@judimd God bless you young lady, 81 , still got a fire in your belly and push through every day! You’re a hot ticket!
I’m 64 and had my first back surgery in 1986 and since then I have had 54 more surgeries; fusions, knee scopes, joint replacements and quite a few others. Back then there wasn’t really a focus on prescribing narcotics and doctors were willing to write those scripts. Vicodin, OxyContin replaced Tylenol #3 and Tylenol #4 and the pharmaceutical companies pushed these new drugs saying they were not addictive and the docs were swayed by “the gifts” from the pharmaceutical industry. I live in Massachusetts and since the states started to realize that there were countless deaths by overdoses and when the doctors stopped prescribing narcotics because the DEA was putting pressure on them to reduce what they prescribed and literally stopped prescribing them heroin was the next best thing because these “addicts” that were addicted to pain meds and the pharmaceutical companies were what caused many patients to become addicted. In 2017 I had surgery on my shoulder to repair my rotator cuff and bicep tendon repair. I was prescribed a weeks worth of OxyContin and 2 weeks worth of Percocet and my pain was manageable. In 2020 I had a reverse total shoulder replacement after 4 more surgeries. This group of orthopedic surgeons were informed that by their owners to not prescribe as many pain meds. The prescriptions I received after the shoulder replacement was 10 5mg Percocet and no refills and to make up for that they would offer another nerve block or even a second additional nerve block.

Like you I was all fired up that I was required to undergo pill counts and urinalysis in order to get pain med refills. Here the doctors were having us sign “contracts” stating the patients would only use one pharmacy, one pain med physician and we had to respond in no more than 24 hours from the time you were called for your drug tests and counts or no more narcotics. I was still in the 20’s on my surgery count and I felt like a drug addict begging for pain meds and I didn’t want more, I needed more. I felt like I hit the lottery when I got a script for 20 5mg Vicodin, I wasn’t selling them, I wasn’t abusing them I needed my pain controlled and I refused to sign their contracts. I’d skipped a couple of weeks and then ask for a refill but didn’t need to sign the contract, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

The prescribing really did get way out of control for those doctors that were involved in pill mills. It’s funny that this subject came up today. Pain meds weren’t working as well as I’d like so no sleep last night. HBO MAX is running a promotion for their streaming services for $2.99 for 12 months. I found a documentary on 2 guys who were twins that opened a a pain clinic with an unscrupulous doctor and they just wrote prescriptions. Doctors got $50 per patient and the copay to the clinic was like $200 or so. These were set up in Florida who did not have a law that reported prescriptions to a database. At one point these 2 brothers were making over $40 million a year just writing prescriptions. The name of the documentary is American Pain and their rise and fall of these 2 guys who knew nothing about pain meds and didn’t care about the problems of overdosing patients. They had a recording of a phone call between the brothers laughing about a car that was destroyed by being hit by a train and the car had pain meds all over the interior of the car, 2 were killed, one barely survived and the laughing about “you gotta be really stupid to get hit by a train,” those girls were patients of American Pain.

So now I’m in the mid 50’s on the number of surgeries, I’ve taken 2 rides in a life flight helicopters, been in e medically induced comas, I died in a head on 60mph crash but the first responders got me back and so many other issues, including a diagnosis of bladder cancer in May and a kidney was removed last week. I am finally with a doctor who is actually willing to prescribe narcotics in the strength and amount that keeps me in manageable pain. I told this doc that at this point in my life and what I’ve suffered through all those years that I really felt I deserved to be able to use pain medication so I can tolerate living. No abuse, no selling just some relief of my pain.

Sorry, I kinda babbled on and on but there was so much abuse and governments and doctors went from over prescribing to severely under prescribing, some doctors were inadvertently pushing those patients into hard core street drugs because an addict needs their fix.

Again, sorry for babbling on but this is a huge problem for the honest patients that legitimately need the meds.