We’ve been a patients and friends to Doctor Agustin Vitualla for a several years. What he is experiencing is the result of a combination of nature and the politicized acts of government ove-site. As patients and citizens of our community, we must come to the aid of individuals who find circumstances beyond their ability to manage, not only for their relief and justice, but because such results of a ‘steamroller’ approach to any policy impacting our private lives, should not remain unchallenged.
Dr. Vitualla has been practicing medicine for nearly 40 years and married to Nilda Cabatingan Vitualla, nearly 50 years. At 72 and 71 respectively, they were looking towards retirement and some joyful years, soon to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Unfortunately, Nilda has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, bringing on catastrophic personal and professional challenges.
While managing the negative impact on the quality of both their lives caused by dementia, Doctor Vitualla and Nilda must now also cope with a State ordered investigation into his practice and patients. Caught up in media driven fever, there’s a push to reduce opiate-based pain medications from most doctor’s medical regimens. Long held effective by medical doctors for treating chronic pain, opioids have become an overwhelming source of stress for doctors. Dr. Vitualla’s years as a physician, believes caring for them with healing and pain relief, should not be subject to the whims of politically driven regulation and agendas. He’s chosen to resist overzealous oversight by officials that threaten the time-honored relationship between an individual and their doctor. For standing his ground, he faces civil and criminal threats that could end his practice, stranding many of his patients and destroying his means to care for his wife and his needs during their final years. He plans to practice for three more years, retiring to take-on Nilda’s care full time. While he is working, she requires qualified, albeit expensive care. The ongoing legal battle with the State has caused him to shrink his practice, reducing his revenue and ability to function professionally and provide for Nilda.
As current and past patients, we support him as we observe his practice declining, causing his often-happy disposition to evaporate. We’ve witnessed the negative impact on his life and practice caused by Nilda’s slow, but inexorable deterioration. We believe providing funding to help him defend his means of practice, as well as provide assistance towards the cost of care for Nilda by professional means on days he is practicing, would offer some relief and justice to both their lives. We want to help him smile from day to day as he works his last three years doing what he has spent a life time doing - providing medical care for his patients and members of the greater community. These days he goes to work in fear, awaiting further action from the State.
This ‘opiate crisis’ is causing exponential prosecutions from a perspective that is over reported and under supported factually. In fact, if the danger posed by ‘prescription opiates’ is truly the underlying motivation for the ‘crisis’ and resulting over-reach, then all things alcohol should also be under the gun to reduce consumption and severely restrict access.
After all, alcohol kills two and a half times as many people every year as all opioids combined, including heroin and other illegal opiate based substances.
Dr. Vitualla needs our help because he has been targeted for investigation. To move through this challenge requires competent legal assistance. As of this writing, Dr. Vitualla has to discourage long-term patients with long-term, legitimate chronic and acute pain, from taking their previous levels of pain medication. This has caused many patients to try to find alternative relief or simply stay home and suffer. The reduction in patients cripples his medical practice from a practical point of view – fewer patients, less income.
There were and are doctors and clinics, often called ‘pill mills’ who used pain medication and the potential for addiction to drive their business models, making their practices all about money. Many of their patients had no legitimate use for opiate medications, using them instead for recreational purposes, to sell for profit on the streets or use due to opiate addiction, often the result of exposure to and use of heroin and other illegally obtained opiates. The vast majority of opiate deaths are not due to prescription drugs taken by patients under a doctor’s care due to injury and chronic pain. The use of heroin, Fentanyl and other illegally acquired opiates represent the cause for the ‘opiate crisis’, as well as prescription drugs acquired illegally and treated with powerful substances like Fentanyl. Anti-opiate supporters claim that the loss of life and quality of life resulting from the use of opiates is the driving factor behind the ‘opiate crisis’. Yet, if the same attention and judgments of addiction and deaths due to abuse of a substance were applied to alcohol, there would be no justification for the wide-scale availability and use in our society today for wine, liquor or beer.
Dr. Vitualla is not and has never been a ‘pill mill’ and advises many of his patients with temporary injury to move on beyond the use of Opiates. On the other hand, there are many individuals who as patients require regular pain medication, responsibly scheduled, to function as co-workers and family members. It is a ‘quality of life’ issue. We do support pain prescriptions made available to patients with verified needs and by physicians who can better decide what actions should be taken, rather than give up our rights to a bureaucratic and political mandate.
We wish to provide the financial means to protect Dr. Vitualla’s practice and assist caring for his wife, rather than allow him to become another victim of bureaucratic guidelines and a political agenda, that has led to this war on doctors. These funds are not for retirement, but to facilitate his ability to get there!
Due to his age and the continuing threats from State authorities, he will practice only 3-4 days between two locations. Our financial assistance will allow him to develop a plan to retire with some dignity and the ability to care for himself and Nilda’s declining state of being.
• For his legal defense, funds will be placed in escrow by Attorney F. Michie Gibson Jr., who will defend Dr. Vitualla at a lower than average rate per hour. We want to secure an amount that will provide legal defensive activities, allowing Dr. Vitualla to stand on his commitment to the doctor/patient relationship.
• Legal Defense Funding: $16,000.00
• Elderly Day Care averages $1.600.00/month. Funding for the next year and a half allows the doctor to rejuvenate his practice by focusing his time at work medical care and growing demand by the State for documentation. In his small practice, additional documentation becomes an increasing financial and time burden. With Nilda under good care, he will function better at providing care and service to his patients.
• Nilda’s Care Funding $28,000.00
• Funding Goal: $44, 800.00.
You can read more about the Opiate Crisis and its impact on the medical community and Alzheimer’s and its impact on individuals at the links below.
'Real Perspective - Government Attacks on Doctors Prescribing Pain Medication'
'A Husband’s Role Reverses While Caring for a Wife with Alzheimer’s'
https://www.alzheimers.net/husbands-role-reverses-while-caring-for-wife-with-alzheimers/