And, oxycodone isn’t working

For the last six months, my life has just been a pain pill rollercoaster!  I can’t seem to find a pain medication which works, and if I do, it either buries me in side-effects or costs a small fortune.  I could have a nice new car for what I spend on pain meds every month.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go back to just oxycodone, because an entire month’s worth of medication (being really medicated, too), cost just $85.  It seemed like a sensible idea, but I quickly realized it wasn’t going to work when I started to wake up in excrutiating pain.  Oxycodone only lasts about four hours, so unless I woke up in the middle of the night to take a pill, I’d end up with no pain meds in me after eight hours of sleep.  I tried it for a week—I’d wake up, hobble to the medicine chest and to a granola bar, and wait 90 minutes to feel normal again - but there was a residual effect which lingered throughout the day.  I had a hard time staying ahead of the pain when I had to medicate every four hours, and I had a hard time determining how much to take to ward off pain but to avoid nausea.  After about ten days, I called Uncle, and went back to my leftover oxycontin.  What a relief it was to have a steady release of medication over the course of eight to twelve hours!  It made me appreciate oxycontin again, and I seem to have found a good schedule for it.  I take one 10 mg oxycontin every eight hours, and I take one 5mg oxycodone at the same time.  If I start to feel like I’m faltering at the four hour mark, I can “top up” with another 5mg of oxycodone, but I seem to only need to do that about once a day.  I’ve actually felt not to badly for the past week, although I’ve been rather fatigued.  Still, I’d rather be tired and pain-free than tired and painful.  This new discovery of mine means I have to go back on oxycontin, and I guess it will be about $200 per month.  I just don’t know what else to do.

My partner, Flippy tried a bold new experiment for her pain medication this month—she’s on methadone.  Her oxycontin dose was getting pretty high and she was having a lot of break-through pain.  To top it off, she’s already used up her pharmacy benefit for her health insurance this year, so all her meds are out of pocket, too.  From her research, she knew that methadone was an effective and low-cost medication to help with her FMS and low-back pain, so the doctor wrote her a prescription.  The cost for one month of methadone, paying cash, was just $13.  Stunning.  Even more stunning is the fact that it seems to be working.  For the first two weeks she had some break-through pain, and took oxycodone for that, but since then the pain has evened out and she’s mostly pain-free.  The worst part of the methadone for her was initially nausea, but it’s starting to ease off after a couple of weeks (and Vistaril helps with it as well).  An unexpected side-effect popped up after the nausea—Flippy’s overactive bladder medication stopped working, which made it very uncomfortable for her to work for long hours or drive in the car.  At first she was in a bit of a panic, assuming she’d have to quit the methadone, but she’s increased the dosage of her bladder meds and so far, it seems to have resolved the problem.  If it’s not one thing, it’s another… now the bladder meds will cost twice as much every month, even though we’re saving on pain medication expenses :p

I’d love to live a life without pain medication.  I’d also like to be able to afford to try a higher dose of the Duragesic patch, or to try the new pain medication like Opana, but without health insurance (or more cash), I’m stuck with what I’ve got.  I realize that I’m lucky to be able to afford what I’ve got, and to have a doctor who will prescribe it for me, but it’s not the way I want to live.  I hate that the cost of being sort of/occasionally pain-free is constipation, reflux, urinary retention, and poverty.  Those all contribute to stress, which make my FMS worse, which causes me to need more pain medication.  Stop the ride, I want off!

SORRY, THIS ENTRY IS CLOSED TO NEW COMMENTS BECAUSE OF MORONIC SPAMMERS.  FEEL FREE TO EMAIL ME, HOWEVER… IT’S A SHAME THAT WE CAN’T HAVE AN INTELLIGENT DISCUSSION WITHOUT PARASITES TRYING TO TAKE OVER.

Posted by on 06/17 at 04:18 AM

  1. Ran across this one: http://www.opana.com/ Probably another one to research and discuss. Probably expensive as hell right now because it sems to be brand new.

    Posted by Georg  on  06/28  at  03:31 PM

  2. I only found out about Opana a few weeks ago, but you’re right, it’s fairly pricey.  I’m still working through some of the less expensive options—we found some prescription discount programs which make generic drugs more affordable, so for now I’m sticking to oxycontin to see if I can get some consistent pain relief.  Flippy is on MS-Contin this month (she’s weaning off methadone because of how it bothered her bladder), and it’s also inexpensive because it comes in a generic.  If money was no object, I would even consider using the fentanyl patch again (but only for 48 hours at a time), but the longer a medication lasts, the more it costs!

