We've received a lot of rain the past few days here in central Wisconsin. The rain is needed. Living in the middle of potato and corn fields, farmers need the water.
The bad side of rain, for me?
It usually kicks my behind like nobody's business.
The best way I can describe how I feel is by analogy. Imagine a sheet of aluminum foil lying on a table. That represents a person without living with chronic pain. For me, I feel as though somebody crumpled that foil into a ball and let it slowly unravel.
That ball of aluminum is the best way I can describe how I feel when weather fronts move through.
Tragically, I know I'm not alone. I know there are plenty of you out there with me with stories of your own.
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The stories don’t slow down. They just keep coming.
After I published the first column in this series, chronic pain sufferers began reaching out.
Not trolls, not drug seekers, not “pill heads.”
These are our neighbors, our veterans, our wives, our parents. People who’ve spent years quietly enduring agony so intense it reshapes their relationships, their faith, and, in some cases, their personalities. The only thing they all have in common is they’ve been punished by a healthcare system that treats pain relief like a crime.
These aren’t just anecdotes.
They’re open wounds.
And the public needs to hear them.
The Wife Beside Him: “She Was a Bouncing Ball of Energy”
Reese, from northern Arkansas, didn’t write about himself. He wrote about his wife.
After 41 years of marriage, he’s now living beside a woman, slowly disappearing into a couch because her body betrayed her and the system let her down.
“We just experienced it again yesterday,” he wrote. “The pharmacy wouldn't refill her pain meds because she is 2 days early. Medicare is the gatekeeper in this instance. She is 70 and has terrible osteoarthritis... cancer twice... scoliosis for a decade.”
She hurts every day.
But God forbid she has a rough week and needs a little more relief on Wednesday than the rules permit until Friday.
Too bad. Let her cry in the parking lot.
Let her count out pills like a criminal under house arrest.
Reese put it plainly: “What once was a vibrant, energetic, driven human being” is now “a couch potato due to the pain.”
He watches helplessly.
And he suffers, too.
If she does too much in a day, she’s in agony the next. If she does nothing at all, the pain still finds her.
Sometimes, her legs spasm and her toes twist like something out of a horror movie. “She jumps out of bed screaming,” Reese said.
But no early refill.
How many more marriages and how many more lives are we willing to let crumble under this one-size-fits-all tyranny?
The Island Patient: “Managing a Still-Broken Arm”
Carole lives on an island off the coast of Washington state.
Nine years ago, she shattered her shoulder and broke her upper arm in half during a sleepwalking episode. By the time she realized what had happened, the damage was done.
The best they could do was manage her pain.
But even that came with fine print.
Her orthopedist prescribed Vicodin. “Of course, a controlled drug,” she said.
That meant 45 minutes each way to pick up a written prescription. And then the clock starts ticking. If her pain spikes, does she take an extra pill here or there? She risks running out before the end of the month.
“It’s been 9 years now,” she wrote. “The bones will never get better... You’d think I’d be used to it, but it’s a daily burden, managing the pain, managing the now-chronic insomnia, managing the limitations of a still-broken arm and shoulder.”
That’s what people forget.
Chronic pain doesn’t just take away motion.
It takes away rest, joy, spontaneity, and hope.
Carole doesn’t want to take more pills.
She wants her life back.
The College Student Who Flew 46 Feet
The third story comes from a man in the Southwest, now 67, whom a drunk driver hit in college.
He flew 46 feet before landing in a gravel driveway. The list of injuries reads like a combat casualty report: mangled leg, shattered skull, torn ligaments, bulging disks.
A lifetime of fallout followed.
“For years, I self-medicated. Alcohol. Street drugs. Just trying to dull the pain,” he said. Eventually, a doctor prescribed hydrocodone.
For the first time in years, he felt genuine relief.
He quit drinking.
Quit drugs.
But his wife left him anyway, not because of the opioids, but because of who he became without them. “She said the narcotics changed my personality,” he recalled. “What she didn’t understand was that it wasn’t the narcotics that changed my personality. It is the unceasing pain.”
That’s the line that stopped me.
Read it again.
Because it’s the part our lawmakers, insurance providers, and CDC regulators don’t want to admit: Pain changes you.
It rewires the soul.
It scrapes away your patience, your charm, your ability to be the man or woman you once were.
He said it best: “Only those of us who have to live with unending, chronic, breath-taking, life-destroying pain every day of our lives can understand what another of us goes through.”
He now takes time-release morphine.
It barely helps.
And now?
“Morphine ER is out of stock everywhere. Chinese drugs strike again.”
Craig’s Challenge: “Live Near Me”
Craig’s story takes us beyond U.S. borders.
After breaking six vertebrae and enduring two failed spinal surgeries, he discovered that morphine, the drug doctors kept insisting would help, didn’t work on him at all.
During one ruthless episode, his caretaker’s brother burglarized his home and stole a fresh refill of fentanyl.
Craig had called the police, filed the report, and even had his house fingerprinted.
But when he tried to get a replacement at the pharmacy?
Denied.
Until the police were done.
So he went to the ER for help. But first, they needed to run a tox screen to make sure he wasn’t overdosing.
While in agony.
Let that sink in.
Imagine a man who’s been through strokes, seizures, heart attacks, and broken vertebrae… being told to prove he’s worthy of relief.
Not comforted.
Not believed.
Not helped.
Just tested and doubted.
Now, he lives in the Philippines. Why?
Because pain meds are so heavily restricted, only two doctors in the entire country can prescribe them.
He must fly to Cebu or Manila every month for a 30-day script.
He ends his story with a barb: “To those still in the US who complain about the inconvenience, I challenge you to live near me.”
The Bigger Picture: Pain Doesn’t Fit on a Chart
These are just four more stories.
Four of thousands.
Or millions.
If you listen closely, they all echo the same message: the system doesn’t care.
We’ve turned pharmacists into gatekeepers, insurers into enforcers, and pain sufferers into suspects.
We’ve created a world where a grandmother with scoliosis has to cry in the parking lot because she dared to take her pills two days early.
Where a woman who broke her shoulder must ration medicine like it's a wartime food supply.
Where a man who survived a car wreck is punished for the behavior of an addict, whereas another, living with a rare genetic brain disease, must board a plane every 30 days just to avoid seizing in agony.
No algorithm can calculate a person’s pain.
No bureaucrat sitting in an office in D.C. can understand what it means to wake up every morning with the same unanswered prayer: Let today hurt less than yesterday.
And yet they write the rules.
So the question remains, and it’s one I’ll keep asking until it’s no longer necessary:
How many more have to suffer in silence before compassion outranks suspicion?
Got a Story? I Want to Hear It.
If you live with chronic pain and have been pushed aside, doubted, or punished by the very system meant to help you, I’m listening.
You don’t need to write a novel.
Just say what you need to say.
You can share as much or as little as you like.
And if you’d prefer to stay anonymous, that’s absolutely fine. I’m not a government agency or research lab. I’m not running numbers.
I’m just trying to tell the truth. Your truth.
Not to sensationalize suffering. But to hold the system accountable for what it’s done to real people: mothers, workers, veterans, neighbors.
People who didn’t ask for pain but live with it every day.
You can send your story by clicking the “TIPS” button and including your email address so I can follow up if needed. Please include my name at the beginning of your message so I can be sure to receive it.
Please let me know if you would like to remain anonymous again. If not, I’ll simply use your first name and where you’re from if you include it.
You’re not alone.
It’s time they knew that, too.
