Author: tearj3rker
Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 1:45 am
| laddertipper wrote: |
| Hi guys, I wanted to update about having my surgery. So, I had it on Tues. and the plan was for me to go home that evening. It did not exactly go that way. I ended up staying over and was in the worst pain in my right side up in my ribs and in my shoulder/neck. They sent me home anyway after many shots of Demerol. I ended up back in the ER about an hour or two later. This was unbelievable pain. Like, 10+. I was totally hysterical and crying/screaming at the poor nurses because it was absolutely unbearable and the fact that shots of Diluadid could not even control it make me feel panic.
laddertipper |
It sucks you had to experience that pain. It sounds really rough! It’s great you got through it though.
So many doctors just don’t fully understand that people who have recently come off opiates, including Suboxone, have a much higher tolerance to opiates than the opiate-naive patients they usually deal with. We are in such a minority, us opiate dependent, that most doctors simply don’t have the experience in dealing with us.
I remember in the months after I would detox off any opiates – heroin, Suboxone, methadone – my pain threshold was much lower. I was overall just more sensitive to physical pain. IMO this could even be considered a symptom of PAWS, it takes a while for our ‘natural painkillers’ to come out of hiding after all.
My brother in law is an anaesthetist, and we talk sometimes about how my addiction has affected me, and my treatment. He said the fact he’s familiar with my story has made him more aware with how to deal with us ‘complex cases’. He said that people who are dependent on opiates often need massive doses of painkillers to relieve their pain, enough to potentially be fatal the opiate naive. So when a doc isn’t familiar with treating us types, they are often really cautious about giving us the dose we need.
Don’t do your head in about PAWS. In support groups and counselling, their name for PAWS is ‘early recovery’. I think it’s a much more life affirming way of viewing it personally. Viewing early recovery as a medical problem can too easily result in looking to medicine for a solution. And wasn’t that our problem in the first place?
I think you’re doing awesome laddertipper. Wow who woulda thought.