Author: SnapShawt

Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2013 11:28 pm

Hey AmyWench, thanks so much.

It has definitely been rough. When my Dad passed in 1998, I gave his eulogy. I did the same for Mom last month. Mind you it was filled with choking and gagging tears and all that, but I made it through it. Of course I was also going through this crap with the doctor change and not doing so great either. Just a really tough time. She had come home on hospice a week before, and the night she passed was just the most stressful time I have EVER experienced in my life. Me and my older two sisters and brother (as well as nephews, nieces – her grandchildren) were with her. She had been gurgling and we called hospice, and they told us to elevate her and turn her on her side, which we did. I got into the bed and laid beside her and put my arms around her, exactly like she did to me when I was a kid. She got much more quiet and passed in my arms about a half an hour later.

As someone else said, stress can have a hard impact on pain, and it certainly did for me. Especially that. I didn’t take any more of the medicine (I had already worked hard to cut the dosage in half as it was), but I did need to add Excedrin for few days to help a bit.

I’ve heard of Nucynta before but had forgotten about it, but I’m hesitant to ask the doctor for a certain medication. You know the drill – asking for a specific medication is "drug seeking" after all. How ridiculous. It’s natural for patients with many conditions to request the medication they have been on for that condition, so I guess the world is full of "drug seekers."

I’m so tired of worrying about what I’m going to do if, such as just happened, I need to find a new doctor. It means a new bout of increased pain while the new one reviews the records and then tries his own thing, which of course you don’t argue with because you want to be cooperative. I’m tired of wondering if the pharmacy is going to have it in stock or if it will be another battle with another pharmacist who looks at you like a dopehead and talks to you like it. Oh, but being worried that your medication won’t be in stock is a sign of "drug seeking," I forgot. My Mom was diabetic, and if her insulin weren’t in stock she would have been in trouble. But I forget again, PAIN isn’t the same – just deal with it. So you can’t function and are a grown man on the verge of tears, man up dude. It’s only pain.

Cut your dose in HALF not once but TWICE, use one doctor, one pharmacy – everything you are supposed to do as a responsible patient – and you still just get crapped on.

I’m just at the end of my rope with the whole damn mess. And the past week with this Oxycodone to Suboxone and back to Hydrocodone bit has taken an extra toll on my body. I’m tired of playing a silly game, completely cooperating and bouncing around for the sake of perception and to ease any suspicions while the pain just continues incessantly, relenting only occasionally and even then briefly until the drumbeat, claw and lightning bolts start again. Two hours sleep here, an hour there …. that’s how it goes.

You know the point to which I’ve actually been driven? I’m not going to run out tomorrow and do this, but it’s on my mind more and more and I mention it to stress where I am. If this continues and it turns out that I’m just stuck with no relief for the foreseeable future, I’ve thought I’ll get a fancy hotel room and treat myself to room service. Do something I’ve NEVER done and overtake my medicine so that for just ONE night I’ll be completely pain-free. I don’t remember that feeling anymore. All I’ve known for some time is "tolerable but functional." But that night I would make sure it would be completely relieved. Record a few videos, write a few letters. Then take a mixture and peacefully fade to black – no more pain, EVER. Wherever Mom and Dad are now, if anywhere, has to be better than this ****ing unrelieved misery.

And you know what’s hilarious about the whole damn thing? It would be seen as another overdose indicating why this medication is evil and leads to horrible things – not as someone who couldn’t get the relief he needed. It would be interpreted as exactly the OPPOSITE of what it actually would be!

I’m not alone. There are MANY in the same position, some who have already done what is more and more on my mind now. Yes, there are those who fool doctors because they are addicted or to get pills to sell on the street at a profit. But you know what? I would rather a HUNDRED of those people continue to get away with it than just ONE person who legitimately needs it endure this. And yes, there have been those who have really needed it and either unintentionally or intentionally overdosed. But you know, THEY are responsible for that, not their doctor. Take the medication AS PRESCRIBED, period. If you try to medicate yourself and screw up, you are the one to blame for that. Of it someone does it on purpose, again that person and only that person made that choice. Maybe, just maybe, they found themselves in this same position and took the only way they could see out – the only way I’m beginning to see.

Don’t go running for a phone or trying to find out who I am and where I’m at. Like I said, I’m not saying this as a "threat" and I’m not actually making plans to do it. I’m only saying that the thought is more and more prevalent because I cannot get this pain relieved – to stress the points to which so many of us are pushed by a government and law enforcement more concerned with the only "drug war" they can win – one against doctors and their patients, more interested in catching the bad guys instead of helping those who need it.

In spite of the ridiculous drive this doctor has taken me on with this, I do have to admit something. I think I said in a previous post that there just may be another use for Suboxone that isn’t being considered, I don’t know. My tolerance, even in just a week, did not drop to the ridiculous 40mg Hydrocodone per day he prescribed, but it DID drop a bit. I was at 30mg Oxycodone every four hours. Now, I tried to take TWO of the Hydrocodone just to see what it would do. Sure enough, though it didn’t relieve it as well, it DID help and I was able to move and do things I needed to do – tolerable but functional, which I can accept. On conversion, this would be 15 to 20 mg doses of the Oxycodone instead of 30mg, again almost ANOTHER half drop. It seems that may be something to look into. I would be willing to go on Suboxone for a week twice a year, for example, to keep my tolerance low enough so that escalation of it wouldn’t be required (actually it had been quite some time since the last one). Granted, that would mean a week of no withdrawals but a whole lot of pain while things settle down before returning to the medication, but it seems like a viable option.

The only thing I can think to do is to approach him with the idea of the last thing I want to do because of what I’ve read about it, but it would (I’ve never taken it, just assuming here) relieve my pain and also assuage his fears – Methadone. Seems like the only compromise here from what I’m finding. I’m just very scared of going on that medication even if he agreed to it.

I’m just both emotionally and physically exhausted and probably thinking overly dramatically. I just know that I can’t take a whole lot more of this, that’s for damn sure.