Has Anyone Had Their Pain Meds Reduced yet - New Fed Guidelines?

Hi Everyone,

I was just wondering if anyone here has had their doctors reduce their opioid pain medication yet according to the new Federal Guidelines - which essentially says nobody but cancer patients should be on narcotic pain meds.

My Pain Med appt is coming up at the end of next month and I have no idea what they are going to do so I was just wondering what has happened to others.

(My H was on 90mg of Morphine for intractable back pain...he's now down to 2-15mg doses a day with another few 15mg for the month 'if he needs it' so who knows what they think a Fibro person will need if an inoperable back gets reduced this much.)

Also, our clinic did not handle this roll out of their new med policy well. They didn't even talk to my H the first time he picked up his meds and they had dropped him by 30mg of morphine without telling or talking to him. So we discovered most changes when we went to the pharmacy or called to find out if our scripts were ready only to be told, on a Friday, you needed to make an appt before they could give you new scripts. And now...if I go look for a new doc/clinic cuz I'm fed up with this one, I will be seen as 'doctor shopping.' It's been lovely. A real catch 22.

So how is it going for everybody else?

Thanks! Hope everyone is having a much better day than yesterday

Thanks but I Am SOOOO Sorry....maybe I could have added some info and saved you a bit of typing Still good to read and thank you very much.

I've been on SSD for this for 20+ years. My doc thinks I also have SFPN among other things. I have virtually every symptom on the Fibro list..anyone's. I've tried just about everything for it. I have done this with pain meds and without. Been with for the last 10 years.

Last Autumn, I dropped my Vicodin from 4/5 q day to 3 w/muscle relaxers. More pain but tolerable. Made me mind my p's & q's so it was a 'good' thing (my H developed sleep apnea & an enlarged heart from taking Morphine and Vicodin + sleep meds for his back so if it could happen to him, it could to me so that's why I reduced my amount plus I knew this Fed thing was coming). I could better tell the source of pain if there was one and I was more conscientious about when I walked or didn't due to calves or achilles or whatever because I could feel it better. Then I tried a few days off completely here not too long ago....I tapered off to none. What shocked me is for all the Gabapentin I am on, it was the Vicodin that actually calmed the neuropathy-style buzz/pain cuz that was screaming. I learned a whole bunch of things and one of them was and is I do not want to be without Vicodin if I don't have to. (I have no addiction to it and my biggest withdrawal is I yawn - a lot!) I take a 1/2-10mg tab w/a 1/2 muscle relaxer about every 3-4 hours plus the Gabapentin & MMJ. I've tried Tramadol and while it worked slightly better for nerve pain than Vic does, I found it really nauseating and unreliable - sometimes it took hours to take effect it seemed. Maybe I don't have a reliable gut source of the enzyme or whatever it is to make the Tramadol truly effective in me. And wow you can take that much Ibuprofen? My kidneys would be screaming. I'm very happy for you that that helps you and you can tolerate it well. That's wonderful.

Tried Lyrica, Savella, Cymbalta, etc. Savella almost landed me in the ER. For whatever reason, I do not tolerate meds that mess with your serotonin and that other one that starts with an 'N' It sets off my nervous system. Even though I knew this from years ago, I was hoping something had changed so that's how I ended up trying Savella. Never again.

I don't tolerate humidity at all or odors or cool water but our Y redid their system to Ultraviolet recently so chlorine smell is reduced and I am hoping it won't be too terrible in there with the noise and input. I plan on going down there to scope it out...you know...see what it's like, what to expect. They do have classes but I'm not sure if the pool is warm enough for Fibro. I could probably wear something on my neck/upper back if they let you. I also have a ton of fatigue (they thought I might have narcolepsy for awhile there) so getting organized to get there from here is, well, surmountable but it's hard enough to get to the store. Big plans, little energy. You know the drill. Some of my docs have thought I had CFS too. Who knows.

I've got my yoga and about a million plans from PT's over the years but I've also been told if you are already 'stretched' feeling just standing there, there's nothing I can do with you. The hard part isn't doing it. It's keeping on doing it.

Thanks for mentioning the pain=Fibro trap. I have some scoliosis and loradosis - my 15" of fame was my neck x-ray at a rural Minnesota hospital. Ha ha ha!!! But maybe my pain appt will be a good thing in that my doc will be forced to talk about it - without falling asleep - cuz maybe it is time. The only Rheumy I've ever seen was when I still had COBRA insurance after I went on medical leave so I only had a few appts available to me. And, well, like you said...once you are stamped Fibro, that's pretty much it. It does not help, however, that we do have to remind ourselves pain is signal something is wrong, not usually an every day occurrence.

I just have no idea what my doc is going to suggest. The clinic did a really poor job of rolling all of this out on the patient side so I think we all have a little anxiety about it.

Anywho...Thanks again.

Thanks - I'll go look. I didn't know about opioids messing with serotonin. I wonder why my doc wouldn't have thought of that??? Anyway thanks