@tjp4 and @snowflake and others,
I have not been on the Chronic Pain site in a while. I am a mentor in the Women's Health group but often visit this group because I suffer from chronic pain from scoliosis and spinal stenosis. My symptoms have been progressive burning pain in my legs and aching in my lower legs and ankles. I have avoided any surgery for this and took opioids and gabapentin with few if any side effects. Since late last year I began trying a new drug called belbuca mainly because my pain doctor is trying to minimize the opioids he prescribes. I was a skeptic since I have suffered with chronic pain down my legs and into my ankles for over 10 years and I have tried pretty much everything nonsurgical. Belbuca is both an opioid agonist and opioid antagonist as I understand it. So it does have some opioid in it but it is not as high on the drug schedule as regular hydrocodone which is what I have been taking. The belbuca comes as a tiny stick-on patch that you put inside your mouth on your cheek until it dissolves. It usually takes not more than 30 minutes. It is a 12 hour medication which if it works correctly should eliminate all the pill taking or reapplication. I began at a low dose and did not think it did much. Then I went up on dosage and within a week I had reduced my opioid pills from 6 per day to 4 per day. I no longer have the nerve/burning pain in my legs much at all but still have some of the other skeletal/muscular pain in one of my lower legs and ankles. So I increased the dosage again starting today and am going to see how I do. I have very good insurance but even if you do not, there are some coupons for belbuca that I got from my doctor (there may be some online as well).

I am just wondering if anyone else has tried belbuca and what your experience was. I also wanted to share mine just in case someone might be interested in checking it out by discussing it with your doctor. My pain is quite severe and has been for many years so finding something that helped even a little was really quite encouraging. Just wanted to share it with the group.

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