Jitterbugging for Jesus

After years of constant, debilitating pain, I began feeling much better. Opioid medication not only did a good job of relieving [my] pain, but along with hormone supplements and anti-inflammatory drugs, they also improved my quality of life, allowing me to do things now that I could not do before.

It may sound trite, but this man “gave me my life back.”

— From an article written by my friend Louis Ogden about Dr. Forest Tennant for the Web site Pain News Network.

I want to tell you a horror story concerning a dear friend of mine named Louis Ogden, who takes a seemingly alarming amount of pain drugs.

My friend Louis (Louie Louie) Ogden, and his bride of 45 years Kristen. Because of a genetic issue that makes treatment with typical drug regimens ineffective, Louis lived most of his 67 years with what is called “intractable pain” before he found the leading pain management doctor in the country.

Let me say right off, however, that my buddy Louis–whom I affectionally call “Louie Louie” because of our shared taste in classic as well as more contemporary rock and blues music–is not a junkie.

Contrary to what the overzealous federal government agents at the DEA and some political leaders seem to believe–Louis and a number of his fellow pain patients who also take huge amounts of opioids–are not drug abusers.

They aren’t pill seekers or thrill seekers or drug dealers using or selling hard drugs on the streets.

I want to share more about Louis and his beloved wife Kristen and those fellow patients who take opioids under the guidance of a California physician named Forest Tennant.

Dr. Tennant is distinguished for being on the cutting edge of researching and controlling debilitating pain for patients like Louis who can’t find pain relief from their local doctors.

Before I share more about Louis’s case, I want to share some background on our country’s endless “War on Drugs” and what it has come to.

* * *

That great American conservative and Republican hero Ronald Reagan famously said in a press conference, “I think you all know that I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

Of course, the Reagan Administration then proceeded to wage the government-run War on Drugs that has been failing miserably, and draining the national treasury and our tax dollars, for more than three decades.

To be fair, however, I have to say that every president since Reagan has thrown more tons of good money after bad trying to deal with drug abusers and the dealers who supply them. And it wasn’t a Republican who built the enduring Prison Industrial Complex that locked up almost exclusively black crack addicts from neighborhoods that the politicians and corporations keep forgetting to invest and create jobs in–except when election time rolls around.

Believe it or not, there was a time when President Bill Clinton was a hero to the military and to every law enforcement agency in the United States.

Anytime the military or police leaders asked for a dollar, Clinton was prone to say, “Here, take two dollars.”

Clinton and the Democrats didn’t want to be seen as soft on foreign enemies and criminals and Democrats still don’t.

And for sure, the “law and order” Republicans never want to be soft on crime when they can oversee the creation of jobs with evermore prisons, private and public.

The more reasonable option of decriminalization and treatment never get far: the profits and political contributions for that option aren’t worth it to the powers-that-be.

* * *

Fast forward to now, and the national opioid epidemic. I recently posted about the unbelievable toll that pain drugs have taken in the last 20 and more years. That post was written from my point of view as a Christian and a United Methodist pastor. You can read it here if you missed it.

Because of a genetic issue that makes treatment with typical drug regimens ineffective, my friend Louis lived most of his 67 years with what is called “intractable pain.”

Intractable pain is the kind that is unbearable–beyond control with anything like a normal drug regimen. It’s the sort of pain that can make a stable, well-adjusted person suicidal.

And Louis, who managed for some years to make a living as a master electrician and earned a college degree before the pain became too much, was a well-adjusted man who had just about lost any will to live when I came to know him through this blog.

Then in 2010, Louis’s dreadful life with pain started to take a sharp turn for the better. That’s when he and Kristen were fortunate enough to find Dr. Tennant, one of the country’s foremost experts on pain and the prescribing of opioids.

Dr. Tennant and his wife Miriam have operated a pain clinic in West Covina, CA since 1975. He is also the Editor Emeritus of Practical Pain Management, a monthly medical journal about pain. His current research interests are inflammatory markers and the role of hormones in pain care.

Other doctors had always told Louis there was little to nothing they could do to relieve his constant pain, short of making him a junkie. So Louis (and 150 other fellow patients who go to Dr. Tennant for pain treatments and research) credits the physician with giving him his life back.

Ceaseless pain obviously wears and tears down the entire mind and body, straining everything from the heart to the spirit. So every three months, Kristen and Louis travel across the country to the clinic outside L.A. from their home in Virginia to see Dr. Tennant for a checkup and refills on prescriptions.

That’s a long way to go to see a doctor, but the Ogdens are only too happy to do it. (And Kristen does volunteer work at the clinic during their stays in the suburb where the clinic is.)

But now comes the United States government, eagerly wanting to get drug dealers off the streets. That’s commendable. I and you and Louis and Kristen and, I’m sure, Dr. Tennant, don’t want drug dealers selling opioids on the streets and making a deadly epidemic worse than it is.

But the bad news for Louis and other pain patients who need opioids to have functional lives is that the DEA recently raided Dr. Tennant’s office. Louis informed me of this in an email in which he told me:

“My doc has been raided! I’m scared s——-. The DEA has my medical records. The ‘expert advisor’ to the DEA is not a specialist in pain–he’s a family doc.

“I’ve read the warrant and he SPECULATES that all out of state patients receiving high doses (THAT’S ME) must be selling their meds because no one person could survive these high doses.”

I’m hopeful, and actually confident, that the drug enforcement authorities with the federal government will come to understand that one person’s poison (heavy pain drugs) is another person’s healing medicine.

Maybe it’s the eternal optimist in me, but I believe that Dr. Tennant, who hasn’t been charged with any crime, is going to be vindicated as the good guy in this raid.

I’m confident that when the authorities read Louis’s case history, they will find that he is not a junkie or a pill or thrill seeker. Kristen, in fact, is a retired civil servant who served in the federal government for 36 years herself. She has a degree from William and Mary.

She and Louis met in 1968 when she was 15 and Louis was 18 and started dating 15 months later. They married in 1973 after dating for three years. Her dad served a year in Vietnam.

Louis got his college degree when he could no longer work as an electrian, and was accepted to Syracuse for a master’s degree that he was unable to obtain because of the pain.

My point is that this is not a couple dealing drugs for money.

Now, all that said, I urge you to read what Louis had to say in the article mentioned at the top of the post that he wrote for the Pain News Network. Read it here for yourself.

There’s also this piece Kristen wrote.

Factual information is always good. I hope the federal Drug Enforcement Administration will obtain the facts before it makes any more assumptions about why somebody travels across the country to obtain opioids every three months.

I’ll keep you updated on this matter in the weeks and months ahead.