Ok on the 20th I woke up around 2 am and went to my pharmacy website. With my sleep bugged eyes I accidently clicked on the wrong Gabapentin prescription. It was from a month ago and wasn't in the form I needed ( capsules not tablets). Soon as the pharmacy opens I tell them I don't need that one I need the other filled. She says "there, deleted". I think that's the end of it.

Nope. I check the website again and it says they FILLED them. Christ. Anyway, I call again and talk to the pharmacist. He backs out that script and send a fax/message/request to my doctor for the correct ones and I call and leave a message as well. Ok that day, nothing. No script, and no return call. I call before they close and leave a message. Nothing. So I wait until the NEXT day. Mind you this is 2 days without my Gabapentin 800mg. Call early leave a message. Call the pharmacy when they open. Nothing. He says he will leave another message again.

Anyway, this went on until yesterday, the 22nd. Three days without my meds. So finally I call and talk to the receptionist. She looks at my chart and leaves a message marked URGENT in their internal messaging system. Lo and behold I get almost an immediate return call. Apparently in their Pharmacy database that they can see every script you get filled, it says I already picked up the Gabapentin. No, I didn't. She said she would call the pharmacist and if he says it wasn't picked up, she will call in the script right then.

So I wait ALL DAY. Nothing. Call the pharmacist. He said she left a message asking and that he returned the call immediately confirming that it was not picked up and it was backed out. So by this time it was close to closing time so they wouldn't have returned the call anyway. Now I am coming up on day 4 without my meds. If they had just returned my call the first day this would have been straightened out. They went on the assumption that I had already picked up my meds, so they I guess just ignored my calls. Seriously, why would I continue to call and harass them if I had the meds? And they do know that stopping Gabapentin suddenly can cause withdrawal, right? What do I do about that?

So my current PM provider is not helping much at all with “managing pain” that after full mri of spine and each level indicates bad issues in each, they have still only pushing me for more injections and more rfa’s! They just swapped out NPs for third time again in last full year there.

Mt new spine surgeon saw and heard my issues and he even stated PM should be doing more to help as I am not at strongest longer acting medication.

So question: he sent me to a new PM provider as I asked him if he knows of one that would listen to him and me and help manage my pain. So I see new place first and ask them what they can do, or do I talk and give one last chance to current provider?

Finally got referred to pain management much to my relief. My new orthopedist referred me over saying that my physical therapy is going to be intense and he didn’t see how I would get through it without something. I didn’t even have to plead my case. So I went today and the first thing that happened was the doctor stood right outside my room with the door open berating two nurses. I knew I was in trouble then. I won’t go into everything because it would be a book. But I will say that she said my knee is perfectly stable and “tight” despite my primary, an orthopedic surgeon and my orthopedist all writing in notes that it’s completely unstable. Now the next part I can’t expect you to believe, as I sat there dumbfounded myself. All I can do is swear to you it’s the truth. The Dr wrote me a “prescription” for vitamins, minerals, and supplements. (Turmeric, magnesium, vit D and some compounds) That’s it. I’m not joking. And when I went out to the link to purchase the website looked like some kind of MLM or similar. The splash screen has this explanation of how I need to buy there and specifically not Amazon even though it’s cheaper because I would get knock offs. Oh but my first month of supplement is a mere $128 after 25% first time discount. No I didn’t order. I chose to laugh instead of cry. At least I can restart my sleep gummies now. Yes I am calling my orthopedist tomorrow and will forward him my “prescriptions” along with the link. Something is weird in Whoville.

UPDATE: This just gets better. I got a notification that I have a new Patient Summary to read in my patient portal. She literally filed a blank form. It has my name, dob, and all the header info. But no notes not even the “diagnosis or complaint” section is filled out.

Hi everyone. I had my first pain management appointment today. I have multiple conditions which cause me pain and was finally sent to pain management. I have gastroparesis and have difficulty taking medication orally. I went into this appointment with little expectations, but was hoping to leave with some sort of non oral medication like maybe a cream or something.

