“Mrs. Rhodes, Taylor’s surgery went well. The nurse has his prescription and will give it to you before you leave. Be sure to get it filled today and get ahead of his pain.” Those words, “get ahead of his pain” are etched in my mind. Decisions made daily by policymakers in Washington, DC can have deadly repercussions for families across the United States. Unfortunately, this became our reality when Taylor was unnecessarily exposed to opioids after surgery. We lost Taylor following an overdose in June 2019.
Ironically, both of my children had the same shoulder surgery, but the outcomes were very different. Blair, my daughter, had access to non-opioid options and today is a junior in college with plans to attend dental school. Taylor had his pain managed with prescription opioids, which led to addiction and eventually his death. While nothing we do will bring Taylor back, he deserved better, and he deserved options in how his pain was managed. We all deserve those options.
We are losing far too many people to addiction, and the healthcare system should not be how they fall in. We must take urgent action to prevent opioid addiction in the country. How many is it going to take? It is my hope that the Biden Administration will take urgent action to ensure other families don’t have to live with our reality. They can take action right now and implement legislation that would prevent opioid addiction and save others like my son.
Last year, Congress took an important step in fighting the opioid epidemic by passing the Non-Opioids Prevent Addiction in the Nation (NOPAIN) Act. This policy provides tens of millions of Medicare patients who undergo outpatient surgery each year with access to non-opioid pain management options. Once implemented, the NOPAIN Act will expand patient and provider choices in pain management by making available FDA-approved treatments they may not have otherwise received. In doing so, clinicians will be able to act in furtherance of CDC guidance, which notes that non-opioids are just as effective in treating acute pain as opioids and should be used as a first line therapy – making this legislation a commonsense solution.
Despite this, and despite the President’s insistence on addressing the opioid addiction crisis, CMS is waiting until 2025 to implement the NOPAIN Act.
If we wait until 2025 to give people options in their pain management, we will sacrifice tens of thousands of lives. They are not just stats, they are people’s everything. How many more deaths is acceptable?
I know the importance of having options. Both Taylor and Blair underwent the same shoulder surgery. Unfortunately, only Blair had access to non-opioid options. The opioid prescription given to Taylor to manage his pain hijacked his developing brain. He would later say that when he took those pills, it was the first time his brain felt ‘normal’.
As both a mother and a mental health clinician, I used every intervention, resource, and tool I could find in an effort to give Taylor the support he needed. Once someone falls into addiction, they are in the fight of their life. The best strategy is to keep people from ever falling in the first place. My family isn’t alone in our pain; across the country, we lost 80,000 loved ones in a single year to opioid-related overdose deaths.
When Blair was preparing for the same procedure two years after losing Taylor, our family knew better. I have to live with the regret of allowing Taylor to take an opioid prescription. We demanded and fought so that Blair was not unnecessarily exposed to opioids. In the end, Blair received a non-opioid option and had very little pain. The pain she had was managed with over-the-counter acetaminophen.
Implementing the NOPAIN Act now, rather than 2025, is a no-brainer. Currently, non-opioid options are available to patients treated in the ambulatory surgical setting because of a policy change that went into effect in 2019. We have the tools now to bring these options to all patients.
What is the cost of waiting until 2025? It will not be measured in dollars but by the size of the hole that is forever left in your heart. It is measured in everything I will never watch Taylor do or achieve. The real cost is knowing Taylor will forever be 20 years and 12 days old because we “had to get ahead of his pain.” No one got ahead of my pain, and the pain I experience every day is the result of not having options in how we manage pain.
I am asking that the Biden Administration to act with the urgency this crisis deserves and accelerate the implementation of the NOPAIN Act to 2024. One life lost is one too many.
Kerri J. Rhodes is a licensed marriage and family therapist and licensed professional counselor in Richmond.
