Dosing of Methotrexate and Pain meds

[Guest guest]

My experience with these things is:

If the dose of methotrexate is not eliminating pain and you are still below

50 mg a week of methotrexate with no adverse side effects (kidney and liver

function and blood counts fine) , it is certainly called for to ask your

doctor to be a bit more aggressive and up your dose- say 5 mg more for two

weeks, then

another five for two weeks and so on until your pain dies down.

Vicodin is a good pain med, but it is a four hour pill and is not recommended

for chronic pain by pain management experts- nor are all the other four hour

ones like codeine, demerol, etc... It has been studied and current

recommendations are that if you have chronic pain you are better off with

twelve hour preparations like Oxycontin or MsContin or the three day pain

patch Duragesic, because of two things:

1. Better pain control with less drug in your body- this is because there is

more a steady stream of medication instead of the every four hour peaks and

valleys.

2. Less addiction- again because the medication blood levels are not

fluctuating wildly up and down every four hours, and you need a lower dose

with the longer acting meds too.

Good Luck,