this should be interesting..

Nurses Recovery

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Second random testing selection in my contract thus far.. on a saturday. Option seven.

I finally found a place to go. Googled the test number while I was waiting and it appears to be for alcohol. I don't know if that one includes other substances in that test or if i am even right.

So for 61$ I will test positive because I drank at my husbands holiday party last night.

Heres the thing. Per my contract I am allowed alcohol or am not required to abstain in other words. This surprises everyone, even my lawyer was shocked to see this.

I wonder if this is a random holiday time-day-after run of the mill test they are probably giving a lot of folks who may make a poor decision in the spur of the moment. If so.. theres 61$ flushed for no reason at all.

I worried about this happening when i saw my luck at not having to avoid alcohol. Maybe I'm blowing it all out of proportion. Maybe they will acknowledge my contract without this turning into a thing. Maybe ill test positive for meth because I took my prescription decongestant a week ago after getting pneumonia. Maybe thc because i took ibuprofen.

This monitoring has me anxious as @#$%, looking over my shoulder constantly, and completely miserable.

Explaining yourself??? WTH??? You don't even know what you're supposed to be explaining! They haven't told you what you tested positive for. Ridiculous!! If you don't hear from the doctor at the lab tomorrow by 11:00 am I would call them. Many people leave early on Fridays, esp the Friday before a holiday, he might even leave for lunch and not return, so call before lunch time.

Remember, they really don't care that someone may be home agonizing over the lab results. To them it's just a callback that needs to be done. We do callbacks at my job all the time for lab results, and it just now occurred to me that there are probably people waiting by the phone waiting for those results (gonorrhea and chlamydia results come to mind!) but I honestly never thought about the person behind those results! That probably makes me a bad person! It just occurred to me as I was writing this that I've probably done the same thing, as far as lack of urgency in calling patients with their results. I would bet that to the people at the lab, you're just another phone call on a list of calls that need to be made.

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Yeah. Without knowing what you tested positive for I don't see how you can explain anything. They do the same thing here in Pennsylvania. I "failed" my first Pee Test coming out of rehab. My PNAP counselor called and told me I failed and told me I would have to explain without knowing what I failed for. I told her it was ridiculous and I just got out of rehab and took nothing so I had nothing to explain. It turns out that I failed because I agreed to take a free vivitrol shot while in rehab at their bequest. I never would have guessed I failed for narcan. Anyway the same thing happened years ago to a member of my support group. She had relapsed on heroin and failed a drug test and they wouldn't tell her what substance she failed for. It turns out the heroin cut was cut with cocaine & she didn't know she took heroin. The point of keeping you in the dark is to get you to admit to something they don't already know. For example, I tested positive for narcan and they didn't tell me what I relapsed on. What if I would have drank outside the testable window & admitted to ETOH use? Then they would have had me on both counts. They immediately dropped the thing from the vivitrol shot after I reminded them that I only took the shot at their bequest and it was provided by the provider of their choosing who I already signed a release of records for. They were on a fishing expedition.

In your case my reply would be simple. I drank but I'm allowed to drink according to my contract (attach highlighted pertinent part of contract here) and I took a prescribed cold medicine (attach prescription here) which may have caused false positives for whatever substance(s) you think I took to get high. At no point did I willingly violate my contract by ingesting any substances I wasn't allowed to lawfully use or were outside the bounds of my written agreement with you.

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Sooo... they can't get to me till Tuesday now.. My 'statement' is supposed to be given on wednesday. So I will sit here anxious, crying, sick to my stomach, snapping at the kids and husband MISERABLE for an additional four days.

I faxed my case manager the appt visit again and reminded her that I am not restricted from alcohol. I asked her to acknowledge that she had that appt information with the scripts I was given.

Her response was 'we have the information don't send anything else essentially

No answer if she has the information, no acknowledgement that if its alcohol it will be ok, nothing.

So its either

1- Alcohol and no one bothers to read anything

2- The antibiotics, steroid, clariton D, tessalon pearls, and ibuprofen I ate for two solid weeks and I was allowed to take these OR

3- Some surprise mystery drug I did NOT take.

I am not myself now. This makes me miserable, anxious, hateful, and just an awful person to be around. No one really gets it because they believe this is supposed to be for me. This program is there to help the impaired nurse. I believe it is a money grabbing, dehumanizing, soul sucking, family destroying, nightmare.

I was not required to do a chemical dependency evaluation. I can see that being triggered for thousands of dollars, increased drug testing, meetings, and requirements when I did NOTHING wrong.

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YEP!!!! I couldn't agree more. This program is an out of control dumpster fire causing much, much more damage than it does to help people. In your case the pathetic half-wits maybe didn't even read their own contract. AMAZING

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Women's Health, LTC.

