Pain management

**first of all, my blog template might not look right. If you don't see grungy flowers and a notebook, try refreshing. If it doesn't work, it's okay. My posts are untouched. It will fix itself eventually. Server issues. :/

After this last trip to the OR, my urologist finally talked me into upgrading from percocet to dilaudid. If you have been following my blog, you know that dilaudid used to make me violently ill years ago, which is why I haven't taken it before now. I flat out refused, but this time around the pain got so bad, that I was desperate for better control.

The good news is I can take it without nausea meds!!! Now we think I was given cocktails of pain meds in the hospital that reacted with each other, and that's what made me puke for days on end. Dilaudid was always given to me last, so that's why I thought that was the culprit.

So, here is what I take. I don't take my pain meds on a regular schedule. If it says take 1 every 6 or 8 hours, I really only take one dilaudid a day, or two (one in the afternoon and one in the middle of the night if I can't sleep from the pain). For lesser pain, I skip the dilaudid all together and take one percocet once or twice a day - usually once. More than once I tend to get sick, even with zofran. I always have to take my zofran before taking one pill.

I am very conservative with my medication for a number of reasons, but for 2 big ones:

1. I have kids. 'Nuff said.
2. Fear of violent nausea. It's the same reason I hate alcohol. I got really sick once when I lived in the barracks. Never again. I HATE PUKING!!

I almost stopped taking dilaudid. Twice, right after my last OR trip, I had some nasty side effects that weren't on the printout that came with the bottle. While nausea was never a factor, night terrors and sleep paralysis were. I've had sleep paralysis before, where you swear you are awake and can look around the room, but you can't move a muscle. It happened while I was in the Marines. No medication was ever involved - I was just exausted.

So that happened twice. Either that stuff knocks me out, or it keeps me wired, as if I had 10 cups of coffee or something - just really jittery and still wiiide awake at 4:00am.

Dilaudid is better than percocet for really bad pain like I've been having. Sometimes is takes the edge off of the pain (without an euphoric feeling either...it makes you feel normal, if a little jumpy) but sometimes it didn't do squat, so there is nothing else you can do because you're already on meds. Sigh. Still, it touches on the pain percocet can't deal with at all. So, no complaints here.

As far as becoming addiction to pain meds, yes, it has crossed my mind, but I guess I'm one of those people who doesn't have an addictive personality, otherwise I would have been hooked a long time ago. Either I don't have an addictive personality, or I've been bitten too many times by side effects in the past to ever "enjoy" the meds, or want to take more than I need. Luckily, I've never built up a tolerance to the meds I've been on. If I get a bottle of pain meds, even if I use them a lot at first, a year later I have to throw the rest out.

The other day I was searching for dilaudid side effects and came across a website that was kind of like drugs.com, but each drug had its own comments by users. The discussed side effects a little, but mostly said how many they were taking a day. One jerk left a comment that told everyone they were addicts, and to watch out, etc. The next guy said, "I've taken percocet for the last 10 years because I'm in PAIN! I take 10 pills a day and I'm not addicted to it..."

Sigh. That kind of useage was one of the things I was afraid of the first time I took a narcotic for my stone pain. Yes, this person IS an addict, despite the very real pain this person was in. Tolerance IS a form of addiction, but there is a stigma on the word addiction that people don't want to be associated with. This person has a tolerance to percocet, otherwise they wouldn't need 10 pills a day! 10 pills in one day would literally kill me. 4 in one day might land me in the hospital with breathing problems. I'm that sensitive to the stuff, and sensitivity does not = fun. I feel so bad for people who aren't under proper pain control.

Now, to get my pain under control! I won't this week though. I always refuse pain meds except toradol (because it's just an anti-inflammatory med) during the week when I have to be a parent to my kids. It's not about me being a hero, or being self-righteous. I just couldn't live with myself if something happened to my kids when I wasn't at my best mental state. Here's the irony. My mental state is 1000X worse when I'm in severe pain and not on meds, but you won't go to jail for driving under the influence of pain now will you?

:_(