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St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Lee Enterprises

Sunday, August 31, 2008 9:58 PM CDT
LETTER: Medicines should be taken only as directed

By MICKEY GARLOCK, Mattoon

Listen please. About a year ago I was diagnosed with Diabetic Neuropathy (pain from diabetes). After a few months, the pain medicine didn’t help much, so I took more of it.

I even took some from someone else that wasn’t prescribed for me. Needless to say, that was a very bad idea. I didn’t know I was also seizure active, until I ran out of one of these painkillers.

A little over a week ago, I was sitting at my computer, just about to get up, when bam, the next thing I know, it’s about three hours later, I had went through the house like a Tasmanian Devil, (knocking things down all over) went to the bathroom before I wanted to and chewed off a decent part of my tongue.

I had just had a Tonic Clonic (Grand Mal) Seizure. I spent the last week in the hospital, four days in a regular room and four days in the detox unit of the Psych floor, my choice.

My lesson is this, please, please, please, please, please, take medicine exactly as it was written for you, don’t change your own prescription and do not borrow medicine from others just because it makes your pain go away.

What happened to me can happen to you. My penalty, I can’t drive until I am seizure free for six months, which I may never be.

I am also missing (besides part of my tongue) a good portion of my memory which is slowly coming back. I have also lost over forty pounds in a week.

Sorry for the rant, I just wanted everyone to know the dangers of being stupid.

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jackinthebox wrote on Sep 1, 2008 6:34 PM:

" Glad your okay Mick. Good testimony and hope someone will see your artical and learn from it. Their are alot of people addicted to pain medication and doctors are more then willing to prescribe them for the sake of money. "

mickeygarlock wrote on Sep 1, 2008 7:11 PM:

" I don't blame my doctor, if I had taken my medicine correctly and not added others to it, I would have been fine. It was not the doctors fault. It was mine. "

mickeys sister wrote on Sep 1, 2008 9:33 PM:

" i was there with mickey and the whole ordeal lasted almost two weeks. he was in a terrible mess. its not much fun watching one of your siblings go through what mickey did and are for the most part helpless to do anything. he had a lot of people rooting for him like my sister and another brother, his next door neighbor who took him to the hospital at one oclock in the morning and cole county 911 who got him an ambulance a few days later and to the mattoon police department for doing what is called a wellness check on him when i requested it from 30 miles away and i told mickey that i could always reach out and touch him but i think mickey is really on the mend and has learned a very valuable lesson on how to or not to take medication "

Responsible Party wrote on Sep 1, 2008 10:28 PM:

" Thank you for sharing this. It is hard to acknowlege that we sometimes use poor judgement. Pain is powerful and the words "out of your mind with pain" is very real to those who have experienced it. Reading this before that stage is reached may help someone avoid a similar ordeal.

I wish you well in your recovery. "

injustice85 wrote on Sep 2, 2008 10:22 PM:

" doctors are easy to hand these prescriptions out, it makes their job less thorough and easy, they gave my father a half a years worth of painkillers, major ones, for some knee pain "