"If you limit your choice only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise" – Robert Fritz
Since the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC (CPSBC) announced changes to the opioid prescribing standards on June 1, 2016, health care providers and people living with pain have raised concerns about how the new policy may have a damaging impact on the treatment of chronic pain in this province.
Growing up, I lived with my mom until I was about 12 and then I moved in with my grandma (me and my stepdad just didn’t get along). I lived with Grandma for about a year. She was an awesome lady. Then I got taken away by MCFD [Ministry of Children and Family Development, child protection services].
My son Tyler fatally overdosed on heroin laced with fentanyl in a friend’s hotel room on January 27, 2016. He was 23 years old.
I first started using heroin in the late 90s. I was in Matsqui Penitentiary, so it was just a way to get high and escape reality. I was 32 years old. I had started off young, sniffing gas and glue as a kid, and I smoke and drank. Everything was just another means to escape.
It was 4:00 on a Friday evening, about 24 hours since anyone had last seen Gwen. She had been given the opportunity to get help, but she chose instead to leave the hospital. No money. No cell phone. No car. No purse. Nothing. And no one had heard from her since.
Verne Smithman, 76, of Langley is proof that depression can strike any gender and any age.
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