Chronic pain with no end in sight.......

[sylvi]

Morning everyone i hope today will be as good as you can make it. I am not sure whether i have told you or not(don't mind me if i repeat myself damn fibro) Drs have confirmed my spine from the top of my neck down to the base of my spine is riddled with oa/ra and there is nothing they can do for me. My pain levels on any given day area 7/8 and on a really bad day above 10. I have been told that i have all the drugs i can take apart from morphine,which they are going to start me on when the letter gets to the gp. I am a bit funny with morphine as it sends me light headed and weird,but i have agreed to give it another go in the hope it will ease the pain.

Giving in is not an option for me and i will keep fighting these diseases that i have until my dying day.xx

[Mmrr]

sylvi, I cannot imagine what it must be like to live in constant pain, but I have seen others who have have lived with it. Medicines change and improve each time we use them, so maybe this time will be different for you and you will get the relief you need. Best wishes. Marie

[kohai OA Ambassador]

sylvi I can 100% relate to your post. I recently had to move town for the disability adapted house the council had found me, but prior to that, the MSK team at the hospital there, even at the beginning of this year still kept insisting I only had mild disc degeneration in the lumbar... and they still referred to the x-ray done in 2012! and if so, why was my entire spine feeling like it had been put through a grinder?

Moving location meant a new doctor, the dread of having to go over repeatedly what tests had been done, what meds I've tried (and that's been a huge amount), which specialists I'd seen, the list was endless.. but the new doc could see for herself how much pain I was in, so sent me to a new hospital here, this time for an urgent x-ray of the top and base of my spine. About 10 days later the results came back. I expected to be told that yes it was mild and that the rest of the pain was basically being blown out of proportion in my mind, so you can imagine my shock when she told me that the lumbar and cervical areas of my spine were so badly degenerated she was surprised I wasn't paralysed and then came even more bad news straight after that, she said that while I had already been diagnosed with OA in all of my joints, I know have it through my spine too.

I've been on tablet form of morphine (Morphgesic) for quite some time now, along with liquid morphine (in bottles) 5ml-10ml every four hours, but for break through pain only. She recently changed my 5mg and 2mg Diazapem to 10mg Baclofen and asked me to persevere with it. These new doctors really don't like prescribing.

My previous doc, whom I'd been with for 8 years, had finally got me on a level of Oramorph (liquid morphine), Morphgesics and diazepam that it was finally managing the pain, even though it left my brain somewhat muddled most of the time.

I'd rather have little or manageable pain, regardless of whether I was 'with it or not', purely because while I'm struggling to hang on, the days where the pain is at its worst, I'm hanging on by my fingernails it gets that bad, and I have another 35-40 years of life left of this pain progressively getting worse, whereas my husband would prefer I be treated not just drugged up.

I can understand your feelings and experience with morphine before, but its not an easy call is it?

If you say no to it when your pain level is 7-8, would you still say no when it goes off the charts 10+?

Everyone reacts differently to morphine, how long were you on it last time? and at what dose?