To be hacked off over "contaminated"heroin.

[fallon8]

I may have pressed wrong button and posted this elsewhere,I aplogise if I have.
Dog walking, thinking time.
Why does Radio Scotland in droning voice keep telling us that ex amount of peolple have died thru taking comtaminted heroin? Apparently is contains Anthrax and a few bods have died. Surely, they shouldnt be taking the bloody stuff in the first place.
Thru' no fault of my own,I have been treated for Breast Cancer 4 times and continue on long term stuff to try and keep it at bay. I sometimes have to argue my case to get a more expensive drug which has less side effects.Why should resources which could be spent on me and others like me be used for twats who bring it on themselves? Dont mention, smoking, too much alchohol, obesity either!!! To get into the Chemo Room,you rung the gauntlet of patients hooked up to their treatment fagging it outside,i know they maybe on the way out, but I dont care,but why waste the cash? I know, I know, I shouldnt let it get to me,but it does.

I get the I survive to spite people thing I think

she just emans if I am getting this that she survives to prove peoples estimations of her limits wrong

TBH the very same thing that got me my degree and so many other things

Rtaher than I survive so I can be nasty whcih I guess is the other interpretation of that phrase

fallon I think you haven't had the right help to cope with everything that has happened to you.I don't mean physically but emotionally.Has anyone in the team looking after you ever suggested some help to accept and deal with this?You sound tormented to me

LadyBiscuit
"spending £2k on someone who is going to die anyway is a pretty poor use of funds. Spending the same amount of money on someone who might turn their life around and contribute to society is a much better use of resources."

i think thats pretty insensitive.
so you wouldnt spend 2k trying to extend the life of a child with cancer for a few more months? id rather give someone some ease from their pain even if they were going to die than spend money on someone who in all likelihood will just go back to heroin. all congratulations to those who beat the addiction, but its too few for me to weigh it up properly

Spending £2k on someone who will die anyway is an excellent use of funds- apart form palliative care (which you would truly never refuse) there is the whole value of life extension on both the person and thier family, and crucially very likely savings in terms of the amount of support eg parents or children may need in the longterm- or even at the saddest, the amount of care (eitehr social sefices for a child whose onlyc arer has died, or such as my uncle mentioned below time in Psych units)

Costs to society and wider costs are enver as simple as your life = X days, drugs costs X amount therefore no / yes. Remember the case of the woman from Bridgwtaer who fought for herceptin? (she came from my home town so can remember area but not name). One of the key aspects of her succesful case was that she had a young foster child who needed her to be around.

BritFish - these are the king of decisions we have to make as the NHS does not have unlimited resources. This will get more acute, and I think should be more transparent.

Look at a less mortally ambigous case. Should you spend 2k on a hip replacement operation that will improve someones life by 100% over 10 years or 2k on keeping someone alive for an extra month?

Nothings ever even that simple though, but it's the kind of decisions the NHS needs to make.

If spending 2K on addiction services saves 2.1k in the long term that means more money to spend on other services.

cancer cost to nhs

The 1st one, will find the rest when I get time as they are in the website but in different files, and links.

Sorry, that was an insensitive post, I apologise. I was irritated by using a single example of someone who had failed to quit heroin and a gran denied a drug as being evidence to support the theory that drug addicts don't deserve NHS support. Still, that doesn't excuse it and I am sorry cupcakes.

I do think NICE is in an impossible situation - there are finite sums within the NHS and yet drug companies keep developing new drugs which are hugely expensive. They have to make decisions based on cost/benefit analysis and that isn't easy. And I know that they (often) get it wrong.

I know several people who have successfully kicked heroin (as well as those who are posting on this thread) and are now contributing to society. And quite a few of them have gone on to become drug workers, to help others escape from the jaws of addiction. I am hugely grateful that the NHS saw fit to invest in them.

I don't think it's fair to say NICE often get it wrong - people often disagree with them, which is not the same thing, but is inevitable.

Fallon, I am sure you don't realise how you are coming across.

I have a close family member who has recently had BC and she too has become quite bitter like you. I think cancer can seriously f&*k up your life. You may be given a good prognosis and told you are free (hopefully), but it seems it also does a lot of damage in more than the physical sense. Anger and spite will not make the rest of your life very pleasant.

People are right. The NHS should not start making value judgements on who deserves treatment, because whose values are the ones we should take?

You can see where the path leads surely? Not treating a homosexual with HIV? NOt treating a Muslim child because they are a product of a first cousin marriage?

To the NHS, illness is illness and there should be no value judgement. The alternative is quite horrendous.

Well it's a bit crude sometimes - I was listening to a guy on Today a few weeks ago saying that they had turned down a drug on grounds of cost despite the fact that there are so very few people who suffer from this particular condition (can't remember what it was) that actually the costs to the NHS would be minimal. It seems insane that they don't look at total costs, rather than costs per unit.

