Symptom Relief

Hi Ta

 

   My husband does take opiods for pain, only because nothing else works and it was a last resort.  He doesn't however find any relief to the numbness and tingling with that though.  The only thing he has found to help with that was steroids unfortunately, and he takes those sparingly if at all and it's just a temporary fix.  Everyone is different though, hopefully there will be others who had different results to share.

 

Kimber

I find that extra-strength vicodin is the best for fatigue relief for me! It puts most to sleep, but I find that it works better then provigil most days. My biggest concern about using it as a stimulant, and not needing it for pain, is that I will prematurely get a tolerance to opiod narcotics and when I truely need the pain relief it will be very difficult to accomplish. So I use it very rarely and only when I am having moderate pain.

I have had numbness and tingling since before I was diagnosed or knew what MS was. Before the numbness in my feet I used to have unbearable pain. Although the numbness and tingling was irritating and scary at first, I very quickly realized there was no more pain. I take it as a blessing. Some medical journals will argue that the numbness and tingling is a form of pain and can have the same psyhcological effects of overt chronic pain.

Have you talked to your doctor about the numbness and tingling? There are meds out there that can help with it besides the vicodin. MS can be a painful disease and if you don't have pain now, that is very good. I would strongly suggest against the use of opiod narcotics, unless you have moderate pain. I have seen people in the middle or end stages of a painful chronic disease where nothing works for their pain short of sedation and a breathing machine. On the flip side, this is rare to happen to that extreme. What is common is a need for stronger pain killers in the future.

It is interesting to see hwo the same medication can work differently for diffrent people though.