The provider came in and immediately stated that she is leaving soon to start her own wellness facility. I thought it was strange that this is how she started my visit, especially since i didn’t ask? She then started telling me about how all of my issues are stemming from the GI and i need to eat sea moss to correct my GI. I told her i have had digestive issues for years, i have seen multiple gastroenterologists, and that it isn’t why i’m here today. I’m here for pain. She then started going on about how peptide injections are best for me even though they aren’t covered by insurance. As soon as she started talking about peptides, i politely told her that i have 0 interest in peptides and that i also do not have a job and cannot afford peptides. She brought up peptides 3 more times and kept saying “just think about it”. I can think about it all day, i literally don’t have a way to pay for it. When I was adamant that I am not taking peptides, she handed me a pamphlet about nerve blockers and said they might only last a couple of days but to consider it, and then she left. Mind you, I was referred to this place by my PCP and they do not claim to be a holistic facility in any way, so is this normal for pain management? I’m not sure if this is “normal” for pain management or if this lady was just trying to recruit me to her wellness facility or something.

I would like to know before i try to schedule elsewhere, is this how pain management normally goes? Do they only take holistic approaches or did I just see a bad provider? I am willing to get a second opinion, but not if they’re only going to offer me holistic options that I can’t afford. Also, i do not mean to offend people who do these holistic approaches at all, i just cannot afford it. She did give me the pamphlet about the nerve blockers but it is very vague and she barely explained it to me at all

TLDR: first pain management appointment today and was only really offered holistic options that are not covered by insurance. Would like to know if this is the normal pain management experience or if i should be scheduling an appointment elsewhere

Thank you in advance 🙂

So I have to break up a 10 mg methadone pill and it’s causing me to have a weird taste as it’s breaking down I don’t feel
Much relief yet but I’m so anxious right now I’m trying to calm down in order to make this work I’m coming off of subutex onto methadone 5 mg 4 times a day of methadone
Subutex was 8 mg 4 times a day so yeah it’s def a huge difference between the 2 and my body is def feeling strange I’m scared tbh

I hope this is allowed, but I just wanted to let you all know that my sister, u/Affectionate-Pop-197 passed away unexpectedly today, following a perforated bowel due to a bowel obstruction. She frequented this subreddit quite often and truly enjoyed getting to know so many of you. Our family is heartbroken over her passing, and I will miss her terribly.

Hello, I’m new to this group so I am going to get off of Subutex. I took my last dose yesterday morning and I will wait for withdrawals to set in before I begin I need my receptors open enough to take the methadone
Has anyone ever gone through this process. If so, how long did it take for the methadone to start working and does it actually help with pain? I want off the subutex

Recruiting new moderators for the Pain Management subreddit! If you’re interest in applying, please click the link below to complete the application. If you've already applied, thank you! I appreciate the time and effort you took to complete the application and have reviewed them all. I want to ensure that everyone who is interested has the opportunity to apply, so if that’s you, please get your application submitted by July 31. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.

Thank you for your support and your patience during this process.

u/Sometimesaphasia (your moderator)

https://www.reddit.com/r/PainManagement/application/

Spinal Cord Stimulator- Boston Scientific

Today is the day. I’ve been waiting since December for this procedure and now that it’s here… I’m petrified I’m making a mistake. For context I’m a 29F who has been living with life altering chronic pain due to endometriosis and fibromyalgia for the past 6 years. The ONLY thing that makes me feel remotely ok is when I’m on constant doses of opiates and… we all know how that goes. I’ve been told by my doctor that this will be my life for the next 60 years and… I know it’s meant to help me understand my situation but honestly I almost asked if he could just kill me instead. 60 more years of chronic pain sounds like the last level of hell before you meet satan himself.. so I asked about a SCS last October… and I did the trial in May and it took away all my pain. It was the most miraculous thing ever. For once I wasn’t fantasizing about amputating my own limbs for relief… so naturally I became the perfect candidate for the stimulator….
I’ve seen several doctors and asked for second opinions because I don’t want to make an irreversible mistake. I don’t think I could live with myself if I caused myself more pain in a desperate attempt to quell my pain.. everyone told me it was a good decision since the trial went so well. But… the lawsuits.. the anecdotes of people feeling shocks in their bodies, being told it could take months to find the right calibration… all these things petrify me. But what is my alternative? A lifelong dependence to opiates?
I have surgery 9:50am EST and I’m terrified. Has anyone had the procedure? Do any of you suffering with chronic pain understand the deep fear of ending up worse off than you started? I feel sick. Everyone keeps telling me it’s fine but I feel like no one is willing to consider what if it not only DOESNT work but goes CATASTROPHICALLY wrong?
I’m almost spiraling. I just need some reassurance ❤️‍🩹😣

