@sandytoes14
I don't think I've heard of Savella or milnacipran. I'm going to ask my doctor about that. I wish I could take Cymbalta but it caused the inside of my throat to swell bad. Lyrica too. I've had over 30 meds cause swelling, usually in my legs and feet. I also have neck and shoulder pain from a car accident, but the lower back pain is pretty much constant and the pain is very sharp. my hydrocodone 4X a day helps some with my other pains but not my lower back. I really agree with you about health care and pain meds. the government has cracked down a lot due to drug addicts and people selling the meds too, making it even harder for we in major pain to get it. I was on 5 a day but my doctor lowered it. thank you so much for sharing, sandytoes14.
Clownscrytoo

Hi. Congress is having USDA do a study on how many people are opiate addicts. The HUGE problem with the study is that they are throwing heroine on with opiate addicts & deaths. It's going to be so off!!! They need to separate heroine from other opiates to make the study more accurate!
So with that & the CDC giving doctors to either not/stop subscribing opiates for long term illnesses. They are totally clueless how much hell we go through every day! There are meds that can help our chronic pain but Congress is taking them away from us. We all need to enlighten our Congress members that we NEED good pain meds! I have hydrocodone for break through pain but cannot get more than 30 pills per month. Not near enough for my bad days--usually winter is a lot worse! Now my daily pain med is Nucynta. It is an opiate but it does not have the bad side effects like the others. No ups & downs. After a couple weeks it helped stable my pain

Hi Sandy, I was just reading through the comments on pain and fibro.. Anyone that has real cronic pain knows that we don't even get close to feeling high on pain meds. With this big push on getting everyone off pain pills "carte blanche" is not fair. I'm still getting pain pills because of my spine surgeries (one more to go). However, my doctor is dying to stop prescribing them. Then what? The same people that convinced me to take 4 pills a day instead of "as needed' now just wants me to just stop. Even though I don't think I can make it without any help from pain meds. Every time I try to ask how to get help to get off the pills, they just blow me off. Mostly, they say just stop. What kind of professionals say that. If it was so easy there would not be so many non-sick people trying to do anything to get their hands on them. At my age and all the complications I have, I should be allowed to have some relief. Or any age for that matter. I don't know who to turn to..
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