Talking end of life with patient advocate, Laurie Engels

To the chronic pain and hospice patient communities: I have lived my life in MN growing up the youngest of five. My Mom was trained as a nurse but she was a stay at home Mom. I graduated high school in 1976 and got my BS in Animal Science at the U of MN. I started graduate school but never finished. I have spent the last 25 years of my life devoted to breeding and showing English Setter dogs. I live by myself in Minneapolis. My health issues started with knee surgery in college and I had ductal carcinoma at age 27. Sadly I opted for implants and they caused many issues. I went onto full time disability at age 36. I’ve been on LTOT since 1998. When I was going through the month of testing to find out why I was short of breath I started thinking that if the news wasn’t good at least I wouldn’t have to worry about losing access to my meds. How crazy is that to see a terminal diagnosis as a blessing. When they finally figured out it was AML and I have the worst mutations possible I knew I would choose hospice right away. My first hospice company was horrible. Their doctor drew a line in the sand and she refused to prescribe my OxyContin, and instead gave me MS Contin and cut my MME by 12%. This put me into withdrawals. I was so sick from the meds. Even my pharmacist told the doctor that would put me into withdrawals. I fired that company and thankfully was put back on OxyContin. The new company has been bending over backwards to make sure I am as comfortable as I can be with the cancer that has spread to T11 and L3 and now my pelvis. I want to discuss end of life options, how we got to this place where even hospice patients are not guaranteed relief from their pain. It’s a crazy time and I’m afraid if we don’t start to see some change we will become an opioid free country as doctors will no longer be allowed to prescribe them. Regards, Laurie If you have any questions, email her at: [email protected] To read about her advocacy, select the following link: https://www.daily-remedy.com/my-dying-wish/ #assisted #suicide #death #hospice #end #life