Posted 1/25/2012 6:26 AM (GMT 0)
Bwfm, thanks for your reply. That's awful!!! It's not so much that I'm upset about the March appt, though I am very dissapointed. It's the fact that my Dr office said they were contacting the rheumy and that I would hear from them in 2 days and a week later I had to call them myself and they'd never heard of me from my Dr office.
As for the pain management, when I saw my Dr I was having bad back, hip and knee pains. He gave me 5mg Oxycodone, every 4hrs...60 pills in the bottle. Since seeing him I have been worse than ever before. I have been rushed to the ER because my joints very suddenly felt like they were on fire. I've been waking up with horrible muscle pains in my upper arms. Like I lifted too many weights at the gym is how I describe the burning ache. One day last week I almost lost all use of my legs. I could barely stand and when I tried to walk I was like a baby giraffe! There's been something new and more painful, it seems like, each day.
None of these things are in my records that the rheumy will use to evaluate the severity of my case to determine how soon I'm seen. I made an appt with my Dr for 11:45am tomorrow...err, today since it's 1:15am now I guess. I also just had surgery this past afternoon and the Gyn that did my surgery sent me home with a rx for 800mg Ibuprofen and said that my Oxycodone would take care of the pain. What he didn't know was that the position they laid me in caused me to have a horrendous amount of pain in my back, hips and legs. I cried for hours after the surgery. They gave me all the doses of Fentanyl they could then called the Dr for the okay to give me an extra one before sending me home. I ended up with like 5 doses of it then took 2 Oxycodone pills, an 800mg Ibuprofen and had a heating pad on my back and one on my upper thighs before feeling any relief. I tried to tell the Gyn that the Oxycodone wasn't working for the "normal" pain I was having, let alone pain from an operation.
The ER nurses got mad at me because the Fentanyl shots in my IV were literally not doing anything for me after the first 15mins. They kept repeating, "We're not supposed to give you this much. This is a really strong medication. I can't believe that you're not getting relief from this." And so on. One nurse even got a little loud with me and said, "We aren't here to treat all your pain just the new pain from the surgery." All I could do was cry while my back knotted and twisted and my ovaries felt like someone had them in a vice grip and my upper thigh muscles ached and burned like never before. I've only been in that much pain once in my life and that was when I was in back labor with my son in 2001. Yes, it hurt that bad today.
I sincerely hope that your daughter pushes the issue further! She needs help with the pain. I'll pray for you and your family.