December 25, 2014
I Am Not Having A Peaceful Holiday
Alen J Salerian MD
I still hear their voices. The despair, the
agony of entrapment. The moans of
torture.
They were not just
patients they were friends and I was their trusted physician.
MS a retired
surgeon, a gentle soul -who had over nine months tried Betty Ford and a few other fancy rehab centers- had
stopped by my office for her farewell.
MS had casually
mentioned her anticipated move to New York City. She had euthanized her pets.
This was a red flag which should have alerted me to her underlying message .
She said,” sooner or later they are going to take you down. I don't have a life
now, I only have perpetual misery. You had given me life . And you will never
get your DEA license back.
It is equally
difficult to block out the restrained fury in NJ’s voice when he had called
from Aspen Colorado . He was pleading with me to find a new psychiatrist . He
was attending a methadone clinic yet his mood had plummeted.
His roommate would
later tell me that the change in NG was dramatic. The day of his death in a
small cave on the mountains they had gone to a local emergency room. NG was
desperate and suicidal. He requested hospitalization. He was sent back to his
methadone clinic.
I will not forget
the eulogies expressing the extraordinary kindness of DS an African-American
woman aged 57 who had been my patient for over a decade. She
had suffered from severe depression and pain and had done well.
A week before her
death we spoke by phone Her voice was frantic interrupted by sighs and sobs.
She was calling from the Washington
Hospital Center. She wanted to know
whether I could visit her. I asked her
to trust her doctors . I let her know
that I did not have privileges at the hospital center.
Paul Mullins called my office hours before his
self-inflicted death on the anniversary of the loss of my DEA license. A year
is a long time to wait for someone in severe pain he had said. No one would
prescribe appropriate pain relief for this retired coal miner.
I'm not at peace this Christmas. Their voices coming
through Christmas carols and Hannaka lyrics. Echoes of man-made
atrocities. The voices of collateral
damage from the war on drugs.
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