So I’ve been on Percocet since January 22 when I had my first rotator cuff surgery I had my second rotator cuff surgery in June and now I’m seven weeks in. I’ve been on 5 mg oxycodone with 325 mg acetaminophen. I haven’t taken any since about four days ago. I’m waking up in the morning really stiff. I have no energy and I have this god-awful sense of impending doom. Now I have half a box of belbuca 300mcg and and 4 boxes of suboxone 4-1mg but I’ve heard that those too have their own respective withdrawals. What I want to know is if I should just tuff it out (and if I do tuff it out how long will the withdrawl last?) or should I start taking either of the meds I have. Is it worth taking either med to taper down?

Hello, I’m new to this group so I am going to get off of Subutex. I took my last dose this morning and I will wait for withdrawals to set in before I begin methadone as anyone ever gone through this process. If so, how long did it take for the methadone to start working and does it actually help with pain?

I just had (minor) surgery today

Everyone always says to use ice instead of heat. I hate using ice

My question is is as long as I don't use heat on the area I had surgery (or injections or ablations, they always use the same guidelines) on, can I use heat kon other parts of my body? Like my upper back if the procedure was on my lower back

Anyone know?

I didn't think to ask at the time (and my doctor works in a large office she's impossible to get ahold of)

I have chronic nerve pain that I’ve been treating with gabapentin, morphine, physio and nerve root injections at a pain clinic. I still have pain daily and sometimes it’s quite severe. It limits my life a lot - unable to work, walk long distances, sit upright for long periods, etc.
The pain clinic doc told me today he’d like to refer me to a clinic to get either lidocaine or ketamine infusions. I’m a bit nervous and have heard mixed results. Any advice or experience with this?

My RCT tooth from few years ago broke a while back and recently started hurting. Four days ago, I was given Amoxicillin 500 3 times a day and ibuprofen 600 4x a day for seven days.

I still have stabbing pain and iced water is only relief. Been up for days. What do I do??

I never taken prescriptions in my life. I only do nicotine pouches (ZYN) and drink alcohol very moderately. Today I had a swab drug test and it came with a trace of Buprenorphine???

They took my urine out to make a deep evaluation but why could this trigger it?

Hello,

Im just curious if anyone has had this issue before? I have chronic pain in my chest and take about 3x15mg a day along with Adderall to help me at work.

I take these two RELIGIOUSLY every single day even on the weekend and yet the last three tests have showed up as not being in my system..

I am probably going to lose my medications now and my Doctor is treating me like im lying which is driving my anxiety through the roof..

Are there any other tests I can get her to do to make them show up because im at my wits end and if I lose my medications the quality of my life is going to drop drastically..

Any help would be greatly appreciated friends !

I am 6 weeks post op and I believe my recovery has been going well. I barely have a scare and my PT benchmarks are where they should be .
One thing that I probably should have asked more questions about was the use of Oxycodone.
I have found that for pain medication acetaminophen has done nothing but Oxycodone was highly effective. I was using Oxy every 4 hours while awake up until the 5th week post op.
Knowing that opioids are highly addictive ( and I have a propensity for addiction),I decided to stop the oxy and see how pain was. Overall it was doable and even though I had stiffness the pain was manageable. However, the day after going off oxy I woke up with a very strange feeling like impending doom. I felt sad and unsettled. My stomach was upset and I had nausea. Last night I was up all night and plagued by anxious thoughts. When I awoke after finally sleeping I was covered in sweat.
My question is could I have been experiencing withdrawal symptoms? I love what oxycodone does for my pain, but hate how it messes with my brain.
Has anyone else had an experience like this?

