Thank you so much for the kind replies. My doctors is not as concerned about the opiods as she is concerned with my pain levels. I am coping but when the pain stays over a 10 for longer than 4 days I start to become suicidal. All I can do is lay in bed shake and pray to die. I am so suprised that people are not more aware of this kind of suffering. This pain became unmanageable after rods started to work their way out of my spine. My thoracic was literally hanging off the rods. They removed them, the fusion failed, and I told them in the hospital that I couldn't survive this. I never recovered. I tried everything under the sun while trying to survive. I did not use opiods until I tried to kill myself and was saved by shock therapy that brought back my will to live. I live with pain levels that stay about an 8 with opiods. As I had mentioned in previous post my quality of life is poor. I understand the drawback of these drugs but I don't know what you do with this. I stay on a lower dose because I know they don't work over time. I never knew people could survive this kind of agony. My docter feels that the pain pump was made for people like me. I have tried meditation, cognative approaches, marijuana, gabepentin, cymbalta, so on and so forth. The drugs ware off and I am back to the very scary place of feeling I am dying from agony yet I keep on living. I wonder why so few speak of Intractable Pain and wonder how many people out there suffer and commit suicide becaues they could not express their agony. I started with Fybromyalgia and lived with chronic pain for years. This is worse than I could ever imagine. I pray god helps all who suffer like this. They say Osteoporosis is a silent killer but I have found it to be horrible. My spine is literally crumbling and all my long bones hurt like they are broken. The only way I can describe it is like when I broke my leg when I was young but it is all over my body. I feel bad to put this in writing but I feel so alone in this and I used to be a very well respected teacher and therapist. Now I am limited to a bed and four walls I spend far to much time looking at. This person I hardly recognize. I hang on because people love me and I am a fighter. I have changed everything from what I put into my mouth to what I put on my body. I have researched IP for any other clues to what I should do. If anyone out there knows anything about this I am all ears. God bless all who suffer silently.
Kristine