Courtesy of Kitsap News Group – When Marty Mioni’s horrific back pain from a litany of ruptured discs and surgeries has subsided enough, the 63-year-old woman is able to care for her husband — nearly bedridden with Stage 5 renal disease — in their Port Orchard home.
But Mioni herself is nearly confined to a bed with wracking, chronic pain tempered over the years by a regulated dose of prescribed opiates. Now, though, an opioid epidemic across the nation has prompted the federal government, as well as state governments, to issue new restrictions to physicians who prescribe these powerful, addictive medications.