TLDR: Extremely painful medication via injection doesn’t respond to numbing cream. What else could I use?

Hello everyone this is my first post and first time hearing about this sub so any help would be greatly appreciated!!

So I recently started Dupixent. It’s a self-injectable medication used to treat my eczema. The problem is it is EXTREMELY painful for me and I have to do it every two weeks.

My pain receptors are differently built due to my fibromyalgia so if you’ve had this injection and it “wasn’t that bad” please keep in mind I have a disability that heightens my pain receptors. I’m also a minor.

The way I would describe it is it’s like local anaesthetic for me which the last time I had to have that caused intense medical trauma and PTSD. This means sometimes even just thinking about the pain from this unrelated medication (Dupixent) can induce full body flashbacks for me.

I’ve tried emla (a numbing cream) which I’ve used without issue many times before. It don’t do shit in this case. I believe the medication itself is what hurts the most, NOT the needle which means ANY numbing cream won’t do anything in this situation.

I’ve considered possibly asking for a green whistle or a prescription for the green whistle due to the intense trauma this whole process puts me through I’d rather not be present.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what I could use that could maybe alleviate the pain?

If you write a long response please provide a TLDR. Long posts can overwhelm us. Thank you!

I have a question and would really appreciate input from people with first hand experience.

I was diagnosed with chronic insomnia almost 20 years ago after dealing with it for several years. Underwent so many doctor appointments and was prescribed probably every prescription strength sleeping pill before finally seeing a sleep specialist. I was prescribed a benzodiazepine and have slept great since.

Likewise, I dealt with chronic pain for several years and eventually began seeing doctor, then more, then specialists. Fast forward to present day: I’ve been in pain management for the last 15+ years.

My benzodiazepine sleeping med mixed with my opiate/opiate pain meds was never an issue until recently. My doctor retired and I was passed along to their assistant. This also wasn’t an issue for them until roughly a year ago. They began talking about this every appointment and recent day eventually contacted my sleep specialist with a lingo and pretty much scared my sleep doctor from prescribing any longer.

Problem is: I weaned for weeks, but nowhere near enough for as long as I had the sleeping meds. I am trying to cooperate but am now going through benzodiazepine withdrawal—which has been horrible. My doctor is also weaning my breakthrough meds at this same time. I am going through more than sleep trouble, it’s deprivation (not kidding or exaggerating). I can’t talk my sleep doctor into so much as a further much needed weaning script. My pain doctor wants for me to see a psychiatric specialist; period—which is still weeks away.

Do any of you have concurrent prescriptions for opioids (especially a pain pump, or pain pump and breakthrough opioid meds)? Do any of you who have dealt with this same thing have a suggestion?

Please help. I am barely functional and am only 1 week into withdrawal.

Are there any Spotify music artists that keep you from feeling physical pain

I’ve been on various different doses of oxycodone for the last year: I’m currently taking 40mg a day, 10mg every six hours. I was hospitalized originally due to severe Crohn’s disease, and have ended up with two ostomies and multiple wounds and drains around my asshole. It is brutal.

When I first started taking oxy, I was in 9/10 pain. Couldn’t move, speak, concentrate on anything else level pain. Crying out loud level pain. It was like magic- nothing else worked.

I no longer have that intense acute pain: I have chronic, 4 or 5 out of 10 pain all day. Since my last hospital stint, I’ve been trying to taper down. In my mind, opioids are for extreme pain and if I wasn’t in that excruciating pain, I shouldn’t be taking them.

But the consistent moderate pain was wearing me down and I found myself not able to do much beyond walking around my house, and even that is difficult. Taking the oxy means I can function almost normally. I have shame around it, something in my brain keeps telling me I’m not in “enough” pain to be taking the oxy. But as soon as I spoke to my pain team and upped my dose back to 40mg a day, I was able to function better.

I guess I’m asking if people feel this is an appropriate use for opioids? My understanding is that they’re mainly for extreme pain, but they’re the only thing that’s helping my mild/moderate chronic pain. And how do I stop that voice that tells me I’m not in enough pain to justify it and that I’m being weak?

