Another pain management fail! A second 5 hour drive for nothing!
Here’s the continuation of the pain management saga, read my previous blog about this subject here, 3 weeks ago, we visited Kansas Pain Management in Lawrence, Kansas for the first time, and were turned away for being 45 minutes late after a 3-hour drive. This past Tuesday, we returned to Lawrence, and it turned out that KPM does not prescribe Hydrocodone at the strength Erin takes to manage her pain.
3 weeks ago, I was super pissed at Kansas Pain Management for being so damn inflexible, when there were zero people in their office for being 45 minutes late when we had taken a day off work to make the 3-hour round trip to Lawrence. On the second visit, we arrived 50 minutes early and were seen 45 minutes before the appointment time, which showed how slow this particular office is. Anyway, if they prefer to not prescribe narcotics, that is their choice, now my anger has turned to Erin’s primary care physician Jennifer Spriggs, ARPN, operating out of Wesley on N Woodlawn Blvd in Wichita.
Why am I angry with Jennifer Spriggs you ask? well, we made two trips to Lawrence, at a cost of close to $250 for gas, food, and other incidentals, because we were referred to Kansas Pain Management by Jennifer Spriggs, telling us that they would be able to prescribe Erin’s Norco® 10. If KPM cannot prescribe Erin’s medication, they are useless to us, all other services we can get locally in Wichita.
Now Jennifer Spriggs has refused to fill Erin’s Hydrocodone prescription after sending us on a wild goose chase, so now my wife is out of pain medication completely with no ETA on when she might be able to get her prescription renewed. This is one hell of an evil punishment, and IT IS punishment for using CBD Delta 8 for some additional pain relief when her Hydrocodone does not quite take care of her pain.
Now Erin is trying to get an appointment with a local pain management clinic, as her APRN, Spriggs won’t prescribe any more Hydrocodone until she has an appointment with a new pain management office.
What Erin needs is a pain management doctor that actually is a doctor for the right reasons, someone who wants to genuinely help people, listen to their patients, and use trial and error methods to create the best solution for their patient’s care. This has been sorely lacking in Wichita pain management we have visited thus far, Kansas Pain Management excluded, as they just have a policy that does not work for us.
As things stand, without medication Erin will not be able to function after a few days of being without her Hydrocodone, which means she will have to quit her job, as she physically will not be up to it, nor safe to drive to her office and back, which is a massive blow to us financially, we’re already struggling with finances. But I am more concerned about my wife’s physical and mental wellbeing than the financial hit.
What this has done is made us realize we need to call ahead and ask questions like, do you prescribe the medication we need? what is your policy on screening, and do you have an onsite lab? As clearly, we cannot rely on doctors to give us the correct information on what their referred provider has to offer.