Mama Carol

I don't work in the field in which I was trained but that training transitioned well to what I am doing. It gave me a background so I was given the opportunity to get into another field.

They had four preparers at their kiosk at Walmart last Saturday. Looked to be about an hour and a half wait as well. And that was just one location! I was there a week or so earlier and it looked to be about a half hour wait that time. The one at Kmart was busy, too. And I've already done eight returns this year. I did close to 150 last year. I did probably 50-60% of the individual returns our firm did last year. We do few simple returns though. Those are the ones for the children of our other clients. I wasn't really sure I wanted to work there after the person I interviewed wi

I have 20 years experience as a tax preparer. I recently interviewed for a job with a national tax prep firm. They wanted me to attend tax school for seven days, with no pay for that, and then attend additional training for seven days with pay at minimum wage. After that I would be hired at $9.00 an hour, the same as the people who walked in off the street, signed up for the tax course and finished the course. They were stunned when I turned them down. Within days I had two other job offers, both paying considerably more than the national firm would have paid. I settled on the one that

I knew what I wanted to do when I was a senior in high school. It was just a variation on what I had wanted to do since I was a little bitty kid. I don't remember what organization it was that was hiring for the position that required a Masters. Pretty sure it wasn't a non-profit and don't think it was related to government. Seems like it was related to health care, but it's been a few years since I saw it and I just don't remember. Just this past week I saw an ad that required skills that pretty much have to be learned through doing them.something you just have a knack for doing

What concerns me more are the jobs that require skills or experience and yet they pay minimum wage or only a few cents more than that. Why would anyone go to school to learn a skill, work for a year or two in that job only to be paid minimum wage anyway? I still remember that job posting I saw for someone with a Master's degree in Social Work, Psychology or similar course of study and 2 years experience and it paid less than I was making with no college degree.

At least the guy taking the video didn't get a plane on top of him.

I hope the person who took the video knows how fortunate they are. Wow. That was some frightening video. I told my husband that was as scary to watch, putting myself in the position of the person taking the video, as it was slip sliding through that intersection the other night in the rain.

I thought the guy wearing the "I beat anorexia" shirt was you!!!

Without a doubt. When you do find a pain management doctor who really tries to help you find something to treat the cause of the pain, they are a keeper. Mostly what I saw were doctors writing prescriptions for ever increasing doses of narcotics. I don't know if we have pill mills here, but we sure have a lot of pain management doctors.

Most people don't realize that I rushed my knee surgeries so that I would be able to take care of him when the time comes and so I could have them done while he could take care of me. Fortunately, I didn't require a lot of physical help from him. I was able to get up and down on my own after about day 4. Even before that, I just had him stick his arm out so I could use it to help balance me. I wasn't going to do anything that would cause him problems. He's had another pain spike since my last surgery. How he gets through some of them without pain meds, I have no idea. I've seen the tear

If it's $250 to go to a pill mill and then the cost of the meds, you probably could buy it cheaper on the street. It's no wonder that the ones who don't need the meds for pain management would go that route. The exercises he does don't put pressure on his spine. And he walks a lot, too. He goes out for a walk around the neighborhood sometimes 4 times a day. It's about 1/2 mile if he goes the whole subdivision. Neither of us are doing a lot at the gym, but we are there usually five days a week. they are only open 5 days a week.

I work with a young woman, not yet 40, who has had three surgeries on her neck. She has spinal stenosis at multiple levels in the cervical spine. She told me the other day that her doctor has said she needs to quit work. She's not 40 yet!!! This is what she has to look forward to. My heart hurts for her. The doctor put her on gabapentin last year and it helped some. It at least allowed her to continue working during tax season but then she had to have one more surgery on her neck in December, so one has to wonder if the medication allowed her to do things that caused damage. I agre

You handle it very well, Laurie. You amaze me and inspire me. I wish there was something available to help you and my husband. As it is, you two have a choice between the pain or being on pain meds. That's one hell of a choice. Thus far, my husband has been told he will likely be in a wheelchair by age 70 because there is no surgery available that is worth the risk of paralysis. We have a friend here who has the same type of stenosis that my husband does. She has had surgery and is doing great. But she only had it a little less than two years ago. My husband is seriously conside

