[ad_1]
WASHINGTON TERRACE, Weber County – Life today is not what J. B. Griggs imagined more than 20 years ago.
In 1998, he was injured on the job while driving a tractor. Heated hydraulic oil vomited on him, ignited and eventually burned about 80% of his body.
Griggs spent months in intensive care and the doctors treated the intense pain with morphine. After 125 surgeries later, Griggs said that his opioid addiction had allowed him to take doses of up to 540 milligrams a day.
"Sometimes it just feels like you exist and you do not live," Griggs said.
Then, in November 2018, he stated that his doctor had told him that he no longer thought he could legally prescribe such high doses. It would have been necessary for Griggs to come down and he had about three weeks to do it.
"I felt like I was a man waiting to be executed," Griggs said. "That's all I had to live because I did not see any way out."
Griggs explained that because of his unique needs and heavy addiction, he could not find a clinic to help him cope with withdrawals. Because of his injuries, Griggs easily overheats, he has specific climatic needs and he was taking additional medications for post-traumatic stress disorder.
"Nobody would take me," says Griggs. "I thought detoxification would come into my life, I would not survive because of the intense pain of dropping all drugs."
With the help of his brother, Griggs quickly left Arizona to enroll in the Ogden Regional Medical Center. Despite the unusual difficulties, drug addict Nadya Wayment decided that she had to one way or another help.
"Its medical complexities made a big difference," explained Wayment. "It's very, very important to be in medicine for the right reasons. The good reason is to be there to help the patient. "
In just eight days, Griggs endured intense withdrawals, with the help of Suboxone, a pain reliever designed to help fight morphine withdrawals.
"It was unbearable pain," said Griggs.
Still, he's better off and he says his life has changed.
"I still feel alive. I have the impression of being reborn, "Griggs said. "I am on 20 milligrams of Suboxone and my pain level is about five."
Just before, Griggs said his pain level was still around seven or eight on a scale of one to ten. Now he wants to go out more often, visit the burn unit support groups and visit his grandchildren.
"To me, he will always be a hero, because going through such a complicated rehab took a lot of courage," Wayment said. "Most of our detox cases do not even have the same complexity as J.B."
Griggs and Wayment added that changes needed to be made so that others would not find themselves in similar situations.
"We need more than this collaboration between the primary care physician, between us, drug addicts and opioid-dependent people, to really end this opioid crisis in our country," Wayment said. "When laws are promulgated and they are for the right reasons, there is always a certain percentage of the population that will not be considered at all through the general law."
Griggs added that as difficult as it is, patients must also do their part.
"A victim is someone who allows, no matter what has happened to them, to dictate how they will live the rest of their lives. A survivor does not do it, "he said.
pics
Mike Anderson[ad_2]
Source link