Lyme Pain Mangement

I posted this over on the lyme board but I figured I would get a wider variety of responses here.

I've been treating lyme disease for a little over a year now and I am now dealing with pain on an almost daily basis.

i get very bad headaches and lymph node pain in my neck and i am prescribed vicoprofen as needed. my neck often feels very uncomfortable and I have alot of muscle tension. the thing is, i don't get any refills so i'm scared to take it. if i take it a couple times a week I will start to get dependent on it and i pretty much need it every day. he also prescribes me ibuprofen 400mg as needed but he also says i shouldn't be taking that every day.

the pain is not unbearable but its bad to the point where i've lost pretty much all desire to go to school and hang out with my friends. i pretty much just do nothing all the time because im not feeling good enough. i feel like i need a mainentance dose of a time-release painkiller as I can't stand only feeling okay when i take my vicoprofen once a week. i need something else.

any advice?

Hi dcraver,

I have Lyme, plus a lot of coinfections, six autoimmune diseases and fibromyalgia, so I'm dealing with severe pain in many areas: joints, muscles, rib cage, lower back, upper back, neck, migraines, you name it.

about a year ago my pain issues came to a head when I was hospitalized with an attack of excruciating pain in the right upper quadrant of my abdomen (liver/gallbladder area). Well, my gallbladder was removed more than a decade ago, but I do have autoimmune hepatitis with Stage II liver damage, so they ultimately decided it had something to do with my liver, although they never did figure it all out.

The only pain med that touched it in the hospital was morphine but even that didn't do enough. I ended up on fentanyl patches. Those definitely helped more than anything I'd ever taken! I would still be using them except for the fact that they suppressed my breathing too much (I'm fond of breathing). So now I'm on Dilaudid, which isn't as effective for me but is pretty good.

But the problem is that I'm only sharing my own experiences....Jim and RetiredMom are right in saying that only a doctor can help you figure out what type of pain meds YOU need. An LLMD may not be able to do that. You probably need to see a pain management specialist and explain all of your pain issues and the history of the meds that you've tried, etc., so that they can help you find something that really works. A lot of people here are using time-release meds with an additional pain med for "breakthrough" pain.

Good luck to you....please keep us posted!
JoAnn

bump. Is there any time-release form of vicoprofen? when i take it only provides relief for about two hours max and then the pain gets worse when it wears off. There's gotta be something better than this.

thanks for the reply. i wish i could just get some temporary relief for even just 3 days out of 7 in a week. I need to feel okay sometimes so I can have some resembalance of a normal social life. Without it, I am so much more miserable! I crave social interaction!

I have an appt this afternoon. I was crying the last week straight for at least a half an hour each day. I just don't have the motivation to fight through the pain anymore. I am praying to get some relief but if I don't I guess I will try and find some natural alternatives. I gotta do what I gotta do or else I'm going to be thinkign about death every day and that is no good.

i finally got him to address the issue. We came to the conclusion that the ibuprofen in vicoprofen (even at a low dose of 200mg) was giving me pains in my digestive tract. he recommended oxycodone 15mg. I guess I will take it when I really need it. He says if its still not effective, I can take aspirin with it.