One Final Thought

I thought that he was in extreme pain and took one pill, but started to feel weak and drop into unconscious, that he tried to close the pill bottle (and they are a bother to close or open) and they spilled. The other scenerio is Michael started to feel weak and he needed the pill his doctor told him he had to take, but it was too late. He gets the pill bottle open, and before he can swallow the pill, he collapses, and the pills spill all over the floor. What he could have done to prevent this: If he was in extreme pain, he should have spoken to his doctor or if his doctor did not believe him, get a second opinion. Other thought is that heart attacks are more common with African Americans so he may have already had a high risk, his skin disease may have increased his chances, etc. See? No sensationalism, No "oh I know how he feels," etc. You see if I were not terrible at math or chemistry, I would have made a good nurse.

I have an all too intimate understanding of this. My mother had osteoarthritis in her lower back from ten years as a nuclear welding inspector and suffered insomnia. It wasn't until she'd had the osteoarthritis for 15 years that it was diagnosed incidentally on an MRI looking for another condition, before then she'd been given skeptical looks and prescriptions that weren't quite strong enough and no further treatment or tests. So, she started medicating herself. Eventually she managed to get on disability for what was now crippling back pain. When I was 19, she was put on a new cocktail of antidepressants, sleeping pills, and pain medicine that didn't interact well. You may have heard about ambien causing people to sleep walk/eat/drive and not remember anything that they've done. One night she took her nighttime medications repeatedly, forgetting that she'd taken them. I found her on the couch the next morning. Her autopsy showed that she'd suffered respiratory and cardiac arrest from the accidental overdose of pain medication. We need a better understanding of pain and how to manage it. We need doctors that actually look beyond the surface and don't just prescribe a bunch of medications without actually thinking about it. I think chronic pain might be the new stigmatized condition that mental illness used to be; it's not talked about, it's handled quietly and ineffectually, and people DIE. I myself have chronic kidney stones and though it's not a daily phenomena, the pain is excruciating and can last for up to a week. I never take the medication other than when I'm passing them, nor have I ever been tempted to (even before the passing of my mother) because I hate the way that the pills make me feel. Nausea, confusion, numbness. It's no picnic.

I have never had to use alot of pain medication but there are times when I wished I had alot to take when I was in pain. I was in alot of pain after giving birth to my daughter and after having my hysterectomy. The pain meds they gave me sure was not doing the job at all.

The same reason why this same thing happens in so many situations across the world. The user becomes so good acting 'okay' that even people very close to them don't really know or want to believe that the user is over using. You don't really want to believe the reality of the situation. It isn't any picnic. He was in alot of pain. Easy to get hooked. And if he was suffering from insomnia it was probably a relief when people near him saw that he was sleeping. Was it because the meds kicked in or had he taken too much of the pain meds? Hard for a person to know.

He began taking painkillers after his hair caught on fire during a pepsi commercial. At that point is when someone should have stepped in to guide him in dealing with pain. I blame all the Doctors, enablers, his father, and his suppose friends who didn't do anything to get him help. If I had been his mother or sister I would have intervened even if I had to trick him somehow into rehab. For so many people who supposely loved him they didn't love him enough to get him help. All they did was appease him and take his money. Now today we are all in mourning over another great talent gone to soon. Just like Elvis. We won't be dealing with this again because there is no one else in the world with the caliber of either Michael or Elvis and there never will be. Thanks for responding.