OK this may turn into a bit of a rant. I sent my brand new doc whom I have seen one time and thought I was in love with as it was 2 doctors working as a team a message as they forgot to send my refills to the pharmacy and my vicodin needs a written script only. I got a reply last night which was less than 24 hours since I messaged them through their message portal, which was amazing, but, the message I got back said they refilled all of my meds except my vicodin as she does not prescribe opiates and that the increase in my Benlysta to every 3 weeks and the increase in my gabapentin should control my pain. Let me just say that my old rheumy only gave me 30 vicodin to last me 3 months and I almost alway had some left over because eI don't like to take them but there are days where I am in so much pain that I need the help. I understand that there are people out there in this world who abuse the system and over use narcotics but unless you have this disease and the others I have been blessed with you have no right to tell me I don't need pain meds. I am so disappointed and discouraged right now. I feel like once again I have to defend how I feel and how bad I really hurt that I am not just after meds. I am in tears with a migraine and do not want to take anything for it because what little supply of pain meds I have left has to last and what if the pain is worse tomorrow or what about Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday when I am scheduled to work 10 hour shifts. I hate this desperate feeling and hate this pain. I hate this disease!!
You need to get a pain management doctor now. This is the way it is and it is so hard on a lot of people. It is frustrating for sure to have so many doctors to deal with but it is our only choice these days. Good luck! oh, check out potential PM docs on something like vitals.com to get an idea how other patients score them.
I M going to only reply to your migraine. For twenty years of really suffering with migraines n still working, ocsad only treated symptoms. Once I was diagnosed with RA n lupus, then got on anti- inflamatorys, no more migraines.
My rheumy has never prescribed my pain meds. With the recent change of Vicodin being rescheduled and now needing a triplicate form to prescribe, many doctors won’t prescribe it. My primary care doc takes care of my vicodin. I had to sign a contract with her that she would be the only one to prescribe narcotics for me. I suggest sending another message asking who you should go to for pain relief. 30 pills is nothing compared to the amount some people get. My scrip is for 150 a month which I no longer take so you should be able to get 30. Particularly if you get migraines. Be a strong advocate for yourself. I had to send many nasty e-mails to get my doctors to understand how much pain I was in.
This is going to sound crazy but I have chronic migraines and it works. Drink something with caffeine, put an ice pack on the back of your neck/base of your skull, and put your feet in very warm water. It increases the blood flow and opens up the constricted blood vessels in your head. Good luck!
I am in some what of the same boat. I had to wait for my insurance to start so as soon as that happens I’m getting a pain doc. I can’t take most of the lupus meds because of liver and bone density problems so the usual fixes dont work. I commend you for still being able to work I have to have something just to deal with the pain of walking. Most days my hips dislocate and having to slip them back into place is killer. I hope it works out for you.
General practitioners seem to be more sympathetic about pain than specialists, for some reason. I am fortunate to have been a patient of my family doctor for years before I got arthritis and SLE, so he knows I don’t have a history of pill abuse. Signing a contract with one doctor for opiates seems to be standard operating procedure these days. And, yes…many doctors are shockingly unsympathetic to their patient’s pain. If it has been established through MRI’s, blood tests or XRays, that a person has a severe health condition, causing pain, medicine to get rid of the pain should not be withheld.
Dearest Heather you are so right! They don't live in your body and NO knows it like you do. Do you have a family doctor that can write pain meds for you. That is what I had to do. Like you I only take the pain meds when I absolutely have to and the 60 tabs my doctor prescribes can last me up to six months. Everyone here has had to defend themselves at one time or another so we do understand, I hope you feel better soon. God Bless Julie
After Oct 6th, when the rating of Vicodin changed, doctors are all starting to freak out about RXing Vicodin. My PCP who had been refilling my Vicodin, quit refilling mine and he knows me well. He has seen that my use has been decreasing quit a bit as I have gotten better. So now I have to go back to a pain doctor, which I did. He wasn’t sure what to do with me because he there was no procedure he could do to help the pain and actually saw my history of needing Vicodin for pain had been decreasing as I started feeling better and having less pain. He said that now pain doctors will have to show what they are doing to improve a persons pain while giving Vicodin to handle the pain. Quite discouraging. This means that the kind of pain autoimmune diseases cause ultimately won’t be able to be prescribed drugs like Vicodin for pain. That leaves a lot of people with no where to turn. Very depressing.
Hey, it’s going to be okay! The pain is /can be controlled some what , getting rest when you don’t have to work is a main factor of Lupus! Yeah -easy to say, well trust me having a Flare is the part where Lupus want you to lose all control , but if you relax and rest to the best of your ability , the pain actually tone down to a level that you can bare. Sound crazy ? Dealing with this disease now 4 years , I have did everything that you said above and yes it get old to your mind to say anything about the pain that you have and seems like nothing helps , well Resting as much as possible does. Hope that you feel better soon…Beverly L.
I totally understand what you ate going through. I had to see a different doctor at my physician’s office last month and she canceled my Tramadol. I called the rheumy office and they said there was nothing they could do I needed to call my primary care doc. WTH?! The rheumy is the one who prescribed it and has been my treating doc for 2 years I was so pissed. Of course I called the primary who said call the rheumy. How the hell csm s physician who saw you once and has no idea of your condition cancel one of your meds and no one cares. So I’m like whatever I’m tired of trying to prove how this condition has changed my life and not for the better.
I ask to be referred to a pain managemet center and sence doing that i havent had any problems getting my vic,in fact she took me off the reg vics because the tylenol was makeing my liver enzims so high so she put me on plain vicsthey work alot better their stronger and u only take 1 twice aday.good luck
Hi Heather,
I was on Norco (hydrocodone) 6 yrs. and started going to a new rheumatologist because mine moved out of the State. He took me off of the Norco and put me on Time-Release Morphine with Tramadol. He also put me on 2 Tylenol morning, noon, and night which I believe is what sent my liver enzymes #'s high so I am off of the Tylenol, I should have known better on that one!!! I have found that the time release morphine works better and longer then the Norco. Hope this helps.
God Bless You, Mary
Curcumin… doctors are a pain arent they ?rememver to keep stress levels down walking lowers cortisol. Stress will just make u sick for another 4 days
You need to get an app't with a pain management doctor. Everything has changed so much in the past year and as I understand it, only pain docs are allowed to write scripts for pain meds. Good luck. I am so sorry you are going thru this pain.