My mom is in chronic severe pain. Her pain management doctor is just an a**ho** as far as I am concerned. She has been seeing him for at least 9 months and he just throws his hands up in the air and says I just do not know what I can do to help her. He will NEVER return my calls re: her pain. Anyway I told my sis that she is going to have to handle this from now on, he just blows me off. So We had a conference call with another pain management doctor and he made a suggestion that her primary pain dr consented to. So we were all happy that this will make a big difference in moms life. So She was already on 60 mg of oxycodone and still in pain. He added oxycontin. His instructions were not clear and the pharmacist did not know what was going on and I called him yesterday and begged her to call me back and he did not. She is supposed to take a 20 mg oxycontin every twelve hours with a 10 mg of oxycodone for breakthrough pain. Well there is no breakthrough pain. The meds do not work. and the prescription says oxycontin every 8 hours. I finally called the medicare nurse hotline and she gave me new instructions that are very clear and hopefully will do the trick. My problem is that I don't know what I am doing with this kind of meds for an 85 year old woman who has been known to hallucinate on morphine which is why she cannot take it. I am afraid I am going to give her to much and something will happen. Well I just now an trying the new directions and will see if this works. The nurse was outstanding and so compassionate and nice. Do any of you have this type of problem with getting proper instructions from a specialist? I have been so upset about this and seeing mom in even more pain since it changed is killing me. I value any advice that I can get. Thanks
My primary doctor understands my concern so any new meds she gives me, it is ok for me to break the pill in half or in quarters to see if I can tolerate the pill. For some strange reason child dosages work better for me.
Prescription pain pills are tricky, I know my sig other has had issues using oxycontin for back pain.... the problem he has is that he will also use other over the counter pain pills while using oxycontin.... the last time he did that I had to call the Paramedics because he fell and was very disoriented.
Sometimes I think if we use too many over the counter pain pills for years on end that our body becomes so use to the pills that the pills don't have the same impact. I never was one to take any pain pills, not even aspirin, I just try to work through the pain, but I understand some pain can be unbearable... after surgeries I was ok with just using Aleve or something similar.
You could try suboxone. It works for pain as well as the awful withdrawals from opiates. You've got to be careful with it also. A little goes a long way...
Good grief, advice from the nearest heroin addict?
MILLIONS of people get hooked on prescription medication especially the opiate ones every single year. They are not heroin addicts.
Trying any other approach without slowly weaning her off and or going the suboxone route would be