Pain and discouragement
my chronic pain is often a downer. I do take meds for it but often am late with them and then the pain is awful. is life worth living is the trap i get into..i am a very senior person.
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@primghar and @resawaller - thinking of you both today. How are you doing with the pain?
Surging. I need to see the doctor about getting more effective meds, but in a peculiar way I’d almost rather endure pain than to ask for more or more effective stuff. Every time you approach a doctor about an opioid they act if you’re some kind of drug seeking addict selling it all on the side.
Hi Jim, Before the Swim. is implanted you have to see a Psychologist. If you have Medicare that is their rule. You do have to go to the hospital, your Rep. will be in the OR with you. Not a big surgery, small amount of discomfort after. Please, make sure the battery is not on your waist it should be in the upper buttock. I had a stimulator it worked for me for my leg pain. I don't know if the Representative from the company offered you different kinds of stimulation going into your spine, legs? I choose a wavy constant movement in my leg. It was soothing and kept my mind off my pain. In my area the Company name is Medtronic they have a high success rate. My Pain Management refers me to no one! I don't have the Stim. anymore I have an implanted pain pump continuous medication with it is something like a remote control called a Bolus which means if I need more medication I press the Bolus. It's programed for every hour and half 8 x's a day. I hope this helped.
So True! I never run out of my meds that should count?
@kimspr3 Did you have an scs or a drg stimulator? I have a Burst DR stimulator from Abbott (when I got the implant it was with St. Jude, then they sold it to Abbott). There are a few surgery centers around here, connected with groups of doctors. They do a wide range of outpatient surgeries. If it becomes necessary to stay overnight the patient is moved to the hospital, just a few blocks away.
I spoke with my pain specialist last week and he said that the doctors who did pain pumps here in Oregon no longer do them. There are a few who put them in but they're quite a ways away from home. I'm not sure why they stopped doing them. But the medication he started me on has been working - hopefully not just in my head.
Jim
MINE TOO, SMILE
Hi, I hope you will be able to stay on the Medication seeing that it helps. My drug Stim. is my pump. I made a mistake, When I had the Stimulator it was in Ambulatory Same Day not a hospital. Even here in NJ, I'm 70 miles from NYC very few Doctors do Pain Pumps. I don't know why? I travel 2 hrs 1 way to have the pump filled once a month. Not bad. For me, I need the pump but I don't want to take pills also anymore taking a toll. May I suggest before procedures that may be offered to you try a little research about it. I wish I had done that.
@kimspr3 I had an appointment last week with my pain specialist. He didn't explain why the local doctors quit doing pump implants, but I gather that they had problems with them. I told him that I saw online a list of a few doctors who do them, but they're all over in the Willamette valley, 3 hours from where I live. The pain doctor discouraged getting a pump. I'm not interested in driving 3 hours each way for a refill every month. It would be expensive because I wouldn't want to do the round trip in one day. That means a night in a motel and several restaurant meals.
I know that I take a lot of pills every day - for neuropathy pain, arthritis, allergies, reflux, svt, anxiety plus various vitamins. I told my PCP this afternoon that if imipramine actually does treat my neuropathy pain, I would try backing off morphine. But for now I'll stick with the morphine. I stopped taking it a couple of years ago, and after two weeks I knew that it truly was reducing the pain. So I do what I need to.
Jim