Life With Chronic Pain

Last February my abdominal pain was becoming unbearable and my primary care physician felt uncomfortable prescribing me narcotics for a long period of time. As a result she referred me to a pain management doctor.

My insurance was a little sketchy so I had to drive from downtown LA to Pomona to see a doctor that took my insurance. I was a little annoyed with that but it turned out the doctor was fantastic and well worth the drive.

At my initial visit he did a very thorough exam and spent almost an hour with me. I was very surprised because other doctors that I have seen had spent less than ten minutes with me on my initial appointment. Towards the end of the exam he asked me how I wanted to proceed. He was afraid that I was experiencing hyperalgesia from the narcotics. He had two options: start several non-narcotic drugs and try to wean off the narcotics, or continue treating the pain with narcotics. I chose to go with option one. At the time I was taking about 40mgs of Vicoden a day and another 100mgs of Tramadol a day. I also had Compazine for Nausea. That day he prescribed me Tegratol and extended release Tramadol. He instructed me to increase my dose of Tramadol to 200mgs per day and to stop the Vicoden over a period of two weeks.

I knew that stopping Vicoden was going to be tough, but when I started I had no idea. My plan was to drop my dose by 5 mgs every 2 – 3 days. That would have me clean in about two to three weeks.

The first day wasn’t so bad. I was a little shaky, but nothing I couldn’t deal with. I went for a run and felt much better afterwards. The second day was much worse. My pain level began to climb and I felt like crap. I would sit in the bathtub for hours. It gave me some relief, but I still felt horrible. This continued for another week.

After a week of weaning my self off I was still taking 20 mgs per day. I wanted to die. My pain level was about a 6 most of the day and at night it shot up to an 8. I called my doctor and got an appointment for the next day.

He was concerned that I was in so much pain and he decided that it was unlikely that I was strictly from narcotic withdrawal. He decided to start me back on Vicoden and told me to take as much as I needed to keep the pain at a level 3. He also reminded me that my Tylenol intake should not exceed 4000 mgs per day.

So with my first attempt to get off of narcotics a bust, I was back to were I started, but with a great doc by my side.