I went through withdrawal when I went off the hydrocodone after my second surgery. It was relatively mild but it was certainly withdrawal. I was really surprised that I did that after only taking it for seven days. I mentioned it to my doctor when I went for my check up and he said that was not common but he had seen it before. I guess I just have a very low tolerance to pain meds. My friend who I mentioned earlier who was a dealer shattered his ankle about 20 years ago. He was on pain meds every 4-6 hours for about 4 weeks. He went through withdrawal as well. He'd been through wi

I had a kidney stone and a gallstone at the same time in 2010. Two of the strongest hydrocodone only put me to sleep. They didn't help the pain. That Dilaudid scared the bejesus out of me. I have no idea what my heart rate was but it was speeding along like a Ferrari on I-285. That inability to swallow was really scary. You have no idea how important swallowing is until you can't do it. In the hospital. I don't react the way most people do to drugs or alcohol. They both make me sleepy, except for the drugs that hype you up. I don't know what they do. Oh yeah, I do. They ma

fortunately for me, the doctor gave me something that helped make them a little more tolerable. I could at least keep them down. That Dilaudid scared me though. And the Oxy they gave me for the trip home did, too. I barely made it to the car, from next to the car, slept all the way home and kept falling asleep at my computer. The next surgery, I only took one Oxy for the trip home. I never took another one after leaving the hospital. I still have both full prescriptions.

They didn't make me feel good. I felt horrible. They gave me Dilaudid in the hospital and I thought I was going to die. My heart began racing and I couldn't swallow. Hydrocodone makes my stomach hurt, makes me nauseated and doesn't help the pain. And that's one of the better ones for me. I'd make a lousy drug addict.

I was told by more than one doctor that the FDA limits what they can prescribe. Doctors that have performed surgery have a little more leeway in what they can prescribe and for how long. Primary care doctors have little say in what they can prescribe and for how long. It's not so much that the doctors don't want the liability as it is they want to retain their ability to write prescriptions period. I had knee replacement on June 11. I went off the pain meds at day 9. I had a second knee replacement on September 10 and went off the pain meds on day 7. I was taking them every 8-12 ho

Until the profit is taken out of prescription drugs, the problem will persist.

All the free clinics for getting off the meds won't help if someone doesn't want to quit.

Like I said, the only difference between the PM clinics and the "pill mills" is the clinics are usually in nicer buildings, with plush upholstery, they play soothing music over the office speaker system and have doctors who still have admitting privileges at a hospital (and in many cases, still does surgical anesthesia). What they do is basically the same and often for the same people. The state drug database is supposed to work to curb "doctor shopping". When I was discharged from the hospital after my first knee replacement, the doctor forgot to sign one of my prescriptions. The pharm

LOL. You must have watched the same episode we did the other night. The guys they caught had NO idea that one had drugs on him and the other had several hundred dollars on him. I have NO idea how that money got in my pocket. He must have put it in there when I wasn't looking. And I have no idea how those drugs got in my car. He must have put them in there when I wasn't looking. Even the cops seemed to be having trouble keeping a straight face. My husband looked over at me and said "we need to find out what neighborhood that is and go over there to see if someone will just put so

I had to turn down pain meds after my surgeries. My orthopaedist was more than happy to give me refills. Our PCP said that within reason, he had no problem giving pain meds or muscle relaxers. My husband and I both like to keep something on hand for the times we have a LOT of pain. The PCP gave him Tramadol and said that if it didn't work, let him know and he would give something stronger. A funny. I went for the first visit with my new PCP. He said "I see you got a prescription for hydrocodone in October 2012". I'm sitting there wracking my brain trying to figure out why I would

No doubt about that. The only real difference between the two is the PM clinics are usually in nicer buildings.

I saw few people in the PM office who were really there for pain management. It's more like legalized addiction. Never been in a pill mill.