meditation he suggested (he is a super cool Buddhist guy) and physio, but the nurse doesn't see any of that. She just sees a "bad foreigner" who is "addicted" who needs to be reigned in.

So she went in and told the doctor not to give me the script and I had to sit at home sick for 2 days, for absolutely NO REASON AT ALL!!!!! Unfortunately that is when "the feces hit the rotary oscillators" as they say (the **** hit the fan hahaha) and I had a string of bad luck, mostly my fault but some of it was just people kicking me while I was down. I mean, really badly hurtfully kicking me while I was down. I swear it was like someone wanted to see me hit bottom and off myself or something.

Well, as you can see from above and my little haha, I am feeling better. It certainly helps to get it out in the open. It took me a while to figure out what PM meant, but I got it now...I am a little slow on the uptake when it comes to the blogosphere and message boards / forums / basically anything technology related at all...hahahaha....it's sad.

Thanks for the suggestions, I am a bit swamped trying to find work to climb out of a debt crisis at the moment so I don't have a ton of time, not really a crisis, but it has been made into a crisis. Why all of these new crises arose suddenly after the nurse messed with my well being is beyond me, but I will have a look around in the stickies as soon as I can get a chance...I can't see them though...I guess I have to actually look in the newcomers section like you said. Well thanks again, I feel much better. Talk with you soon on a PM. Ciao for now Lyoness, always a pleasure. I would like to know more about maintenance, maybe we can chat about that next time. My eyes are getting tired. I had better go. Bye bye.