Chronic Pain members - Welcome, please introduce yourself

Hi. I have been on Lyrica since it's trial @ HSS. Approximately 2008. I have never suffered any side effects except those on my wallet. Now that there is a generic, that costs way less, Medicare won't approve it!

Dearest @lioness, I hope and pray that my situation is only a local one. My town is not a booming metropolitan area. I have studied a bit about the subject regarding doctors who have complicated patients. I am complicated. It has taken me many years to learn how to obtain proper medical care.

I'm hoping that you and I both will do just fine. We will be good patients and good consumers. We will advocate where necessary.

Love and light,
Mamacita Jane

@mamacita
The day that the Lyrica disaster hit, we were meeting with the financial advisor and I think I said some weird things. Then we had lunch at one of our favorite joints in Bend, Oregon, and I couldn't eat. I just put my head on the table. My wife decided that we needed to go straight home. Fortunately she was driving. I would start a sentence and couldn't complete it. I became increasingly incoherent, had a fever and had no memory. When we went to the ER, my wife expressed her concern that I might have had a stroke. That brought a quick end to the check in. They got me in an ER room and put monitors on me. Then alarms went off when I went tachycardic. Things happened fast, but by the time they got me on a defibrillator, my heart rate went back to normal. That night I thought I was having a cardiac event, but we figured out that I was having a panic attack - awful things - because of the endotracheal tube. I've had those tubes in several times but this was the first time I had a panic attack.

So no more Lyrica. Bummer.

But I started taking Imipramine and I'm up to 75 mg and the neuropathy pain has gone down from 4-8 to 2-3. I'm going to step up to 100 mg tomorrow. I can walk through the stores all day and my feet hardly hurt! Unfortunately my BP went up when I started taking it, so I think it might be a drug interaction with any one of several meds. I have to play around with meds to find the culprit. I just hope it's not a medication that I really need. I was going to stop taking the Benadryl at bedtime tonight, but I thought about it as I was swallowing my nightly pills. But I'm going to enjoy the pain relief while it lasts.

Jim

@jimhd So glad to hear your heart is better . You want to stay that way. Does Imipramine act like Lyrica? Never heard of that drug. What ever you can take for pain relieve is what we all want.

@lioness Imipramine is for depression, but is prescribed for other things. I think it's a cousin of amitriptyline.

Hi @lioness,
@jimhd is right. It is an older form of anti-depressants called tricyclic antidepressant. Other names are Tofranil and Tofranil-PM. Many of these older anti-depressants were used to treat not only depression but are also used for pain. Here is a link to a website where you can find out more about this drug, https://www.drugs.com/mtm/imipramine.html

Hello Tom (@captainmidnight). If you are comfortable sharing, what has brought you to the Chronic Pain group?

Hi , Jamie here, my husband has chronic neck/back pain that burns down to his numb feet . His pain doctor wants to do stem cell injection therapy. Has anyone here tried this ?

@jmcamden9687 Good evening. What was the cause of your initial neck/back pain? Was the diagnosis in any way different from what you expected? How did the pain doctor explain the anticipated results? I would like to call on @johnbishop to send you the latest links to stem cell injection therapy results. Have a peaceful night. Chris

Hello @jmcamden9687 -- I would like to add my welcome to Connect along with @artscaping and other members. I don't know of any success stem cell treatment/therapy for any autoimmune disease but there is a good discussion for neuropathy that you might be interested in reading through to see what others have discussed. Normally it's not covered by insurance. Also I don't think there have been any clinical trials or FDA approval for any of these types of treatments so it's good to do a lot of research.

> Groups > Neuropathy > Stem Cell Therapy for Neuropathy
— https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/stem-cell-therapy-for-neuropahy/

Would your husbands doctor being doing the stem cell injections in a smaller local clinic or is it a major medical facility?