Imagine my surprise, on reading the news last spring, to find that I’d contributed to the spike in fentanyl street deaths in Vancouver.
Me? A writer leading a quiet life far across the country, in Halifax? My only connection to the “opioid epidemic” – a story that still dominates the news a whole year later – is fentanyl. I’ve used it for the past 12 years under the care of a pain specialist with 35 years of expertise treating serious, intractable pain, because, at 39, I suffered a rare-ish form of inflammatory arthritis so painful it eventually kept me from walking, standing, sitting and sleeping.