Thank you all so much and I am sooo glad to be able to help. After I blew out my knee in 98 and finally got to the point I knew I would never lift another stretcher into the back of an ambulance or even sit on my knee's on the ground beside an accident victim I was devastated! I had spend my entire life in the business of helping others and it was not just what I did it was WHO I am. To me this was the hardest part of this entire trip in the CP world. To be able to come to a place such as this and actually help someone in some small way is better therapy then all the PT and Phsych session medicare has paid for over the years.
1st Pam putting the info in your wallet is a must do! If ever your picked up by an ambulance and not yourself and they see your meds in your purse the very 1st thing they are likely to do is narcan you. I am not saying this is the wrong thing to do as risking someones life over overdosing versus something else isnt worth not doing. They can pull you back from the horrific effects that narcan causes in a opiate tolerant person fast with only a shot of morhine but if they linger more then a few minutes in a dying overdosed person all is lost.
Tony is correct in saying that carrying meds outside of unlabed containers is a felony in all states. In saying that this is a very simple and free alternative. Ask your pharmacist to make you "purse or carry on bottles,what this is small prescription bottles with your origional labels on them and they can pull these right off their computers and attach them to little pill bottles and they read exactly as your larger origional bottles.
This is also necessary or at least advised in air travel or bus or train. Lord knows you dont want to be waylaid by security for carrying narcotics on board without proper labels or containers.
This also assists in those times when you may end up in the ER by accident or illness and they are trying to figure out what all these pills are in those nice little pill containers so they dont give you something to react to anything your taking.
I carry a midic alert list in my wallet that lists all my meds but we all know there are times we have changes in our meds and forget to change the list.
I have to say this again here although Methadone has many side effects and myths that go along with taking it even the stigma of being on a med that is for "addiction" and yes so many folks jump to that conclusion right off, far to few folks realize it is a great pain med as well, It has been a life saver for me.
Another thing i want to say here on the plus side is it is very cost effective as well. Many times CPers get put on methadone becuase they lose their insurance or their medicaid or medicare wont cover the med they were on or simply their part of the coverage for the origional med was far more then amny of can come up with most months.
Take for instance 180 methadone 10mgs cost somewhere in the field of $38 versus 100's of dollars that many oxy-c or opana would cost.
I have many friends that were forced onto methadone by medicaid in this state and even if I think it is a great med it doesnt work out for everyone and this is one of my soap boxes here,when the stat or anyone other then you and your Doc make changes in your meds by refusing to pay the price of them. I wont get into the rampage here on I how I feel about all that but I am fairly sure many of you have been there.
Now onto how much is a max dose? That would be very difficult to answer and I will try to tell you short of a book here Stray,but I will say from what I see your on you have a long long way to go before you get there!
1st remeber no one can go from 10 to 100 on methadone in a day or even a week without risking killing themselves and it all goes back to how it lingers in your system that I explained in a previous post on this thread.
I know people who manintain on 10mgs a day or less and I know several folks who take as much 320mgs a day but remember they didnt get there in months or even a few years and it isnt unheard of for those in the methadone clinic to take even more then that dose but they are watched very closely and seen every single day when they pick up their doses. For pain I have not seen anyone on that high of a dose.
I am also going to say here that you can and many do take your entire daily dose of methadone at one dosing and it wont hurt you. Let me explain that some here I dont want anyone to get confused.
It all goes back to how it gets into and stays in your system. I do this becuase for me clock watching for meds was one of the things that I hated on short term meds as I thought it was making me revolve my world around a pill!
If you take 60mgs of methadone a day say 2 pills 3 times a day you can and I do take all 60mgs at 5 a.m. and require nothing else until 5 a.m. the next morning. No I do NOT feel anything like w/ds by end of day,no I dont have anymore pain then I would have otherwise by end of day and no I dont get "high" from that 60mgs.
It is the way methadone was designed to work. It is how it works in the addiction clinics when they show up each and every morning at 6 a.m and take their meds and dont go back for 24 hours,it is still in their system at midnight the same night and the dropping levels dont seem to occur until they reach that 24-26 hours later and then only by a little not all of it.
Your body is accomadated to all 60mgs and it doesnt decrease in your system for more then 24 hours so for me it works better this way more level. By taking it some here and some there it is upping and owning even though the amounts in your blood arent changing by more then a few mgs at a time.
In saying that Docs just get into the ever so many hours dosing schedule and thats what they write,my Doc thru the years has finally given it up and just writes it as 60mgs a day and I take it however I want,its still 60mgs a day no matter if it is once a day or 3 times a day.
I have found that taking like this if I have to go out or something hampers me from getting back to my meds for some reason I am not panicking. I can take a over nite trip and not even have to take my methadone out of the safe as long as I am sure I will return by morning.
Those of you that take B/T meds such as the morphine might talk this over with your Doc and see if this is something that might work better for you as I would think that the rescue med might be able to do a little better job if the methadone isnt being dropped into the mist of it thru out the day,but please talk to your Doc!
I want to say this again those taking high doses of methadone DIDNT get there in day or a week or even a month,it took years of titrating up slowly.
If you have any more questions please dont hesitate to ask and If I dont know the answer I certainly know where to find it.