pain clinic appt.

Hello Janet!…and Welcome to the CP forum!

Were glad to have you aboard, and I'm confident our members are willing to help you with any questions you may have, so feel free to ask….and there is no such thing as a dumb question. Were here to help anyone who ask, and our members have a deep knowledge and understanding when dealing with chronic pain.

Again!…Welcome and Enjoy the forum!

SE

Hi Janet, the DEA requires the Doctors to drug test every so often but I think your Dr must be having some problems since monthly is not the required amount. I have seen alot of them start doing them monthly and maybe they think it keeps the watchdogs away? I know my old Doc at home tested monthly as well but he did so because he was being monitored by the board and the DEA for "over prescribing" whatever that means? If you have pain he treated you,he was however one of the few that took medicaid that would and he was Internal med so they gave him a very hard time but he kept fighting them and using up his money to pay fines and lawyers and then I think it ,the fight, got the better of him. He seem to be a healthy vibrant 60 something one day and then down hill run to ill health the next. He got sick and he kept getting worse until 7 months after he started in with his illness he was dead.

He and I spent alot of time working together at the hospital over the years as well I went to Nursing school with his wife. He was a good Dr and he fought so long and so hard for the CPers and the right to treat them but once they got on his band wagon they were not getting off until another good Dr on our side was destroyed. They couldnt get him legally even though they sanctioned him twice he went to court and won to have it removed so they drove him and harrassed him until the pressures got him.

I can recall twice in a year they were using new charts on patients and they had nothing in them except the face sheet and the last progress report from your previous visit and when I asked his wife what was up with all the missing charts she said the DE and medicaid quality assurance team had all the charts going through them,kept them for months and returned them only to take them again for months more!! How could he do a job with nothing to work with and since they already had done it once and now most DRS never even get audited like such and they gpot him 2xs in a years? Just being nasty.

Anyway my move here to Florida was at a bad time for CPers but I finally got into a Neuro Dr that I love and he has had no problems helping me. He does random testing 3 times a year and 2 scheduled. so it turns out an average of every 2 months about but I could be scheduled this month and random next.

So out alot of the Drs are doing monthly just to keep the hounds at bay!!

thank you for your help with the keypad...i really appreciate it.

well my pain clinic doc is a very compassionate person and prefers to do all methods of treatment. he is one that will not give medication on a regular basis if the patient does not go along with what he thinks is best for you.
if he says you need injections and you keep cancelling the appointments, or he recommends physical therapy and you dont go then he doesnt keep prescribing meds.

he says in that case well obviously you dont want to help yourself so there is nothing i can do for you. i have heard him say that to many people. the walls are not very thick thick...lol

so im guessing he is drug testing every month to protect himself. i dont care one way or the other because i dont have to pay for the testing. i have never even kept up with when it was gonna be my month to be tested because i do nothing wrong to even care. i know there is normally people in the waiting room complaining about how much they owe to the lab that tests it. they would say they make payments montly and right when they pay the last payment its time to be tested again...lol

Jim...I can understand that point but it also depends on how long ago that type of therapy or treatment was done.

Many times if it's been more than 6 months to a year, then a new PM will want to try everything again. I actually still do all the same things that I did when I started seeing my PM in late 2006. I do injections a few times a year, acupuncture, Physical therapy but at home as I have all the paperwork and stretch bands I use every day. Exercise each day, TENS unit a few times a week, etc...

There is never going to be just that "one" thing that takes the pain down to a perfect level...so my PM believes in using as many modalities every day/week/month.

So, I think we can agree that it's the ones who say that "nothing" else works for their pain except pain meds that cause them to be suspicious.

In our state we only have to do a urine test once a year and thankfully my PM works with the lab to write it off 100% as it is the GC/MS type of test that is very expensive but it is the most accurate. (I don't have health insurance)

GA Peach...it shouldn't be the DEA that is making your Dr. do these monthly urine tests..The Controlled Substance Act does not have anything written that requires this and that is a Federal Law.

I also don't know of any states that have moved to monthly urine testing as well. So it's either your Dr. is possibly under investigation (as mentioned by Vickie) and something happened to a patient or patients like overdose or they have been monitoring and he is prescribing large amounts of short acting meds to chronic pain patients....

You can certainly ask him as you have a right to know if it's a personal decision of his or whether it is state law or not. You can ask out of curiosity, not that you are objecting.

I'm surprised that if your stomach is very sensitive (you mentioned the MSIR)...that the acetaminophen in the Lortab doesn't bother you. Especially with the 500mg in each pill.....Just fyi but the FDA passed legislation a bit ago to stop any new production of anything above the 325mg of acetaminophen in any type of pill.

So don't be surprised if you end up going to the Pharmacy and they only have the 325mg ones...You must have been going to one that still has leftover stock of the old ones.

