Remembering my Aunt Marcy (CW: death, opioid addiction)

Remembering my Aunt Marcy

Content warning: this post discusses death, opioids, and addiction.

*

*

Shortly after my 21st birthday my mother‘s youngest sister, Marcy, was found dead. She was only 41 years old. The autopsy suggested that years of opioid addiction had caught up with her.

She left behind two young children. Her loss was devastating.

Marcy was incredibly caring and giving. When I was a kid she was a puppy raiser for Canine Companions, where I received my amazing service dog, Buffy, from many years later. She loved to make people feel special.

Like everyone in my family, Marcy had major mental health disabilities. She also experienced severe chronic pain and illness. In vivid snippets of memory I see her bending in unusual positions and showing me her elbow scars from two different experimental surgeries. When I look back, I recognize with near certainty that, like me, she too had excessive hypermobility and fibromyalgia.

My extended family supported Marcy as much as possible in the ways they knew how. But as is common due to widespread stigma, Marcy’s pain, and subsequent opioid addiction, were largely criticized and blamed on her.

It took me over a decade of being in severe pain for my hypermobility to be accurately diagnosed and taken seriously. I cannot emphasize enough how often I received the message from my doctors to take my painkillers and go away. I imagine how it might have been for Marcy, struggling to have her pain taken seriously, but being ushered into addiction, and its endless stigma, instead.

I am fortunate that I was able to stop taking opioids in my mid-20s. But like so many others, Marcy was a victim of predatory pharmaceutical companies, misinformation about pain, and deadly prejudices.

Marcy would have been 55 years old on Oct. 30, 2021.

Whether due to opioids or other devastating impacts of ineffective and discriminatory chronic pain treatment, countless people have died much too soon. And countless others have been unjustly harmed. I hope you will join me in honoring and remembering the many lives hurt by pain shame, stigma, and prejudices.

I love you, Aunt Marcy.

Check back soon for my two-part series on the opioid epidemic and negative impacts of prescribing restrictions on chronic pain endurers.

Other posts you might like:

• How Health Insurers Hurt People in Pain Part I: Benefit Restrictions

• How Health Insurers Hurt People in Pain Part II: Financial Gain Over Patient Wellbeing

• How Health Insurers Hurt People in Pain Part III: The For-Profit Insurance Takeover

• How Health Insurers Hurt People in Pain Part IV: Where to go From Here

Subscribe to my newsletter or follow me on social for the latest!

Would you like to support more articles like this?

Become a business, organizational, or individual unshamepain.com sponsor by donating anywhere from $1-$100+ each month. Contact me to learn more or to make a one-time donation. Any amount helps! Thank you.