What Meds Are You On

Hi

I hope no one minds my asking, I am seeing my GP today to ask about changing/trying out some new meds. I currently take Zoromorph slow release morphine twice a day, Sevredol 10mg morphine 4 hourly (if I am desperate), melatonin tablets to help with sleep and Diazepam for anxiety/panic attacks.

It's not working for me anymore, my sleep is rubbish at the best of times but with the heat it has been non-existent. I am in a lot of pain, again either due to the weather, or a flare up and I am feeling very down, tearful and anxious all the time, partly due to all this ESA fiasco I am going through once again. I was wondering what meds you take, whether they are any good so I can make some suggestions. I must add I have tried Pregablin and had a violent reaction against it, I have come off Amitriptyline as I was on a high dose and the side-effects outweighed the benefits. And Gabapentin did nothing for me.

It's so difficult to cram all this in to a 10 minute appointment, especially as I don't know what is worrying me more at the moment, the pain, the chronic sleeplessness or the anxiety/depression. I just wondered what meds other fibros were on and if they found them helpful, my GP is very good and never minds if I make suggestions. Thanks.

[Malwimmy27]

Make sure you write everything down it'll hopefully help when you visit your GP, it helped me, if I don't do that I always forget a few things.

Im currently taking duloxetine (which I'm gradually coming off), which is slowly being replaced by the pregablin. Sorry to hear you had such a bad reaction to it.

I was previously using butrans patches (20 mcg) but found that they stopped working after about 3 months.

I am going to b re prescribed tramadol once the pregablin is at the correct dose 150 mg twice a day).

Good luck at your appointment. I hope you get the help and support from your GP.

Becky xx

[Hidden]

hi siverstar have you been to the pain clinic?

xxxzebxxx

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Hi

Not recently but in the past, to be honest I found them rather useless. They are okay if you have pain in one place like a bad knee or back but there isn't much they can do for all over pain that we fibros have. I have tried acupuncture, TENS machine hire, different painkillers, steroid injections in my neck and shoulders and that is about all they could offer.

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Ah! I found it altogether different the other week when I went. He was originally, before he met me, going to send me back to the pain management team but sensed it was going to be no use to me. We discussed everything quite thoroughly as I'd been asked to fill in information sheets beforehand and one of them was mark the areas you have pain. In fact for a joke I circled round the whole picture to say everywhere LOL he did laugh!

Anyhow! he went through each medication carefully explaining their use and what interact with what etc... and sat and discussed where to go with it. If you having trouble with GP maybe try again and ask to be re-referred, this is important because it suggest you've been before and nowadays you can research the pain clinics to find the best one and choose to go to there.

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Hi

My GP is great but I found the pain clinic useless for me, I am limited as to where I can go due to having no transport and due to restricted mobility and other health issues I would find getting to another one a real problem. I know someone on here has some sort of infusion for pain (apologies to whoever that is, I cannot remember who due to fibro fog lol) which I think is carried out at a pain clinic every few months. That might be something to think about maybe. As I said I am not sure what they can do for all over pain.

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

sounds like a useful option silverstar. I hope you get the help that you need.

incidently, I take slow release tramadol and regular tramadol top-up with pregabalin and also have a high strength pain gel. its early days with me with this mix and my pain is no better but I have to give it a chance. I forgot to ask about infusions and have been kicking myself LOL never mind eh!

Take care

xxxzebxxx

[Hidden]

Hi again, I also take sertraline for anxiety and depression, which doesn't mix with other med options and apparently hard to come off and make medication transition. sorry! ditzy me LOL I don't have many options either.

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Hi

I have got noratriptyline to help with pain, sleeplessness and the depression, extra slow release morphine and some sleeping tablets for short term relief of insomnia do will try those. I also got some weird lidocaine hydrochloride injection ampoules x 10 and a depo-methrone 40mg vial. I do not have a clue what these are, the GP who prescribed them is not my usual GP although my details are all correct on the prescription. These were waiting for me at the pharmacy when I got my regular monthly meds. The pharmacist didn't know about them either. I need to phone my GP tomorrow to see what's going on.

I wonder if there was a mix up somewhere. I have another b12 injection tomorrow so will take them with me. Very confused lol but feel a bit happier that I have some different meds to try.

[Hidden]

Ah very good I'm pleased. Hopefully they'll make a difference for you. Your list of meds sounds high end compared to mine tho I've been on tramadol mix for 5yrs now with pregabalin only introduced in feb after surgery left me with nasty full body spasms that were like a bad case of the hiccups and every time my body jerked it was as if I was being electrocuted. I didn't sleep for days and the pain was horrific, thankfully now I kinda have it under control. I'm not doing too bad considering I couldn't walk for a week either.

The extra meds sounds odd to me! but saying that I once walked into my surgery and a staff member came out and said " here's your prescription for iron tablets" I looked oddly at her and said " what iron tablets? ", to which she replied " Oh! you don't know yet, sorry! the doctor put this script together for you. So, I mentioned this to the doc who apologised bless him, he is a lovely doc. So it is possible they're for you but there's also chance of it being a mix up and I think I would mention it tomorrow if it were me, especially not knowing what they are or for. I've heard of lidocaine but not the others. Maybe someone here knows about them and could tell you. There are websites that have medication lists that could give an insight also tap their names into the search engine, that's the other way I do it when I'm curious or unsure.

Wishing you well for tomorrow silverstar

xxxzebxxx

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Hi

When I started my b12 injections last year due to B12 deficiency I had to go for 5 injections over about a day 10 period as a loading dose. I had to laugh when I went to pick up my regular meds and I got given the B12 vials and some needles. I know the NHS is short-staffed and getting an appointment can be tricky but asking us to do our own injections was a bit much I thought. Once again it was my surgery having a moment and issuing them accidentally, they are still on my repeat prescription list even now. And I thought we fibros were the ones with "fog".

I looked them up, one is a steroid injection, similar to ones I had recently done in both shoulders and the other, the lidocaine is a local anaesthetic and is also used to treat heart attacks lol. I am ill but not that bad ,yet.

[Hidden]

HI

LOL

cheers for the chuckle... so , hey doc! why have I been given these meds? If your usual doc doesn't know it'd be interesting to know what he thinks! I sometimes feel like peeps think we're deaf, mental and plain daft and being mrs blunt as I am, which gets me into allsorts of bother, I can't help myself winding them up.

I once convinced a guy at a party at my house that I only had one leg and the other was a prosthetic, I exaggerated my already limp and his friends joined in on the joke. You know that poor guy probably still thinks I only have one leg. It did serve him right for being so.... how do I express this?.. urm... so stereotypically rude without realising. I took pure advantage poor guy. LOL

Let me know how it goes at the docs.

xxxzebxxx