You can’t see it, but I can definitely feel it. You don’t understand it, but it’s what I know I deal with it on a daily basis. You either think I’m lazy or you feel sorry for me, but I am stronger than you’ll ever know.

I fight every day. I don’t want your sympathy – I just want to be treated with respect. I want to feel better. I’ve forgotten what that feels like. These are the feelings that run through my mind and all of the patients of pain management.

Pain is an unpleasant feeling that is conveyed to the brain by sensory neurons. The discomfort signals actual or potential injury to the body. However, pain is more than a sensation, or the physical awareness of pain; it also includes perception, the subjective interpretation of the discomfort. Perception gives information on the pain’s location, intensity, and something about its nature. The various conscious and unconscious responses to both sensation and perception, including emotional response, add further definition to the overall concept of pain.

Since pain is a subjective experience, it may be difficult to communicate its exact quality and intensity to other people. There are no diagnostic tests that can determine the quality or intensity of an individual’s pain. Therefore, a medical examination will include a lot of questions about where the pain is located, its intensity, and nature.

Questions are also directed at what kinds of things increase or relieve pain, how long it lasted, and whether there are any variations to it. An individual may be asked to use a pain scale to describe the pain. One such scale assigns a number to the pain intensity; for example, “0” may indicate no pain, and “10” may indicate the worst pain the person has ever experienced. Each person’s perception is unique and an experienced clinician has the training to interpret the findings, not the insurance company, law enforcement, or the media.

There are many drugs aimed at preventing or treating pain. Nonopioid analgesics, narcotic analgesics, anti-convulsant drugs, and tricyclic anti-depressants work by blocking the production, release or uptake of neurotransmitters. Drugs from different classes may be combined to handle certain types of pain.

Many people who genuinely need these medications for pain control typically do not become addicts. Medications are not always effective in controlling the pain. Physical therapy, lifestyle changes and injections into the affected area can sometimes aid in the relief process; these aren’t always the answer pending on whether the people affected can actually complete these tasks.

New York state has been cracking down on the amount of pain prescriptions any doctor can write, they have been monitoring physicians and have threatened them with fines or suspensions if the state has deemed that a physician has written too many pain medication prescriptions. The trickle-down effect that has had is that your PCP has refuses to address any kind of pain issue a patient presents with. Signs are posted in waiting rooms: We refuse to write any prescriptions for pain medication. I thought that they took a Hippocratic Oath to treat a patient and the last I looked pain is a legal diagnosis. So all physicians now send anyone who needs pain management to clinics so someone else can manage the pain people are experiencing, talk about a cop out.

Yes, Dr. Eugene Gosy writes prescriptions for pain medications, because no other physician will. His practice is a busy place where a person in pain can actually find some form of relief from the debilitating pain most of us have on a daily basis. Dr. Gosy has described his center as a “model” practice that has helped thousands of patients from as far away as Rochester to Jamestown with chronic pain return to work and improve their quality of life.

Being a patient of Dr. Gosy, I can attest to the tedious process and rules he has put in place to protect the patients and staff. Upon becoming a new patient you must file out extensive paperwork, including signing a contract that you name a pharmacy of your choice and promise to only receive the medications that the office prescribes from them and are subject to drug testing at the will of the physician. Failure to comply with taking your medication as prescribed, failing a drug test, or doctor shopping (getting pain medication from any other doctor than the Gosy center) will result in expulsion from the centers services. We all get to fill out a form that asks us what medication you are using and whether or not you are compliant, your allergies and to complete a diagram as to where your pain is and what kind it is. This is the kind of safeguarding I would expect at a reputable pain management center.

Opioids, in recent years, have become popular street drugs. Throughout the U.S., more people are now overdosing on opioids than on heroin or cocaine combined. Also, police throughout the country report that prescription opioid dependence has led to heroin addiction, since on the streets, heroin is sometimes less expensive for patients to obtain than opioid prescriptions.

William Hochul, the U.S. Attorney in New York state has alleged that Dr. Gosy has prescribed more than 300,000 prescriptions over the last four years. With all the other doctors refusing to treat patients in pain and all of them have referred the patients to pain management what do they expect!?! Dr. Gosy has been treating tens of thousands of patients, that’s not an unusual number of prescriptions. Hochul sought an indictment of Dr. Gosy and won, thus in the process calling all of Dr. Gosy’s patients addicts.

All of us have been cut off our medications – cold turkey. That’s a dangerous and unethical thing to do, so Dr. Gosy suggested that we get our prescriptions from our PCPs till he takes care of this roadblock. Guess what? Even with reports of treatments between physicians, many of us are being told we are “addicts or drug seekers” and no physician or ER will help us stay compliant. Some of these patients are elderly and really can’t tolerate or even handle the upcoming side effects and withdrawal symptoms coming down the pike.

I see a rise in suicide and patients turning to illegal substances to satiate the paroxysm of pain that will most definitely befall the majority of Dr. Gosy’s patients. I also predict that many of these careless PCPs will be sued for malpractice and failure to treat their patients properly. Hope your malpractice insurance is up to date. Hochul is seriously on a witch hunt and I hope he has trouble sleeping at night because he has labeled thousands of patients with a moniker that he has no right to use.

“You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.”

Cath Kestler is a nurse, patient of Dr. Gosy and resident of Silver Creek.