    Oxycontin was always a good medication for me, but I started to need a higher dose. That’s why I’ve been trying other meds instead, to see if something else works better.  So far, nothing does.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  06/29  at  01:18 AM

  3. My new post is the latest of my attempts to help you and others like you to find solutions for mysterious health problems. Please read it with an open mind. The direct link is http://healthissuesunmasked.wordpress.com/2007/08/02/save-money-time-in-search-for-good-health-care-part-three/

    Click on the links in the post and in the various resource sections to the right. They should answer many of your questions. Feel free to contact me with further questions.

    Posted by Jacqueline L. Jones  on  08/02  at  01:19 PM

  4. Just found your blog by accident and reading it sounds so similar to my experiences with fibro, CFS, depression, doctors, etc., and I just wanted to say thank you, and to let you know that I’ve tried lots of different pain meds, reluctantly (I’d rather not have pain in the first place), and I’ve found that no pain medication ever takes away all the pain.

    On the other hand, although I have, once or twice when I was considering whether to saw off the offending body parts, but instead chose to take quite a bit more than the prescribed amount to try to get rid of the pain, I still had pain.

    I don’t know whether if I put myself into a coma or were dead if I’d still have pain, but in my experience with fibro, I’m sure I would.

    I found the best way to tell if I’m depressed because of the pain and other symptoms or whether the depression is primary is to ask myself would I engage in outside activities, like going to the movies or hobbies, etc., if I were healthy? If my answer is “yes” (which it is 99.9 percent of the time), then I know that my depression is caused by my conditions.

    This might work for you too.

    Posted by Kat  on  08/04  at  01:47 PM

  5. Hi Kat smile Sorry I’ve been bad about updating this blog… it’s the irony of FMS/CFS, I’m too tired to blog about it!  I’ll go write an update entry now, and let you know how things have progressed.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  08/05  at  05:13 AM

  6. I’ve been on pain meds for over 5 years and I’ve weaned off and ended back on. I don’t want to take meds either.I tried going to nautral doctors(homopathic) might help you. I’ve looked in as far as hypnothesis. I have chroinc pacereatitis and had two plumary emboulism.( blood clots in my lungs) So I take pain for the stomach, which sometimes the pains make it upset and blood thinners which react to everything. I am down to taking 2 pain pills a day and am going to try to quit cold turkey , starting tomorrow.I can’t do this no more, and the only way I defeated it before was with God. I was in the hospital for 4 months with IV pain meds and durgesic patches plus the pills on top of duilduad.It was nuts, withdrawns are scary, but , knowing your destorying other organs is even more frightening. I can say I am a overcomer, and will be again , it’s the determation, and also realizing , some of our logic is take one before you start hurting, alot is pshcological, not saying no one is hurting , because if we weren’t we wouldn’t have been perscribed pain killers. It’s realizing when your body is saying enough.That is hard. Or being around other people who abuse them, it makes it hard and your heightened aware of your pain when you see people taking meds, like you forgot something and that was it. I will be praying for all of you whom are trying to quit pain killers,it’s not easy and pray for me too. I went off for over 2 years , and ended back in the hospital last year for 6 weeks and since then I’ve been on but weaning down, this week is my week. God bless you all.Over coming through Christ Jesus. I pray His strength to be upon each of you

    Posted by Andrea  on  08/26  at  08:37 PM

  7. Andrea, you really should NOT try to quit your meds cold turkey.  There’s just no reason to do that when you could continue to safely taper them instead.  Cold turkey could cause adverse withdrawal reactions which will land you back in the hospital, and no amount of willpower will prevent withdrawal symptoms.

    There’s no reason to fear pain medication if you take it judiciously and with medical supervision.  Pain meds (with the exception of Tylenol in large doses) should not destroy your liver or kidneys or any other organ.  In fact, opioid medications are some of the safest medications in existence when used properly.  You sound as if you demand a lot of yourself and are hard on yourself—maybe you should ease up a bit and you wouldn’t be so stressed.  Just take things one day at a time and don’t obsess about addiction and quitting, etc., unless you actually feel your medication is causing your other problems. 

    As for being told to take pain medication before you’re actually in pain, that isn’t because the pain is in your head smile Once pain is activated, it’s difficult to deactivate.  For example, if you have menstrual cramps, they’re caused by the release of a hormone.  It’s easier to stop the release of the hormone (ibuprofen blocks hormones called prostagladins), than to try to “mask” the hormone once it’s working and causing pain.  It’s kind of like weight-loss… it’s easier to not eat the ice cream at all, than to try to lose the weight after you’ve eaten the ice cream!

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  08/27  at  01:30 AM
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