How to fix what's broken.

Hey Crohnie and sure am sorry to see you in the same boat as so many others here. The one where they left out the chapter in the medical text about none of feels pain in the same depth and degree and what may not occur in a hundred surgeries will occur in one!! Sounds like you have done your part in evaluating your pain, coming off your meds and that leaving a pretty clear picture of where you stand about says it all. Surgical adhering is extremely painful as is the numerous nerves that suffered damage during each of those procedures. We see it often here and have many that suffer same.

As for what to do or how to proceed the only thing I can offer is to find a pain management Dr that takes your pain seriously and understands that quality of life versus quantity is a real NO brainer for CPers. Sometime the search is long and many Dr's but there are good ones out there you just have to be prepared to work the maze and jump the hurdles of today's pain management. Finding a Dr thats a good fit and working to develope many small ways to battle the pain in bits and pieces by whatever methods work at all and hoping when they all come together you get an amount of pain left you can live with and that provides you a better quality of life.

Each of us has a routine of sorts, a bag of tricks if you will that we rely heavily on, heat/ice, yoga, biofeedback, aquatherapy, acupuncture, injections, nerve blocks, to name a few that we use and after those we let the meds do whatever they can to bring relief on home. So unfortunately we have no magic, no oneliners we can offer just find a good doc, get relief where you can and learn how to live with the rest.

Crohnie, like Vickie said find yourself a pain mgt dr.. Most of the time they will want a referral from another physician, your PCP could take care of this. You will be much better off being under the care of a PM dr as they know how to help manage pain better than a PCP or your gi dr.. If all of your drs refuse to make the referral. Once in a while a PM dr will not require a referral, but those are few & far in between. If you can't come up with something contact your insurance company & explain what is going on, they can help you out.

One way or the other, your drs were going to stop rxing pain meds long term because of the rules & guidelines they have to go by.

Keep us posted.

Horses or Zebras? Doctors were quick to blame my abdominal pain on scar tissue from abdominal surgeries, ignoring the possibility of other causes. My first ab surg was for an ovarian cyst the size of a grapefruit. Turns out at least part of my ab pain is because the remaining ovary is now the size of a walnut! Get to the gyn and make sure it's not a zebra!