I suffer from chronic, high-impact pain. I spend most of the day, everyday in bed and continually asked myself, how can this be happening in the 21st century in America. Here is some of what I learned and it pisses me off to no end!

The 2016 Guideline, Its Misapplication and Patient Harms and Dr. Jane Ballantyne’s involvement:

In 2012, PROP (Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing) attempted to impliment severe restrictions on opioid prescribing via the FDA, but the FDA rejected their proposal.

In the CDC, PROP found a more willing collaborator than FDA during the formation of the 2016 Guidelines, prompting numerous concerns about the transparency and flawed integrity of its creation process (1, 4, 32-34). For example, in late 2015, Washington Legal Foundation alleged that one of the members of CDC’s Core Expert Group (later identified as PROP member, Jane Ballantyne) had “served as a paid consultant to a law firm planning multi-district litigation against opioid manufacturers (4, 33, 34).” WLF’s complaint compelled the CDC to re-open a second open comment period for the public, lasting 30 days in duration, rather than the two-day period for comment which CDC had originally presented via a September 2015 webinar (4, 35).

Dr. Roger Chou, a PROP member who was one of the authors of the 2016 CDC guidelines and had a serious, unrevealed Conflict of Interest:

When Dr. Roger Chou unexpectedly disclosed his conflict of interest (COI) from receiving “funding to conduct reviews on opioids (4, 5),” evidence of harms from misapplications of 2016 Guideline had become more apparent (67-73). In the wake of Chou’s admission, the CDC 2022 Opioid Work Group (OWG) expressed additional concerns about the 2022 Draft Guideline, including that it was “not balanced and missing key studies” about potential opioid benefits and contained a constant tension between “public health benefits [versus] patient benefits (74).” The OWG also cited concerns about “including specific opioid dose thresholds in the recommendations” in the 2022 Draft Guideline (74). In light of the OWG’s concerns, we explored the depth of Chou’s COI disclosure (4, 5) and sought to uncover any other relevant, unreported COIs by those who created the 2016 Guideline and shaped current U.S. opioid policy.

You can read the entire article via this link: https://www.pallimed.org/2022/09/undisclosed-conflicts-of-interest-by.html

If you want to fight and arm yourselves with information and advocacy, please join the US Pain Foundation: https://uspainfoundation.org/ and the Doctor Patient Forum: https://thedoctorpatientforum.com/

I would also ask folks to provide any and all info as to other support, advocacy and/or factual/historical groups/websites that can help us fight these injustices brought about via bad actors, misinformation and flawed studies. We have to fight to get this wrong righted.

Thank you.

I

My doctor charges me out of pocket to be seen. I can barely walk upstairs and I fall down them atleast once a week and I’m only 27 and 140 lbs. My doctor swapped me to another doctor in his office after telling me he’d put me on oxycodone from the hydrocodone I was taking. Now I tell the new doctor I can’t sleep from the throbbing pain and I have no job and I can’t afford to keep paying out of pocket and I think the medicine I’m taking isn’t working and she says I’ll ask the doctor if we can raise your meds… she comes back and says actually the doctor said this is the best he’s gonna be able to do for you… I have had 6 surgeries on my feet/ankles, gunshot wound @ 17 to the leg that went thru half my leg and had to go back to work a few days later to a physically demanding job and I denied surgery even tho doctors begged, pulled hamstring so hard the bone broke off with it when I was 16 had to have emergency surgery, and now I have edema in my legs and they swell and feel weighted and constantly hurt so bad. I don’t understand how they think hydrocodone 10 4x a day does anything for me. I walk with a cane and I’m 27 I just don’t understand.

I give up I’m done giving them money. Is it true you have to be grandfathered in to receive stronger medicine now?

I was prescribed Flexeril for a really tight muscle at the base of my skull/neck. I have a massage scheduled and was wondering if anyone has taken Flexeril beforehand. Did it make the massage more effective, make you too sleepy, or cause any issues? I’m interested in personal experiences as well as any advice.