RELIEF ELUDES DOCTOR'S FORMER PATIENTS

Just as Frank Fisher's story isn't over, the nightmare that began with the
doctor's arrest hasn't ended for his former pain patients.

Toni Briano, 40, of Red Bluff still hasn't found a permanent doctor and
she's still in pain. Darlene Oakes, who now lives in Sonora, considered
suicide at one point. Debbie and Larry Van Meter of Redding spent money the
family said it couldn't spare on trips to Oregon, where he finally found
treatment.

All four are chronic pain patients. All four tell stories of skepticism,
humiliation and downright rejection when they sought medical help after
Fisher's 1999 arrest on several counts of murder, drug trafficking and
other charges.

Relief, then rejection

"Boy, oh boy, it was awful. It was the worst nightmare that ever happened,"
recalled Oakes, a 54-year-old "incomplete quadriplegic" who was partially
paralyzed 25 years ago when she dived into a swimming pool and broke her neck.

The series

Sunday and today, the Record Searchlight looks at how an Anderson doctor
and two Redding pharmacy owners have battled murder charges, dealt with
losing their livelihoods, how their patients have had to cope and the issue
of pain management.

Sunday's stories Frank Fisher and Stephen and Madeline Miller have beat
charges against them, but the battle has ruined their professional lives
and destroyed their personal lives, too.

Frank Fisher became a target of state and federal officials because of his
aggressive pain management prescriptions.

Read the complete series of articles online at redding.com.

Oakes can walk with the help of a walker and has only partial use of her
arms, which she can't lift at all. Fisher was her primary care physician
and the first to treat her pain aggressively, she said.

And it was that treatment that enabled her to get around, she said.

But Fisher's patients worried about him and what might happen to them if he
lost his practice.

"Most of his patients knew he was playing with fire," she said. "But nobody
could make him understand. ... He said I'm sure someone out there will take
care of you. He had a lot of confidence in his colleagues, but everybody
let him down."

Not all of Fisher's patients were directly rejected by other doctors, but
they were humiliated by the way they were treated, Oakes said.

Not all doctors accept Medi-Cal patients, who constituted a large
percentage of Fisher's practice.

Although Oakes has private insurance, it wasn't easy for her, either.

"The other doctors in town treated us like we were all marked people. . We
were told we needed to go through all these programs, be screened and
detoxed," she said. "I was appalled and insulted."

Rather than being treated like a pariah, Oakes said, she decided to muddle
through on her own.

"I was no way strung out on meds, but going day to day without anything at
all ... you start considering checking out, and coming back reincarnated in
a better life," she said.

But she decided she had too much to live for and through word of mouth
found another doctor who would treat ex-Fisher patients for pain.

"There was a bit of traveling involved, but this other doctor accepted us
and took care of us and saved our lives," Oakes said. "It took me about two
months."

A 'miserable existence'

Briano, 40, hasn't been as lucky.

She suffers from reflex sympathetic dystrophy in her right shoulder, a
chronic neurological syndrome accompanied by disabling pain. She has
undergone three back surgeries, which she says failed.

After Fisher's arrest, Briano and a girlfriend split the doctors listed in
the phone book and started looking for a new physician.

"When we explained who we were, we got called drug addicts. We were hung up
on. Nobody would see us," Briano said. "So we went without care for a long,
long time."

Finally, when she couldn't stand up long enough to heat soup in a
microwave, Briano found a doctor who arranged for her third back surgery.

"I wasn't getting better and they were talking about a fourth back surgery
that had a 20 percent chance of working," Briano said.

She asked for pain treatment, and received it for a while through the UC
Davis pain clinic, but her doctor's contract wasn't renewed. A new doctor
in Redding promised to continue her OxyContin and Dilaudid prescriptions,
but switched her to Vicodin and refused to refer her to a pain specialist,
Briano said.

One doctor tried patches, which blistered her skin. Another had her bring
her pills to each appointment so she could count them.

"I was in so much pain I wanted to die," Briano said. "I was bedbound. I
couldn't drive. I could hardly walk to the bathroom. It was absolutely a
horrible, miserable existence."

She found another doctor in Fresno, but he didn't take Medi-Cal. Between
paying for her office visit and renting a car to make the round trip,
Briano was spending $200 a month.

When Medi-Cal started questioning the prescriptions that doctor wrote, he
dropped her, Briano said.

Now she's relying on a doctor in Orland for primary care and doctors in
Chico are looking at her case. One doctor told her she needs a morphine
pain pump.

Briano said she just wants another doctor who will treat her pain and not
act as if she's trying to score drugs to get high.

Overcoming perceptions

Doctors thought Larry Van Meter, 53, was trying to get drugs, too, said his
wife Debbie, 48.

Larry Van Meter, who had polio as an infant, has lost nerves in his legs
and suffers extreme pain in his extremities. He also is diagnosed with
porphyria cutanea tarda, a disease that causes horrible blisters if he's
exposed to sunlight.

Larry Van Meter has a speech impediment and long hair.

"They think he's a doper," said Debbie Van Meter, who takes prescription
drugs for a bad back and depression.

The Van Meters went to Shasta Community Health Center, where they were
asked to go to drug counseling.

"They wanted us on a list (of former Fisher patients). We were
red-flagged," Debbie Van Meter said. "It was a mistake for us to be on that
list -- they deemed the amount we were taking was appropriate."

"So we went down to get the prescription filled and the pharmacist said,
'Whoa, your name's on the list.' They treated us like criminals."

Larry Van Meter eventually sought help from a pain specialist in Oregon,
his wife said.

Finally things began to change at Shasta Community Health and doctors there
began to realize "there's a problem with pain control doctors around here,"
Debbie Van Meter said. "Once you're on Medi-Cal, you might as well forget it."

Now, said Larry Van Meter, he's getting treatment at the clinic -- and the
doses of pain medication far exceeds anything Fisher prescribed.

On a mission

As for Oakes, she's found a new avocation as a pain treatment advocate.

"I'm going to need it for the rest of my life," she said. "I can't expect
someone else to do it for me."

She counsels other pain patients, helping them to realize "they're not the
only ones with problems" and she spends hours on the phone selling the cause.

"The minute the word 'drugs' is mentioned, the whole picture turns into a
nasty, horrible kind of a deal," Oakes said.

"I think constantly of when I was young, able to walk and run. I would do
anything to be able to do that, but that isn't what my life is about.

"I want to get out of bed every day, cook myself a meal. The only way I can
function in this world is to have pain control."

And the only way to achieve that control is with the help of doctors who
are "putting their careers, their whole life's dream on the line for us,"
Oakes said. "If we don't owe Frank Fisher something, then who do we owe?"