My wife go held up at work so we were late to my pain management dr appointment. We had an appointment for 2:00 p.m. we arrived at 1:50. They say to be to your appointment 15 minute before your appointment. They would not see us. So I am on my way to detox. My next appointment is April 15th. I am not sure how things get so messed up that you have to be treated so ....I don't even have the words for it. I have been thinking about stopping the morphine just to see if it was actual helping or not. So I guess I get to now.
Anyone have any tips.
I have more pills that I could take but I not sure that I want to. I have so 30 mg IR as well as ER but not enought to carry me to my next appointment.
What is your usual dosing schedule?
Can you change the April 15th appointment?
Count what you have. You don’t want to go cold turkey, because that sucks and you will have a really hard time getting in control of your pain if you do. Take what is remaining and see if you have enough to drop your dosing gradually over a week’s time or longer if you have enough to do that. You should probably use the IRs to do that since you can’t cut the ERs. If you can give me some more specifics, I can help you a little better.
Pain level and need to medicate aside taking morphine on a regular basis will result in dependence. Just stopping will not be easy...of course your pain will return/increase but you will also be in withdrawl. (which really stinks) Personally I would take what meds I had on hand to deal with withdrawl symptoms and call the doc in the morning. I don't see why you would have to wait several weeks to discuss this with the pain doc or your primary doc. I would be inclined to manage your withdrawl with your other meds until you get in touch with your physician. Hope all goes well...
I agree with HoneyBunny…your doc shouldn’t leave you hanging for 3 -4 weeks just because you were only 10 minutes early to an appointment that they were probably running behind on anyway.
I really empathize with you. I was in pain management for a few months, but it was humiliating. I begged my primary doctor to treat my pain and she has done a great job. She is a real advocate for me, and I am so thankful that she agreed to help me.
GET some help. and not from a forum...............
Hopefully the doc didn't give you 30 mg ER AND 30 mg IR and tell you they were eqivilent in any way..... He should be before the medical board if he did from the http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/archives/fdaDrugInfo.cfm?archi... on cessation of therapy " When converting a patient from morphine sulfate extended-release to parenteral opioids, it is best to calculate an equivalent parenteral dose, and then initiate treatment at half of this calculated value. For example, to estimate the required 24 hour dose of parenteral morphine for a patient taking morphine sulfate extended-release, one would take the 24 hour morphine sulfate extended-release dose, divide by an oral to parenteral conversion ratio of 3, divide the estimated 24 hour parenteral dose into six divided doses (for a four hour dosing interval), then halve this dose as an initial trial."
In short if you were taking two 30 mg eR per day the equvilent would be less than 3mg every 4 hours. the recommended amount to TRY is HALF that.
The halh life of IR is about 2 hours. You can't substitute your 30's or will be loony tunes (if not worse) There is MORE than that in OTC 222's in Canada. I have got to wonder what the H your PM doc was thinking. Are you sure it was real PM and not a pill mill pretending to be PM???
This isn't a do it yourself project. With a little help, you can do it. It should be okay. I can't imagine the 30er are doing much anyway. Or at least something than can't be done with torodol or other non-narco pain stuff. This may be a good opportunity to get something better going for yourself, before you develop too much tolerance that pain meds won't help when you really need them.
The worst part of this is my wife feels really bad because she is my transportation. I called her earlier and told her I would go ahead and drive myself because she was late...She told me no...So now she is beating her self up for being late.
I think that the pain is going to dictate the usage of the IR's. I now can bearly walk.
I called my insurance last night. They gave me approval to get help at a Detox Center if needed. They asked me to do all the basic which I have done. They told me to watch my blood pressure that if it become elevated 160/100 to head to the Detox Center.
They also asked it I had done:
Call Primary and ask them for a single prescription for a fill-in. We had allready made this call.... they said no that they do not fill for people involved with pain management period.
They said that we could file a formal complaint through them and they would take action aginist the Clinic. - I told them that I would wait to see how they treat me on my next appointment.
So here what I am trying to do. I have been taking 90 mg ER's per day. 1 30 every 8 hours, I will continue to take IR's to help with the Pain I have enought IR's that I could take them to replace my ER's but I am tring to be off them totally by my next visit. I do have an appointment with my Rheumy on Monday if I can travel Monday. If he will give me a shot of steroid I might be able to deal with the pain. I will become a couch potatoe for the next 25 days, so that I do not upset my back.If I upset my back I will be in trouble. I have been all but a couch potatoe for the last 3 months any way. If I upset my back I would have been in trouble on the ER's anyway. Right now I am limited to about 3 lbs of weight with my back. But right now walking is very dificult because of hip pain with I had forgot about. So I may have to stay down totally.
I have taken 30 mg of IR so far and hope that I can come down with monitoring my blood pressure and taking the IR's on a tapper.
