@bwe, here is something I posted in another thread on ketamine. I am not a doctor, only a person who has had chronic pain for 30 years and never stopped searching for the root cause, but while searching, had to manage his chronic pain while traveling the world on business and now, unfortunately, have found my son also suffers chronic pain for a very different reason but did not want him to rely on opioids for pain relief so I kept searching for alternative pain management solutions.

I believe you need to find a younger ketamine specialist who believes in wafers, as some of the older generations still only do infusions, which are so much more demanding on the body or are done in the hospital. They will likely do infusions to start with, monitor your reaction, pain levels, and liver function for some time, and then, if all is good on the liver side, transition to a wafer where you can manage the treatment without the ups and downs of an infusion.

Ketamine has been a game-changer for my son since 2018 from chronic pain. He started with intense 6-hour infusions, which lasted three months before the next round. That sort of infusion was very tough on the body. The pain would go from a 7 to a manageable 3, then gradually creep up over three months.

During Covid-19, he helped develop different flavor wafers with his doctor in Miami, as you could not go into the clinic. He would have one wafer one day and two the next day. This changed his life as the pain would stay at a 4 in general day in and day out. This a fantastic outcome after eight years of searching for a solution to allow him to manage his pain.

We moved country, and unfortunately, where we live is not as advanced, and he had to do an 8-day stint in the hospital for an extended infusion by a pump with a needle inserted under the skin on his stomach, far from ideal.

The wafer system is a life-changing way to go, but as we have found, not all doctors like that route. Ketamine is not for everyone and only works for 1/3 of the people who start it. You will need blood work every three months to measure liver function, and you may run a higher risk of bladder cancer later in life, but this is not clinically proven. I would highly recommend taking Milk Thistle tablets to help the liver function. Once we learned this, his liver enzymes were perfect. The doctors where we live now were amazed as they never knew this. Look up ketamine treatments in Miami, and you will find some options to call. Ketamine is not for everyone, but if it works, it can be a game-changer, as my son has seen. He got his life back.