But this is a separate thread I guess

noddyholder,,oh, yes, ive doen and sometimes still do the counselling route.I not angry as some of you suggest, after why shouldnt it be me?
I am surprised by the amount of virtiol shown towrads me,, hope its none of you next week,its along road that has no turning,I think I have touched a few nerve endings here and its probaby more fashionable.especially during a run up to the election to be on "its an illness,not an addiction " side, isnt the charming Dave waffling about community work? Shades of JFK. wonder what he and his party will do? i dont want some MP, inflicted on me, thanks. I wish you all good luck, happy , healthy,lives.

And lets hope none of your family or children become addicts, obese or get smoking related diseases (??!!)

It's nothing to do with fashion, just general feelings of compassion and humanity

LadyBiscuit - Aye different thread I guess ;) The two things I'd like to see from it though are more transparency and a name change that acknowledged that it IS a rationing agency.

No need to apologise LadyBiscuit, no offence was taken. To be honest, if my gran had been given the drugs, there would be someone else fighting for some other treatment possibly thinking "why bother extending the life of an OAP and leave me waiting?" There's always someone who feels that their case is more of a priority than someone elses so we could go on forever debtaing it that way.

Fallon you might be coming across as insensitive but I think many of us (and I know some of you on here have been through similar) may react in the same way. I do see where you're coming from and I wish that I could think like most of the posters on here wrt treating addicts. I wish I could feel more compassion for these people who I am sure are having a really shite time of it but I just can't find it in me. I know that makes me sound like a hard-hearted cow and I don't like it but it's a tricky one.

"its probaby more fashionable"

There really are no words for you are there.

Yes it's "fashionable" to treat other people well. That's the word I'd use.

"I am surprised by the amount of virtiol shown towrads me"

You've just told a whole loads of us on here that we or our friends and family don't deserve help!! How on earth do you think we'd react?!?!

I understand, I don't think YABU. You've obviously had a shit time of it and I think it's fair e-bloody-nough that you feel like that.
I'm with you - no matter how "snobbish", "arrogant" or "shallow" that makes me. I could debate this shit 'til I'm blue in the face. I see black and white and shades of grey. I know that "addicts are people too", of course I do. And yes, it's a shame on them and their families. But it does seem pretty unfair - and very black and white when it comes down to the bone like that.

This woman has had a rubbish time and is seeking sympathy, not abuse. Agree with PrettyCandles. AIBU is sometimes a disgusting abuse of power.

(steels self for torrent of abuse.)

But it's ok for her to abuse others?

"twats who bring it on themselves" For example.

Well Fallon you won't commit to ds1 receiving support so what am i to think? But I will refrain from abuse becuase I assume you are going through hell at the moment. I hope in ten years, alive and well you remember this thread and think- I could have taken two minutes to say of course your child deserves help.

I don't hwoever w2ant you to see ypur child go through similar. I don't wish that on anyone.

I'm treading on very thin ice here, I know but just humour me please, without getting abusive.

My mum had the shittest upbringing ever. I don't want to divulge too much information here but it was crap. She's not turned to drugs or drink, luckily. On the other hand, my cousin is the biggest "smackhead" (it's what he refers to himself as) going and no-one led a more charmed childhood than he did. He started on the skag to rebel. I don't know how much he cost he NHS over the years but it's not insubstantial. I appreciate that we cannot dole out treatment on a person-to-person basis, I am just trying to make the point that not all addicts have become addicts through a terrible life. Some people actively choose to do it. Look at people like Pete Doherty, Amy Winehouse and her husband. All had decent upbringings, all turned to drugs. It's very sad but not all of them are doing it to "escape" life.

cupcakes I had a similar childhood (at a rough guess) to your Mum and a lot of the people I went to school ended up either pregnant before 16 (this was in 1989 so still aspect, at least in the shires) or on drugs. I didn't. I've actively been praised for that before but it has nothing to do with me- it is just who I am, very black and whit and definite about right and wrong. I don't deserve praise butb would love to know what the tyhing in me that stopped me heading down that route is.

My mum has always had a very good sense of right/wrong, like you very black and white about it. You don't have affairs whilst you're married, you don't take drugs and you don't steal etc etc. She did have a very loving grandma who effectovely raised her so I wonder if having that positive influence in her life made her into the person she is? Or whether it was looking at what was around her and deciding that she wanted better?

I'm sure there are no definite answers to this, it's more than likely a culmination of various factors. I just get a bit miffed when some people do the "awww shucks, bad childhood isn't it?" as though that's a free pass to become a drug addict when not everyone that's had a shit childhood turns to drugs and not everyone that had a brilliant childhood never touches drugs.

this thread makes me sad.arguing over who has sufferd the most.who is most deserving/undeserving.illness impacts upon people in many ways and it isnt measurable by a diagnostic label

fallon i am sorry about your breast CA and the heartache thats caused.but you know what other mums,dads families suffer too with addictions,mental illness and the additional stigmatisation of those illnesses as self inflicted

She does sound a bit like me- it's only fairly recently i've realised how silly it is to drive three miles to tesco if they undercharge me by 50p

Maybe if you ahve that moral compass given to you then you can weather so much? My parents are both lovely now and good with my boys, but as child Dad was an alcoholic and Mum depressed. They were always very strong with their moral (not in a religious or conventional way- marriage not an issue for them, faithfulness to your partner one though) and I think theya re the ones who deserve priase as they gave me that gift themselves.