Re: Uncle! I gave in and took the oxycontin/Debbi

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 3/5/2004 17:17:47 PM Pacific Standard Time,

ngsamuelson@... writes:

Ortho is prescribing all the pain

meds. Should I have something else for breakthrough pain? Thanks for writing

to me, I appreciate it so much!.How are you doing?

I would get something just in case you cannot hold all day with the Oxy. Any

of the Vicodin types. I use Roxicodone mostly. But it might be better to

use a non triplicate for breakthru at first. Some even can take Advil to kick

the breakthru you have to do it trial and error.

FYI... Unless your ortho is the only one that will prescribe the triplicate

you might try to find a GP that will follow you too. I say this because

orthos are famous for prescribing and then getting panicky and deciding to pull

the

meds (paranoid that they will be looked at too closely by the feds for Rx.

habits)

Not to panic you. NOT AT ALL! Just to say that it is always better to have

a general physician COORDINATE your care. One that is trained in pain is the

best they are not paranoid of the feds.

For now ... just take it easy and let the meds do their magic. It will take

a couple of days for the oxy to kick in to the full span of 24 hour relief.

You will have days where the meds hold and days where the breakthru happens a

lot and days where you have only one breakthru or only at night. It is all so

subjective on how your body is doing and the weather and how much you do (or

over do)

I am doing OK. weather has me down and I have an end of winter cold but I am

hanging in there.

Take care!

Debbi

[Guest guest]

Hi Debbi and ,

I could not agree more with Debbi here... Here in Norway they decided

a while ago that the GP's are the ones who should prescribe. When it

comes to pain management, it is normally a pain doc who starts it

off, but sometimes it can be an ortho.surgeon, neuro surgeon,

rheumatologist etc. too. But after they have initiated the treatment

and you are on a regimen that works, they send a letter to the GP and

asks him/her to take over. The reason for that is that it is better

that one doctor coordinates all treatment. There is some protection

in that, in that one doc knows about all meds and can check for drug

interactions and such. But there is also an element of control in it,

since some people unfortunately did get prescriptions from their

specialists, and then went to the GP and got prescriptions too... Not

a good thing... You may go to regular follow-up consultations with

your pain doc too, even if the GP writes the prescriptions, if the

pain doc wants to change something, e.g. the dosage, he will just

write the GP about it. If he wants to change the whole regimen, he

may take over the prescribing until you are done with finding the

right dosage etc. again. During this the pain doc will of course

communicate with the GP by sending letters etc.

Re. breakthrough pain. A lot of people can manage with OTC pain meds

for breakthrough pain, e.g. many do well with Tylenol or another OTC

med. But if that proves to not be enough, many also use a quick

release version of the same pain med as they already use in a

continuous release version, or a totally other type may be the right

choice. I guess it may vary a lot from one person to another, but I

guess that as with pain management in general, they often work their

way up also with medication for breakthrough pain... I have chosen

not to use other things for breakthrough pain than OTC meds in

combination with Vioxx. I must admit that I do have some really bad

days, but I ended up deciding that I would try to live with that as

long as I can, because it is such a different thing to do it when you

in general are doing so much better than you used to. Sometimes I do

regret it, when it is just awful... But if I ended up having that

more or less every day, I would have to do something about it...

Aase Marit

>Not to panic you. NOT AT ALL! Just to say that it is always better to have

>a general physician COORDINATE your care. One that is trained in pain is the

>best they are not paranoid of the feds.