It's said that a well-told story is remembered more accurately, and far longer than learning derived from facts and figures. Unfortunately, I only have a handful of memories from the months I was completely lost on fentanyl patches. After my double spinal fusion, I was sent home with boxes of "pain medicine" patches.
No one in my family–including me–even realized I was on a high dose of fentanyl. Even if we did, we wouldn't have known the dangers of this deadly drug. Now that I know the danger I put my family in, the memories from those months still hit me with a debilitating wave of grief & bring me to my knees in tears. I was unable to change my own patches so that job was left to my mom & closest friend. So many times my patches would fall off. My babies would crawl into bed & snuggle with me when I was unable to walk. They could have easily overdosed, just by touching the medicine on the patch.
One of our dearest friend's son was given a fentanyl patch at a party and it took his life.
Even the doctors have no clue how to safely wean you from this deadly drug. I spent 30 days puking my guts out and wasting away on the couch as I weaned from Fentanyl by replacing it with a handful of opioids, Valium, and morphine. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than HEROIN. Did you hear me? It is 100 times stronger than morphine. Fentanyl is a death warrant, not a solution for pain!
We can all be so forgetful. We can all fail to remember the magnificence of love and mercy showered down on us. I can choose to forget that I am alive today only by the grace of God or I can tell my story & pray those that read it are not as ignorant as I was when Fentanyl fell into my lap.
Please help me share my story to help fight this heartbreaking epidemic that is stealing the lives of so many beautiful souls.