Anita Bertrand, CRNA, MS

Anita Bertrand, CRNA, MS, has been to hell and back and back again, twice getting hooked on powerful painkillers she'd steal in broad daylight from the Houston surgical facilities where she worked.

She was like a kid in a candy store. First a 9-month fentanyl binge, then 81???2 years clean, then a 2-week relapse with propofol about 2 years ago, and now clean and sober again and back working at a pain management center. And she wants to tell you all about it. Because addiction could happen to you as easily and as unexpectedly as it happened to her. Or to someone on your staff.

She'll bravely step to the podium at OR Excellence in Las Vegas on Oct. 12 to share her story of recovery, remission, relapse and redemption.

"I'm doing this to let nurses know that they're not immune to this disease and that we have to help each other," says Ms. Bertrand, 52.

Ms. Bertrand says she had no history of drug use before she got hooked on pain medication following her 2005 hysterectomy. "I believe that having the epidural of opioids was the trigger for me," she says. She only remembers being on prescription pain meds for a few days, yet by the time she returned to work 2 weeks later, she claims she was already hooked.

She soon began diverting syringes of fentanyl and self-injecting. Even as addiction consumed her, she evaded detection. Nobody seemed to notice that she was regularly working impaired. And she had access to a bottomless well of drugs. In 2006, when she was doing contract work in 5 different surgical locations in the Houston area, she says she had access to opioids in all 5 places.

"My thought processes were hijacked to this disease," says Ms. Bertrand. "People's lives were in my hands and I'm thinking about when I can get more narcotics. Looking back, there was nothing about my day that was safe. When nurses, physicians and other healthcare providers fall victim to this disease, they pose a danger to those they care for as well as to themselves."

She had 2 car accidents after leaving work and shooting up. She was found passed out in a hospital break room. But she kept working. Her fentanyl usage ended only when a doctor spotted her passed out in her car in a hospital lot, an empty syringe on the seat, the intravenous port she installed in her ankle so she could inject herself more efficiently in plain sight. She spent 18 weeks in an inpatient rehabilitation program for healthcare practitioners.

Her relapse with propofol was short-lived, in large part because you can't work in the OR when you're unconscious.

Ms. Bertrand's hope for sharing her very personal and painful story at OR Excellence is to shine a light on drug abuse and addiction among healthcare workers so it's no longer a dirty little secret nobody's willing to talk about openly.

"There are so many practitioners working impaired and we have no idea. ... We're doing a terrible job addressing this problem," she says.

The OR team has a critical responsibility to each other to detect when one of its own is active in the disease of drug addiction.

"We must grant each other permission to save each other," says Ms. Bertrand. "This disease will kill you. It will kill you and it will take everything away from you." OSM