HEALTH/FAMILY

When a Prescription Becomes a Temptation

A story about post-surgical recovery reveals why unused opioid medications deserve more attention than many of us give them

Photo by Jorge Campos on Unsplash

“About one-half of those who misused prescription pain relievers obtained them from a friend or relative for free.” — Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

My mother has never been a woman who makes a fuss.

Shortly before her recent knee surgery, she moved in with my brother and sister-in-law in the Washington, DC, area. Last month, she suffered a serious fall, an injury that eventually led to a total knee replacement. Through every setback, she responded the same way she has approached most challenges in life: quietly, steadily, and without complaint.

After the operation, she took a single dose of oxycodone. The medication caused an adverse reaction, so she stopped taking it immediately and relied instead on over-the-counter pain relief. Then she began her rehabilitation exercises and performed them faithfully every day.

My sister, thinking ahead, made sure the remaining pills were stored somewhere secure. It seemed reasonable not to leave a powerful medication within easy reach when my mother had no intention of using it. A small precaution, and at the time, barely a second thought.

I have made several trips to Washington in recent months to assist in any capacity I could. A caregiver also visits regularly and has become an important part of my mother’s daily routine.

Recently, a family friend stopped by. I will call her Annie (not her real name). Annie is a physician and has known my mother for many years as they were neighbors. Earlier that same day, Annie had been visiting another friend recovering from the very same surgery, performed only about a week before my mother’s.

As we all talked, Annie described the striking differences between the two recoveries.

The other woman was doing reasonably well. She was completing her exercises, though perhaps not with the same consistency my mother brought to hers. She had been advised not to drive for three weeks but was back behind the wheel after two. Like my mother, she had been prescribed oxycodone, but unlike my mother, she was still taking it, and she had left the bottle where anyone passing through the house might see it.

She had contractors working in her home at the time. When they left, her oxycodone apparently left with them. Someone in that house had recognized exactly what was sitting on that table and made a decision in an instant.

For a moment, we were surprised. Then, almost immediately, we weren’t.

Opioid dependency does not sort people by profession, income, or background. It finds people from all walks of life, people managing careers, raising families, and trying to hold things together, and it does not let go easily. The theft was wrong, but the fuller story behind it is almost certainly more complicated, and more human, than a simple act of dishonesty.

[embed]Related viewing: This documentary explores the human side of opioid addiction and why prescription painkillers remain at the center of the crisis. /Credit: YouTube

The theft was entirely preventable. The pills were in plain sight on the coffee table. The woman who was recovering from surgery had not given it much thought. There seemed no reason for her to. She had enough on her plate as it is.

Over the years, I have read enough about opioids to understand that these pills carry a significance far greater than their size. To most patients, they are simply what the doctor prescribed. To someone in the grip of addiction, or teetering on its edge, they can represent something else entirely: relief, currency, escape.

Seen from that angle, the disappearance felt less shocking than sadly foreseeable.

When my mother had a hysterectomy last year, my sister-in-law returned the unused oxycodone to the pharmacy for disposal. At the time it seemed like a small, practical decision. Now it feels like a wise one.

The danger is not always in the medication itself but in how casually we store what remains after we no longer need it. Telling yourself you will deal with it later is its own kind of risk, one that is easy to underestimate until a story like this brings it into focus.

If you have unused prescription pain medication sitting in your home right now, in a drawer, a medicine cabinet, a bag from the last hospital stay, I hope this gives you a reason to deal with it today. It is not about not trusting the people around you but because a bottle left in the open can become someone else’s turning point before you ever notice it is gone.

Has a personal experience ever changed the way you think about prescription medications or medication safety?

[embed]Credit: YouTube

Related by B.R. Shenoy:

***The System Was Counting on Us***

***The Prescription Nobody Questioned***