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Edited on Mon Feb-09-04 12:16 AM by Interrobang
Back story:
My fiance has been taking Klonopin for years and years because it helps with his ADD-related anxiety and borderline OCD-type behaviour; also it works as an anti-spasmodic and helps prevent his vascular headaches. Klonopin is very addictive, and usually when someone who's been on it for a long time has to go off it, the weaning process takes months. My fiance's doctor decided to take him off in a week, mostly, we figure, because he didn't know better. One of the side effects of Klonopin withdrawl is seizures.
The insurance company that holds my fiance's paper made him go to this guy, who's in New Jersey (which is quite a hike from my fiance's home on Long Island) -- very inconvenient.
Yesterday afternoon, my fiance had a seizure on the concourse in Pearson Airport in Toronto, en route from his home in New York to visit me. He fell so hard (on a terrazzo floor with carpet over it) that he sustained a compression fracture in one of his thoracic vertebrae. Plus, we had to find out where they'd taken him (it was a hospital in a nearby town) and then go get him this morning after they got his discharge underway -- a two hour drive. I have no car/license and had to get my parents to take me. Fortunately, they did (for which I am eternally grateful).
Nevertheless, I really want to kick this doc's ass. The people at the hospital were shocked that the doctor'd do such a thing, and gave him a prescription for Klonopin to stabilize him, so that's ok now. (The hospital people were great!) A friend whom I asked was likewise shocked. I'm furious -- my fiance's in terrible pain, and our first time together since early January is ruined. He's going to have to spend most of his vacation in bed, and *not* the way one usually spends lots of time in bed when one gets to visit one's distant fiancee! I can't even help him as much as I want, because I have Cerebral Palsy, and my balance/agility etc. isn't that good.
(Besides which, I cleaned my whole apartment to the walls before he came, and then had another 36h of short sleep, insufficient food, and stress -- which makes me feel like I've been put through the wringer. I've been sporadically having micro crying jags, and I can't sleep. <I think I'm also having PMS, to add insult to injury.> )
Anyway, tomorrow we cry havoc and let slip the lawyers of war. I'm still taking names for a doctor circle-boot, though, just in case... Skittles?
On edit: For clarity, added details about the nationality of fiance and doctor. Excuse me; I've had a little too much painkiller myself tonight, due to overwork, undersleep, a long trip, chronic pain, and stress (which increases the chronic pain). Sorry...
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