A little back info: I had a major car accident in 2006, and came out with what I assumed was nothing more than a seat belt shaped bruise. I declined offers to go to the emergency room, as I thought I was fine, but a few days after I found that I was in increasingly bad back pain. By the time I found a doctor and was put through physical therapy, most of the muscles in my cervical and thoratic spine had atrophied to some degree, and this limits my mobility and gives me daily pain. Since 2006 I have been on both Ultram and Flexeril to control pain, but they are both doing a whole lot of nothing.
I plan on seeing my doctor today- how should I approach the topic of receiving stronger pain meds without seeming like a junkie? It’s not as if I’m asking to be on morphine… I just want to be able to do things my peers are doing. Being 20 and in pain all the time is pretty depressing.
#1 by justinfr on February 9, 2010 - 5:56 pm
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The next step up could probably be codeine or hydrocodone.
Just tell your doctor that lately you’ve been in a lot more pain and that you have had to severely limit your activities and hobbies because of the pain. Explain how the pain is negatively affecting your daily life and that the Ultram and Flexeril just is not working well in bringing your pain down to a manageable level.
It may take some time to figure out which medication and dosage works the best for your specific pain. It took several months, almost a year, for my pain management doctor and myself to come up with a treatment plan that was successful in keeping my pain under control.
Be patient, but if your current doctor seems unwilling to prescribe medications that work (many doctors are leery of prescribing stronger opioids, especially to young patients), I would recommend seeking out another doctor. It’s not ‘doctor shopping’ if you switch doctors, that is only a problem if you are seeing multiple doctors at the same time and receiving prescriptions from each of them (and none of them know about the others).
#2 by DynoDiKk on February 9, 2010 - 7:53 pm
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You need to be off that Ultram Period! It is a shitty drug! Type in Ultram sucks on Google.
Tootsie, no one is calling you a junkie. Hydrocodone would be the next logical choice. And or morphine, believe it or not morphine should be used before the hydro even in a long term situation, and time release morphine. If you can tolerate it! Hydro hits harder.
Ultram is the worse drug in the world to be on, read this article I wrote on it.
http://www.helium.com/items/1125105-sabbathmusic-and-dynodikk-on-ultram