Word: rickhoff
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Dates: during 2005-2005
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...Penny Rickhoff's world began to shrink suddenly in 1990, after a very tall and very heavy file cabinet toppled over onto her back. The freak accident damaged her spinal cord, leaving her with a constant, gnawing pressure in her lower back. "If I sit for very long, I'm in excruciating pain," she says. Once an avid tennis player, world traveler and amateur pilot, Rickhoff, who is in her 50s, was not only grounded, but she also became almost a prisoner in her home, unable to drive more than a short distance, unable to go anywhere without toting special...
After seeing a dozen doctors, Rickhoff finally realized she wasn't going to be cured and started looking for ways to live with the pain. She took up Tai Chi and learned how to breathe deeply using her abdominal muscles. These pain- management skills enabled her to lower her dosage of morphine. But Rickhoff is the first to admit she can't make it through the day without her meds, and her powerhouse weapon was Vioxx. It helped destroy any pain, any time. Last September, when she learned that Vioxx was being pulled from the market by its manufacturer because...
...heart attack and stroke and are therefore inappropriate for many patients. If the FDA adopts this strategy, it would mean the end of ads like the once ubiquitous "Celebrate!" spots for Celebrex, as black-box drugs may not be advertised directly to consumers. But there was tantalizing news for Rickhoff, Dobbs and other Vioxx devotees. By a narrow vote, the panel okayed the idea of bringing the discontinued drug back to market, and Merck, its manufacturer, said this was under consideration...
...that good news? Rickhoff isn't so sure. "I definitely feel at the mercy of the pharmaceutical companies and the FDA," she says. "It's terrible that they've scared people so much. All drugs have side effects, and some probably have much worse risks than Vioxx." Studies suggest that roughly half of Americans with chronic or recurrent pain simply do not find a good solution, and the news out of the hearings is not going to make their choices any easier. In fact, chronic pain is a leading cause of lost workdays. It costs the nation an estimated...
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