I am not myself now. This makes me miserable, anxious, hateful, and just an awful person to be around. No one really gets it because they believe this is supposed to be for me. This program is there to help the impaired nurse. I believe it is a money grabbing, dehumanizing, soul sucking, family destroying, nightmare.

I was not required to do a chemical dependency evaluation. I can see that being triggered for thousands of dollars, increased drug testing, meetings, and requirements when I did NOTHING wrong.

I am so sorry this is happening to you. The waiting and anxiety is the worst part. Please hang in there and keep positive thoughts flowing. I know, easy for me to say, I am not in your shoes. But, my heart aches for you and what you are going through. It is not fair to have to wait and wait and worry and worry.

Please keep us posted and I am sending good thought your way!

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False positives are a real thing. Here's some examples I found online. Although I am not an expert, I believe these to be true. I remember years ago at my old job a pediatric PT was in the ER and tested positive for PCP but she was like a toddler. The ER doctor concluded it had to be a false positive from cough medicine the parents gave her. Anyway, here are some examples:

Dextromethorphan. Found in Robitussin, Delsym and other over-the-counter cough suppressants.

If you've taken a medication with dextromethorphan in it, your drug screen may be positive for opiates and PCP (phencyclidine).

Ibuprofen and naproxen (Advil/Motrin and Aleve).

Two very common over the counter anti-inflammatory pain medications. If you've taken either of these, your urine screen may test positive for barbiturates, THC (cannabinoid), and PCP.

Just don't admit to anything you didn't do, they are just following their protocols. I don't know what Ohio does but perhaps they would do a hair test or some other testing. I had a false positive for alcohol once and was freaking out but they then did another test (a blood test called a PETH test) and it was negative so everything was OK. Offer to do any additional testing they might need to do. Good luck!

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I agree. False Positives are real & thankfully there are backup tests to refute some of this bad information. Unfortunately we are stuck in this hell and all we can do is react to such realities. Keeping calm and gathering information is key. Lisa that was some very good information on this topic. Thank You!!!

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Final update. After four days of hellish waiting. I got an email.

"No further review is needed. The MRO has been cancelled"

I am very grateful this got sorted out but the suffering and insane amount of stress I just lived through was awful. Someone finally looked at my contract or my paperwork and realized they were wrong. No explanation, no apology, nothing..

What a joke

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Women's Health, LTC.
Final update. After four days of hellish waiting. I got an email.

"No further review is needed. The MRO has been cancelled"

I am very grateful this got sorted out but the suffering and insane amount of stress I just lived through was awful. Someone finally looked at my contract or my paperwork and realized they were wrong. No explanation, no apology, nothing..

What a joke

So happy for you! I am glad it worked out. So sorry that you had to go through all the stress.

Wishing you peace in the new year!

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Well I'm glad it worked out. Honestly I don't see how it couldn't as you did nothing wrong and fully complied with the terms and conditions of your contract!!! Happy New Years to you and yours & put this experience behind you. Like most experiences with the monitoring Nazi's it was miserable but my advice is to flush it down the toilet with yesterday's dinner. All things from monitoring land should be placed with similarly situated matter and sent to some sewage plant for processing

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Specializes in ER, ICU/CCU, Open Heart OR Recovery, Etc.

Thank the gods, this is good news! I know the feeling, though...and when the vindication comes, you feel like WTF was this all about?

So unnecessary. I'm glad you got the notification, and support you. I went through several weeks of this so I totally get where you're at.

Final update. After four days of hellish waiting. I got an email.

"No further review is needed. The MRO has been cancelled"

I am very grateful this got sorted out but the suffering and insane amount of stress I just lived through was awful. Someone finally looked at my contract or my paperwork and realized they were wrong. No explanation, no apology, nothing..

What a joke

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I have a Friend who popped positive for cocaine recently. The lab never called her. In fact, she didn't find out it was positive and she was suspended until a month later through email that she didn't check until 5 days after it was sent. No questions, no extra tests, no call... an email a MONTH later!!!

I test positive quite often. I was on narcs for a while for my shoulder surgery and I take clonazepam. Oddly, the clonazepam only comes up positive very sporadically. Still, I freak out every time... did I take or eat something? Was there a mystery pill mixed in my meds? Last month I called my monitor about a Work issue and he says.. btw.. please send in your scripts for the past 3 months, I see some positive results here. I told him I sent those in 2 weeks prior.. he said he didn't have them, but I had til the end of the week to send them in and he would get back to me a week after that cuz he has a huge case load. I was like aww h@lll no... I went to the pharmacy and had them faxed within an hour and then called every 10 minutes til I got ahold of him the next day and made him look it up. I told him I couldn't take the anxiety. It turned out ok. But every positive freaks me out.

He also told me other people download the scripts and they get very far behind so it's not always up to date.

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