I am a caregiver for a man that has end stage reinal disease, he is also in a wheelchair 24 hours a day as a result of a back injury and a broken leg with a steel bar in it. He is 67 years old, and has been doing dialysis for over 10 years. On the Fourth of July, he was sitting at the end of his driveway waiting for his transportation to the kidney center, as he always does three times a week. It was 4:45 am when he woke up from dozing off, and looked up just in time to see someone running down the street with his duffle bag that he had on his lap. Besides the keys to the house, Van, and safe, they also got away with his headphones, blanket, and pain meds. He has never ever had any problems with loosing his pain meds or having them stolen. He has never overtaken his pain meds. He always keeps them with him, and is responsible with them. We filed a police report, and I contacted the seattle pain center in everett, wa to tell them what happened. They asked if there was a police report filed, and wanted the case number, I gave them this information. I asked what I needed to do to help the man I take care of replace the 10 days worth of meds that were stolen from him. They set up an appt. for the following day. We went to the appt. and they said they want him to do a blood test, and that they will not replace his meds, also he was getting a disciplinary write up because he was robbed. I said that is BS. The man told me to get out and that I was not welcome to come to Daves appointments any more. Now he is going threw withdrawls and in a lot of pain. I found out that if I was to take him to the emergency room so he could get the meds he normally takes, that they will do more then a write up, because he signed something when he first started going to the pain center saying that he is not allowed to be prescribed any pain meds from any other facility besides them. This would be understandable if Dave had abused his meds in the past, or maybe even if he had just filled his script, and it was full. The pain center should look at the big picture when dealing with each patient, consider all the factors before punishing someone that is a victim of strong armed robbery. I feel helpless having to see him go threw all this pain, and I have no idea how to help him get threw this next ten days, let alone how I'm going to get threw the next ten days. This is beyond unfair, and there has to be something that can be done about innocent people in the same situation.
Note they did a blood test on this patient. That means the drug levels were not what they should be, another red flag that resulted in cutoff. False reports of theft occur all the time.(Note: this was not a robbery, no deadly force used). I don't know anybody who would be going to dialysis at 4 AM on the 4th of July Holiday. Very phishy.
Patients are scheduled 3x each week - either the Mon, Wed, Fri group or the Tues, Thurs, Sat group.
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