I will do what I can to minimize the effects but its not going to be anything I want to do again. So I hope the Dr is not going to try to put me right back on them. I am alergic to most of the other meds and The Morpin was not helping with the actual pain it only took the edge off (but I guess I will find out how much it was doing). I have limited my activity to reduce my pain.
Its not your wife's fault in any way. That's the important thing, pain withsatndingYou got the shaft sans vaseline. My guess is some brainless gate keeper misapplied a rule and the doc would be mortified. Can your PCP get directlyt to him to find out????
There are some medications that can help with withdrawal. I forget what they are, but my dr. prescribed 3 of them, something for nausea, something for muscle cramps, and something else which I forgot. It is possible your primary could prescribe a weeks worth of each for you to help.
I think that if you are able to get medical detox or out patient through your primary or rheum, that is the best way to go if you want to totally stop. Withdrawal on its own can be painful, so don’t judge how well the morphine was working or not until you have been without withdrawal symptoms for at least a week. I just do not understand how any doctor could do this to a patient. If you have been compliant with your medications and have followed the rules, I think it’s incredibly irresponsible to let you go for a month with this drug and with no care. You are much more calm than I would have been. In fact, it didn’t been happy to me, but it makes me really upset!
Maybe your rheum or primary can advocate for you with the pain doc, like lamb said.
I don’t understand the pain management program. It tends to treat good people like common criminals. I am really sorry that this happened to you.
I have been taking (1/2) of a 30 mg IR. I have been going for about 7 to 8 hours between them. This has reduces some of the effects of the detox. I am hoping that this will keep the worst of it at bay. I can increase the freqency if needed. I am hoping to step down by reducing over the next three to four weeks.
A little more back ground. The appointment that the gatekeeper canceled was my first appointment with this pain clinic. My past clinic shut its doors. So yes I am in bad place. I am not a user nor do I feel that I need to be on morphine. I think it has been over kill. But I am alergic to percoset and lortab and Roxy. My past pain dr. told me at my last visit that I was one of the paitents she would have like to have kept. She gave me a prescription just for this purpose in case something when wrong. So yes I am out in the cold with my current Dr but my past Dr took care of me. So I am hoping to be fine if I can keep the pain at bay somehow and figure out a tapper that will work.
The rough part is, my feet, back, legs, forarms,elbows,wrists, hips and fingers are all beginning to hurting and then the headache this afternoon was bad. I am somewhat concerned about tring to sleep. I have severe Sleep Apnea.
My wife and I have tickets to a play tomorrow and my daughter is getting married in a week from tomorrow. She wants me to walk her down the isle. I just hoping now to be able to attend the wedding.
Hi Not Understood, I hope you will feel better next week for your daughter's wedding. Can you see a different pain mgm't doctor so you don't have to wait a month? Wishing you well soon,
My wife ended up calling 911 on Saturday afternoon. I was have bad convoltions that scared her. They continued to the ER and then they gave me a patch on the back and a boat load of (potassum), I through up in the ambulance several time, then in the ER and agian in the Detox room. My blood pressure was all over the place. My heart rate at one point was 34. They gave me a few shots and several other drugs that settle me down.
I would not suggest cold turkey off of Morphine. It was total hell... My wife is looking to fill the prescription that I was sent home with. So I sill am on a tapper for the next 3 days. But I am now upright which is a good thing. There was times I was hoping not to make it.
The good news is the ER dr who help me through the detox is willing to see me and prescribe my pain meds. He said that someone in your condition should never have to detox that way. He wanted to know the names of the doctors that I was schedule to see. He was going to call them up a chew them out. He put me on Welbutrin and Gabapitin and Soboxsin. Sorry not sure on the spelling but that where I am.
I feel good now that it is over. I even like the though of working with the new Dr.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I know that there are people who are addicted and are drug seeking, but that was not what happened here. Going through detox like that is not pretty at all. It's quite dangerous, as you pointed out.
It sounds like the doctor is putting you on non-narcotic medications, which hopefully will work well for you. And at least it sounds as though you have an advocate now.
Hi Not Understood - what a horrible ordeal to go through. I'm glad you a least found a good doc that will help you properly manage your pain meds.' Frances
I am hoping now that I can keep my pain under control by slowly adding some activity back in to my daily regement. I missed my rheumy appointment so my wife reschedule that for me. My brain is working but in slow motion. I assume that it will take a few weeks or even months before I get back to some sort of normal. I can only sit for a few minutes at a time before the pain starts to build. When I lay down I have to stretch out but then I need to curl up in a ball to stop the cramps. So it is back to the bed again.
Thanks again everyone for your support and I appreciate Tntlamb and your right to the point aditude. Again thanks to all.
I know exactly how you feel. I have been on some pretty hefty pain meds to deal with my PSA . If you want to come off your pain meds I would discuss it with the doctor. He could bring you down gradually so you wouldn't have to deal with withdrawal symptoms.
That doctor that refused to see you should lose his license. What he did was paramount to malpractice. I am so sorry you had such a rough time. My heart goes out to you and to your family.