I'm in PAIN!

The other day while browsing through a JEMS (Journal of Emergency Medical Service) article about "drug seekers" I found a very humorous list of symptoms/behaviors. Within the medical services, it is common for people to seek narcotics. Often it is because of drug addictions or occasionally, because they can sell the pills on the street for greatly inflated prices. Anyway, I was reading this list of behaviors that ran something like this:
- "I have pain that is a 30 on a scale of 1 to 10"
- "I am allergic to Tylenol, Ibuprofen, aspirin, etc" (all the common non-narcotic drugs)
- "Please give me some ________ (always a very specific narcotic drug)
- "I cannot get in touch with my regular doctor today (it is Saturday and they state the pain started two days ago)"

Not sure if that is a complete list, but you get the idea. Within the hour, we were dispatched to woman complaining of chronic 'hurts all over' pain. She was overly verbal, and spewed a plethora of symptoms, history, and complaints. I suddenly found myself having a hard time not laughing as I realized she was basically going down the list I had just read. As I moved outside to get the gurney I noticed her car as being perfectly capable of transporting her down to the ER for her pain medication. As I looked closer I saw what I thought was the typical white outlines of the family, kids, dogs, etc. but in this case it was the universal pain scale.


All I can say, this woman seemed to have taken the concept of pain and turned it into a lifestyle.