Aeris's Story
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Season 3, Episode 7
"Aeris’s Story - Part 2" picks up where Aeris is just coming back to reality after being in a coma for approximately one month. His steadfast family helps him slowly recover from kidney, liver and brain damage. Advocating on his behalf, his family asks the doctors for a pain specialist as they believe Aeris consumed poisoned drug supply because he was attempting to self-medicate his pain from multiple surgeries and ongoing complex medical diagnoses.
With the prevailing assumptions about people who access unregulated drug supply, instead of a pain specialist, Aeris is given an addictions doctor. While he has minimal intellectual functioning as his brain is still swollen and recovering, instead of supporting him with pain management, the healthcare system coerces him into going on OAT (Opioid Agonist Treatment) that effectively causes him to become dependent on opioids that don’t actually address his pain. So as Aeris fights to regain his intellectual capacity and day-to-day functioning in his life - by virtue of what OAT is - he is now also dependent on opioids again and he is humiliated daily by a doctor who refuses to take him or his family at their word.
Because Aeris is willing to do anything and everything he can to recover, to be there for his kids and family, he tolerates this inhumane treatment from the medical system for over a year. Eventually, Aeris becomes well enough that he’s able to self-advocate to find another more trauma-informed doctor who supports Aeris to manage his own Suboxone tapering. Aeris is eventually able to fully recover, including recovery of dignity.
Between ongoing Crohn’s Disease and other Crohn's-related health issues that have emerged, Aeris’s rebar days come to a mutually-agreeable end. While Aeris is feeling lost without his rod busting crew, an opportunity to become a drug testing specialist with Mountainside Harm Reduction Society emerges where Aeris is able to utilize all his personal and family experiences with substances, and give other folks the supports that he rarely found.
“Be kind to that person on the street. You don’t know what they're dealing with and sometimes one moment of kindness could honestly save a life. Do the best to advocate yourself, or do your best
because I know it can be really hard. And get your drugs checked!” – Aeris Finch
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