#PainGang#RahRahRah to @OldHeadFighta & NH Pain Collaborative for their BIG WIN in getting protections for pain patients & prescribers into state law. I'll put a sample letter together so folks can lobby their state lawmakers using the NH bill as a model.
NEW NH bill "requires doctors/pharmacists to consider the 'individualized needs' of pain patients, treat them with dignity, and ensure that they are 'not unduly denied the medications needed to treat their conditions.'" #cpp#opioidspainnewsnetwork.org/stories/2020/8…
.@OldHeadFighta Huge congrats! I lead @headsUPmigraine. I've been lobbying #Maine's #opioid policy director since I testified against our dose cap in '16. ME has same advantage as NH: personal relationships. I'll pass along your bill, see if that helps get him over the line.
@NitaGhei I don't want to interrupt all the fun you're having with the #MigrainousVomiting, but thought you might like to know NH activists scored a big win. Thought it might give you a little boost while your brain's busy misbehaving. 💙
Bill Murphy's tip re: naming your lobby org worked well for @headsUPmigraine. I've been thinking a name like Pain Activists Network would be useful esp for individuals. Really bulks up a lobbying letter to say, "I'm a pain patient & a member of the Pain Activists Network." 1/2
I checked. No one else is using "Pain Activists Network." Our various advocacy orgs do a great job of cheering each other on. "Pain Activist Network" could be a formal way of saying #RahRahRah#TeamPain. Plus it's only 4 characters on twitter! #PAN
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“#Migraine is a neurological disorder, not a terrible, disabling #headache," expert @DavidDodick explains. #Pain is "just 1 clinical manifestation deriving from a sensory processing disturbance affecting the nervous system" (Morgan, Lancet 2020). /Thread thelancet.com/journals/laneu…
Billie lost her insurance when #migraine disabled her: “There are days I don't see anything except for shapes." Visual warnings are the most commonly recognized auras, but these symptoms are highly variable, both in different patients & on different days for the same patient. 2/
Difficulty speaking or speaking clearly is another common #migraine symptom, either preceding or during an attack.
Poor St. Husband. He watched this clip & said, "Yup, that's you." I spent a lotta years in school to talk like this. 3/
A Yale study of 10 patients found 1 dose of #psilocybin can cut #migraine frequency in half for 2 weeks. Each patient did 1 session with placebo, 1 with the drug. People who felt most high got the least migraine relief. /thread newatlas.com/health-wellbei…
The Yale researchers who conducted the small, but 1st of its kind study suggest #migraine patients might benefit from microdoses or sub-hallucinogenic doses of #psilocybin. Understanding how psilocybin prevents migraine might open new pathways for drug development, as well.
I did 2 #migraine clinical trials. I'm glad someone else took this one for the team. I hated Methysergide (Sansert), now discontinued, which was synthesized from lysergic #acid. A 1965 study said Sansert users experienced a "confused feeling of unreality." Tell me about it.
“[W]idespread & variable dysfunction of the nervous system…comprises the aberrant brain state of a #migraine attack” (Charles 2017).
Daily/near-daily migraine is continuous migraine. Imaging shows our brains *always* look like brains during an "attack" (Brennan 2018). >thread
Recurrent #migraine & #pain aren't benign. “Long-lasting &/or repetitive pain over years leads to profound functional as well as structural changes in the brain networks" (Brennan).
Ineffective treatment is a leading risk of progression to continuous migraine. #MedicalTwitter
Brennan & Pietrobon's paper "A Systems Neuroscience Approach to #Migraine" (Neuron 2018) is @headsUPmigraine's favorite. I excerpted it for others like me who aren't fluent in #neurochemistry:
It's hard to browse #library bookshelves from home. For other homebound readers, NYT best fiction 2009-19 as a thread for non-subscribers. (Your local library might let you read NYT etc on their website.)
2019: DISAPPEARING EARTH Julia Phillips. THE TOPEKA SCHOOL Ben Lerner. EXHALATION Ted Chiang. LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE Valeria Luiselli. NIGHT BOAT TO TANGIER Kevin Barry
2018: ASYMMETRY Lisa Halliday. THE GREAT BELIEVERS Rebecca Makkai. THE PERFECT NANNY Leila Slimani. Translated Sam Taylor. THERE THERE Tommy Orange. WASHINGTON BLACK Esi Edugyan.
Holiday shopping from home? Support #Maine#Wabanaki businesses. The Wabanaki are the Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Mi'kmaq, and Abenki People of the Dawn. #mepolitics#indigenous <thread>
Meherrin Outpost is owned & operated by a Mi'kmaq (#Maine) & #Mehrrin (NC) couple. They make jewelry & sell a wide range of products from sage & sweetgrass to hand drums and (aw!) baby moccasins. facebook.com/meherrin/
Even if they support the #DeathPenalty, most people think that only people who've killed should be killed.
🔴Prosecutors never claimed #DustinHiggs killed anyone, but #Barr has scheduled him to die 5 days before inauguration. Deeply moving video: /thread vimeo.com/194702182
#DustinHiggs was in his early 20s when he drove a shooter from a crime scene. Prosecutors said the shooter "acted alone," but they failed to get the #DeathPenalty. So they accused Higgs of being the mastermind.
The shooter got life w/ no parole. Higgs is to die on 1/15/21.
Jurors did NOT hear mitigating factors that might've led them to choose death in prison by no parole over execution. They didn't know he was 10 when he was his mother's f/t caretaker as she died of breast cancer. Nor did they know he has learning & developmental disabilities.