PHARMACIST STEVE

Pain has many sources

5 Responses

1. 

   Amber Bergstein, on November 12, 2014 at 1:35 am said:

   Im an IC patient as well. Its a monster of a disease. Luckily alternative medicine has been great in helping with my disease. I have most of it under control, but as with most IC patients we always have a combination of health problems. I still require pain meds, but finding a prescriber is harder and harder. I prefer natural healing methods, but sometimes you have to combine both healing modalities to create some balance. Its been 18 years of hell for me, thats for sure.

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   starwood500, on November 11, 2014 at 7:41 pm said:

   My daughter and I both have interstitial cystitis , going on 10 years now. Unfortunately most people don’t realize that the pain can affect the abdomen, back, and urinary tract. Treatment results is varied and often this life long chronic painful disease flares without warning. Still getting adequate pain medication is almost impossible. More women have this than men. Still another painful condition under treated and to be discriminated against.

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3. 

   Paincare2014, on November 10, 2014 at 10:03 am said:

   I think I will keep my degenerative disc disease over Interstitial Cystitis, a lot of people don’t even know what its like living with ongoing chronic pain much less Interstitial Cystitis ,having the feeling to urinate all the time with chronic pain ,that would totally suck and I feel for those that have this awful painful disease. Some people don’t think chronic pain is a disease, but to have chronic pain it comes from some type of medical problem with your body. I’ve been lucky to have had good pain relief over the 18 years I’ve dealt with chronic pain. It wasn’t till this past year that things fell apart , I couldn’t get my in hand legit ,on time ,medically necessary script filled. I was enraged after going to 10 pharmacies and being turned away and decided to take myself off this one pain medication. That went okay this past summer till I got to a certain milligram and had to turn back to the lowest dose possible because I had forgotten what the severe chronic pain felt like after all this time, 18 years of good pain relief. I started to drop off 5 mgs every 7 days over a 3 month period this summer when I got down to a low dose the pain hit me all of a sudden. The best way I can describe it is I felt paralyzed by pain and could not get up out of my recliner. Then it hit me, that feeling I had 18 years ago when no doctor would believe me or help me with my ongoing pain. So I simply turned back and added 5 mgs and that’s where I stopped. I was able to drop off 90 mgs a day of methadone. I went from 150 mgs a day to 60 mgs a day and my chronic pain is still under control.
   This tells me methadone is a super strong pain medication and cheap in price but not for people new to chronic pain, you must be opioid tolerant to take methadone.
   To me its the strongest pain medication is pill form because I tried them all, OxyContin ,Opana ER, Kadian etc. and my body would get tolerant requiring a increase in dose to achieve the same pain relief, with methadone this never happened once I found what milligram best helped my chronic pain.
   I think I had Opioid-induced hyperalgesia or opioid-induced abnormal pain sensitivity, which is a phenomenon associated with the long term use of pain medication.
   Whatever the case I’m in a good place now and doing well, I pray all chronic pain sufferers get what they need if its getting their medications filled without all these anti – opioid zealots getting in our way thinking no one needs opioids, their wrong.
   To a suffering person any relief is good thing, pill form or prayer form. I don’t wish pain upon anyone, not even anti – opioid zealots because their too ignorant to understand.

   Ken thanks for all your time and compassion educating people who have no clue what different chronic pain syndromes are like.
   Your like a Angel of Mercy, as is Steve giving his tireless time and compassion to suffering humans.
   People forget what you say and what you do but people never forget how you made them feel.

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     NikeMJ, on November 10, 2014 at 4:45 pm said:

     I was on the methadone 40mgs daily, with Roxicodone 30mg tabs pen breakthru pain.I do agree that methadone is very potent, however I was gaining too much weight on methadone, so I asked my doctor about the Duragesic fentanyl transdermal system in replace of the methadone discontinuing the methadone and still taking the oxycodone for PRN severe breakthrough pain only. He completely agreed he weaned me off of the methadone within 30 days, I have been given a prescription for Duragesic 75 mcg number 10 apply one patch Q 72 hours, and he did cut my oxycodone dosage in half he gave me 15 milligram tablets number 121 tablet qid PR ends of your breakthrough pain only. And made the comment only take me oxycodone if you really need it because I feel the fentanyl will control your pain, I am still waiting to get the Duragesic filled because I qualify for the patient assistance program to Johnson & Johnson / Janssen pharmaceuticals. Hope you feel better…good luck…take care.

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       Paincare2014, on November 11, 2014 at 10:16 am said:

       NikeMJ,
       I cant use the Duragesic patch, it keeps me up at night, all pain medications do this and I don’t know why, I cant take the one pain medication that helps me past 4 pm in the afternoon or it will keep me from sleeping. I have to get at least 4 hours of sleep or I’m drained of energy the next day. Another thing that happens to people that suffer from chronic pain, it drains you of every ounce of your energy each and every day .
       I have to drain myself of all my energy each day to get a good night sleep ,insomnia itself is a terrible thing to have.

       That’s strange methadone made you gain weight ,maybe it retained fluids in your body I don’t know. But it best not to let one thing lead to another so the patch is best for you if it takes care of the pain.

       With methadone no break through medication works for me, I’m thinking that methadone is filling up the brains pain receptors making any other opioid pass over. So its useless for me to take any fast acting flare up medication. After all this is why methadone is used to help heroin addicts , filling in the brains pain receptors making the heroin null. I’ve never touched heroin after I saw what it did to a friend of mine. No matter how much I tried to help him it did no good.

       I advocated for those in chronic pain for 8 years doing volunteer work for my Pain Specialist, Dr. Joel Hochman , he was the first doctor to help me when no other doctor would. Doctors made me suffer for 10 years after receiving disability in 1999. Dr. Hochman showed me compassion when I met him in 2002 and in 6 months time he had my chronic pain under control. I was so happy and angry at the same time other doctors let me suffer for no good reason.

       Time passes things change, we lost Dr. Hochman to kidney cancer in 2010 , he was the most caring doctor I ever met, never raising his voice at me or getting angry for any reason.

       This is Dr. Hocs. understanding on chronic pain, I hope this link below works .

       http://youtu.be/Fdxsix0DlOM

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