Dear Emily -

I am so sorry to hear this is happened to you. Your pain right now is off the charts - we know that because CRPS pain is almost always the worst at the onset of the disease. Or at least that appears to be the consensus among those who suffer from it.

And you are absolutely correct that (1) you are being stroked by the hospital and (2) time is of the essence in getting treatment. But there is some good news in all of this: a third-party is responsible for your injury, treatment and subsequent compensation. All of which translates to the following: GET AN AGGRESSIVE ATTORNEY NOW!!!

A good plaintiff personal injury firm should be able to help you get immediate medical attention in one of two ways: either getting the hospital to pick it up ASAP without it having to immediately concede legal liability to you, or (2) though the use of a physician who is willing to take a lien on your subsequent recovery in a lawsuit or settlement. And two things are important: (A) the law firm is sufficiently convinced of both the magnitude of your injuries and the liability of a solvent and/or insured potential defendant to precede on a contingent fee arrangement, and (B) the doctor you see must be competent to do the job in a professional and disinterested fashion. And the last point is of particular importance in a medical malpractice situation, where it's in the defendant's interest to steer you to a treating physician who, while treating you, will be careful to spin her/his evaluations in a way that might not always be best for you. (Trust me, that's happened to people on this forum. Hopefully you are finding your physicians independently of the hospital.)

Generally speaking, there is one reliable data base for trained management specialists, and another for "peer reviewed" attorneys, that is lawyers who are rated anonymously in terms of their competence and ethical practice by other lawyers in their community, and if it's a large enough community, their area of specialization as well.*

The directory for pain management physicians of that of the American Board of Pain Medicine, the most selective of such groups in the country, which requires that every physician seeking its certification both complete a one-year clinical fellowship, over and above a basic residency, and thereafter pass an 8-hour written exam. And checking under Spokane, we have three doctors, all of whom completed their underlying residencies in anesthesia:

T Daniel Dibble, MD
1117 N Evergreen Rd Ste 2
Spokane, WA 99216
OFFICE Phone: 509.363.3100
OFFICE Fax: 509.363.0300
Email: dibble@spineteamspokane.com

Robin J Gavelin, MD
OFFICE Phone: 509.838.8561 [no other information on ABPM site]

AND

William L Weigel, MD
105 W 8th Ave Ste 200
Spokane, WA 99204
OFFICE Phone: 360.373.9026
OFFICE Fax: 360.479.8609

The search for apparently competent and peer-reviewed plaintiffs' attorneys in Spokane proved to be more challenging. The place to go is martindale.com fka Martindale-Hubbell, an information services company primarily for the benefit of out-of-town attorneys looking to find to local counsel in a distant area, founded in 1868, now owned by LexisNexis, a division of the mufti-billion dollar Dutch publisher, Reed Elsevier. Long and the short of it, checking for "rated" personal injury attorneys Spokane WA comes up with three firms, two of which are oriented to representing defendants. Which leaves by default one firm, but it looks like a pretty good one, Messina Bulzomi Christensen, P.S. And although based in Tacoma, they have apparently have Spokane office, or as is not uncommon, may sublet space from another firm while seeing clients in Spokane. Without offering an endorsement of any kind, except to say that if it was for me or one of my relatives, I would give them a call first: 253-617-0044.

Finally, as to the matter of "I ended up going to the ER as the urgent care my DOCTOR told me to go to refused to help me!" I have some not so good news. The treatment of chronic pain patients in the State of Washington has been captured for all intents and purposes, AS WELL AS BY STATUTE, by the academic school of thought known as cognitive-behavioral pain management, aka exposure therapy, aka stress inoculation training, aka cognitive processing therapy, aka dialectical behavior therapy, aka acceptance and commitment therapy ("there is no cure so just learn how to function without the assistance of opioids of any kind") which is coordinated out of the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Washington's School of Medicine. As a result, Washington now has, by far and away, the most restrictive laws for the prescription of opioids of any state in the country, and particularly with respect to prescribing for chronic pain patients. See, e.g, Rules Hurt Patients with Pain in Washington State. accordingly, and sad to say, any physician other than a pain management specialist has to be extremely careful in prescribing opioids. (And they don't make it all that easy for certified pain specialists either. Doable, yes, but easy, no.)

Which is to say, I'm sorry, but the State of Washington probably represents the nadir of intelligent thought when it comes to the treatment of chronic pain conditions. And in that regard, you may have pulled the short-straw. Not sure what to say, other than I'm sorry you're in the middle of it. But be glad you're in a relative large community with three board certified pain specialists: pity the folks in rural areas!

But time for that later. I've probably given you TMI already. Right now, it's time to line up a good lawyer.

Mike


* For the record, I know of the former through my experience of 11+ years as a pain patient, having seen pain management doctors from USC, UCLA and Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, to the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins and Robert J. Schwartzman, MD of the Drexel University's Department of Neurology in Philadelphia, etc. And I know from attorney rankings based on over 20 year of work as a business bankruptcy litigator.