And just FYI if you ever end up needing to try MSIR again....I am on MSContin and it took about a month for the nausea to go away but haven't had a single issue since:)

well i have always done everything that they ask of me. i am willing to try anything that the doc thinks will help me. thats what i pay him for and he went to college and i did not. i do know my body better than anyone but you never know just because i didnt respond to physical therapy one time doesnt mean i wont the next time.

i also have two spinal stimulators implanted. he knows i will do whatever is ask of me. the drug testing doesnt bother me at all. in fact, i would rather him test us every month because it gives me a piece of mind. atleast if he protects himself its less of a chance that the doors will be locked and him gone one day.

snowbunny, im not sure about the lortabs being 500 and going down to 325. i guess it will still help me for bt pain but if not then i will have to try something else. i have to go to kroger to get my meds because my husband is a upper management there. thats what my insurance pays for. the only time i can go elsewhere is if we go on vacation and the state we go does not have a kroger.

i know yesterday i went to get my all my meds filled and i had to go back after 3:00 to get the lortabs because they were out and i had to wait for the truck to deliver it.

also, msContin worked better than anything ive ever tried. it did not give me nausea. i can deal with that. i ended up having chest pains that hurt worse than my back pain. i was on it for two weeks and couldnt take the pain any longer. i thought i was having a heartattack. the day i stopped taking it the pains went away. they even had me go to a cardiologist.

it ended up causing my stomach pouch to be inflammed at the opening that goes into the next part. they had me go to my surgeon that did my gastric bypass to check me. he said my intestines have been rerouted and they are not supposed to absorb er meds. in that case though i dont understand why it helped the pain so good.

then since i had to go back on the patch the doc said i could try the morphine ir and see if it made a difference in the pain. it made me have chest pains too but not near as bad. the fact that it caused any pains, the doc changed me back to lortab. that way as long as i take it on a full stomach it dont hurt me at all. she just increased me from 60 a month to 75 a month for the bad days. i dont take it everyday though. i use it only for bt.

i did have injections last week for the right side of my back. now i go on march 4 i think, to have the left side injected.

i do really appreciate you guys talking to me. my best friend and the only friend i have ever had passed away. she was the only person i ever talked about pain with. i was her caregiver as she went through a stem cell transplant. i promised her if anything ever happened to her that i would stay living at her house and help raise her kids as their mom.

my husband and i had moved in with her and her family when she became ill. her husband and my husband grew up together. we have been around her two young children since birth. we are helping her husband raise the kids. its kinda hard but the kids understand my disabilities and eveyone helps out. im so blessed to have my family. i truly feel much happier since i have found this website and awesome people to communicate with that know what pain is like.



thank you all so much for listening and giving me advice. i read everything thats posted and feel like i have really been blessed to have found you guys. thanks, janet

snowbunny, so now my bottle says 10/500 and soon it will change to 10/375 and i will have to take a tylenol with it... is this Right?

yeah the fentanyl is not working as well as it should. they changed me to MS Contin to give the patches a break and go back to it later. she says it would work better that way. i took the MS Contin as long as i could. i went six days un able to eat. my pouch was so irritated that the food would get stuck and i would have to throw it up. thats when they sent me to my stomach surgeon. i actually had diarrhea to the point where i had to throw away 17 pairs of underwear and i wasnt even eating anything..lol

they at that point put me on the patch to give my stomach pouch a break. when it was healed they tried me on exalgo er. i was on the strongest dosage of that and it didnt help. so, i had togo back to the patch.

then she said what if we try changing the bt meds and see what happens... thats when i had the morphine ir. it hurt my stomach too but not near as bad.

so, now im back to the patches but its 75mcg instead of 50mcg. also, i get 75 lortabs instead of 60. that way on bad days i wouldnt have to suffer. im thinking too that may if i had my neurontin changed and go up on that, it may make a difference.

i have been to neurologists, neurosurgeons, and a doctor that did extensive nerve studies on my legs, arms and feet and back. they will not do surgery yet. the neurosurgeon said if he is not sure that it would help and not make it worse then he wont do it. i was sent to three different surgeons and all three said the same thing.

do you think that means that they will never agree to try and fix it? i keep asking if i am gonna end up permanetly in a wheelchair and the doc will say i hope not and we will do the best we can to try and keep that from happening.

my legs just keep getting weaker and weaker. i cant even go up stairs anymore. i make it the first time and after that i cant do it again. i try to exercise but the more i do with my legs, the more pain meds i have to take. its really scary.

at night i have to set my clock to go off every two hours. i have to flip sides because my hips hurt to the point where if i lay on them longer than that i cant move them. i walk with crutches every morning until my hips get adjusted to movement. i cant sleep with my scs on bscause its uncomfortable.

the way it is now, i dread going to bed every night. i get anxiety not knowing what the night will bring. they put me on ambien to make me sleep through the pain but it wakes me up anyway. my hips have severe arthritis in them. my scs works for it though. during the day it does anyway. i hope one day there will be something they can do. i just have to wait. thanks for listening janet

i am 43 and will be 44 in july. it sounds like we take some of the same meds. i also have flexeril and i was taking mobic but because of my stomach problems im not at the present time. i dont take arthritis meds.

my husband bought me the tempurpedic bed that is adjustable. i adjust that to take pressure off my back. i too sleep with pillows between my legs. it really helps.

the crutches help take the pressure of my lower back and when i have the nerve pain going down both legs it really helps.

i think i will ask about going to the neurosurgeon again to be elvaluated. it cant hurt anything anyway. all it will hurt is my feelings, just like last time, thats when he said there is nothing i can do. if i here that again i can handle it this time. lol

thanks for the advice i really appreciate it janet

Hi, my new pm does drug tests atleast 4 times a yr. Are you from georgia? I live in ga.