Posted on 12/29/2004 12:38:09 PM PST by neverdem
True. If I was 80 or something, I probably wouldn't care about the increased risk (often times when they announce medicines have increased risks, the risk only goes up like 5 percent or something anyway). At that age, I am going to go soon anyway.
But, there are other medicines that are good for pain. I took some when I had my jaw surgery, and they worked wonders....and they weren't celebrex or vioxx etc.
Agreed. I also wonder if some folks fail to make the distinction between sources of everyday "aches and pains" v. the sort of pain that will destroy your body (RA, for one). When your body is manufacturing antibodies that target your own joints, it's no longer a case of "mind over matter"...it's time to reap the benefits of pharmaceutical R&D.
Take aspirin...good for inflammation, good for the heart, maybe fights cancer in the colon. Have the makers of Tylenol convinced you there is a problem? Take enteric coated aspirin. Take lots of it.
What (if anything) is he taking right now?
How about Bauer Aspirin?
Heck, even that scumbag Michael Moore is getting into the act.
Nothing like biting the hand that feeds you...one day pharma manufacturing will move offshore because of an unfavorable regulatory and legal environment as well as government price controls. And then everyone will lament at how these evil drug companies could do somwthing so horrible, when all along they helped create the hostile environment that precipitated the move.
This is how I look at it:
They did a dual test with Vioxx and Celebrex. Vioxx caused real problems compared to celebrex.
They tested Aleve against Celebrex and discovered Aleve caused problems.
They tested very high doses of Celebrex and discovered problems - in one test, and a similar, but not identical test earlier found no such problems.
My conclusions:
Celebrex is safer than Vioxx
Celebrex may be safer than Aleve (and certainly is to my tummy)
Large doses of Celebrex may be dangerous.
Doses of most NSAIDS may, at some dosage level, prove as a group, to cause heart problems.
I take Celebrex at the 100mg dose, and in the winter, especially, I need it for arthritis.
Unless they take it off the market, I am not giving it up.
There is no real evidence that it is any more dangerous than a number of other NSAIDs at normal dosages, and in fact, looks safter than a number of them.
The pain in my hands really sucks bad. Narcotics like Loritabs give me a problem with my biliary system. It takes a lot of pain to make me reach for one, knowing that I will have chest pain later if I have to take it very long.
So, I will continue with it, and know that sometimes you are trading off when you take meds for problems...
Be careful about what you advise. My mother was taking 5 milligrams of prednisone and eight coated tablets of 325 milligrams of aspirin a day. Both drugs are associated with a risk of gastro-intestinal bleeding. She became so anemic that she was transfused in a bed monitored for cardiac arrhythmia. Now she refuses to take one "baby" 81 milligram coated aspirin a day.
I am 28 and have psioratic arthritis which is hereditary and very painful, i was on Vioxx until they pulled it, i am now on Bextra but it does not help as much as the Vioxx did. While in the Navy, I was taking 2400mg a day of Motrin a day while 25mg of Vioxx took care of the pain almost completely. I am young and relatively healthy with no family history of heart disease nor of stroke, therefor have no worries of Vioxx harming me as long as I take it as recommended. tell me that it has a very slight chance of causing problems, just like anything else in this world and then back off, let ME make a decision regaurding to my life.
I gather from this post your dad currently isn't taking any medication. Has he discussed taking a DMARD with his doc? Where COX-2 inhibitors have been shown to slightly increase the risk (from miniscule to tiny) of cardiovascular events, DMARDs are a different class of arthritis drugs generally reserved for those who don't respond to NSAIDs or show side effects from their use.
Some DMARD users encounter liver problems, so if your dad takes one he'd need regular blood tests to monitor his liver enzyme levels. But it's certainly worth a try, IMHO.
also in starving i suppose, but i need my hands to work until i finish college. without vioxx or the like, i cant open my hands for an hour after i wake up and they finally stop hurting around 3 in the afternoon at which time they are too weak to pick up anything heavy and lack much dexterity, i am not looking for a "quick fix" if i was i would just take the narcotics my doc has given me for those really bad days. i just want a normal resemblance of life.
i guess at 28 i should just give up and live on social security or sponge off my family, right?
Aspirin is one of the world's greatest medicines as long as you're not allergic to it. However, if you have to take it on a chronic basis, then you have to mostly watch out for gastro-intestinal bleeding and kidney failure. So, regular check-ups with your doc are mandatory.
To each his own, but I agree with you. Wearing my back brace and observing good body mechanics when I'm lifting or climbing at work and taking an advil or using a tiger balm patch in the evening and a glass of wine works fine for my injured discs. I never took any hormone replacement therapy even though all my friends were trying to shove it at me as soon as I became menopausal. I found that natural herbal and soy remedies work great, and they aren't linked to anything dangerous (and they aren't made from the urine of pregnant mares, either...).
There is something about living with chronic pain that until the other has done it, they just can't understand really.
I have a stupid GI system. I make gall stones, even without a gall bladder. Hiatal hernia. IBS, too! I have a stomach that's a bit naturally hyper acidy, and it got the heck burned out of it a couple of years ago by high dosage naproxen -I developed plantar fasctitis and had arthritis in my hand, and this is what they used to treat it. I was inflamed from my esophagus through the duodenum. I solved my foot problem by switching to Danner boots. Couldn't even take Vioxx or Celebrex, and the arthritis screamed! Prevacid did make it better, and after awhile the dr. put me on Celebrex for my achies.
But then I developed more tummy problems. Had stones in my common bile duct, which kicked off pancreatitis. Before they finally operated on the stones, it was like walking around with a heart attack for almost 3 months. Narcotics make it worse - antispasmodics help (there's a little sphincter there which tends to spasm around narcotics).
Pain sucks. I still get some of the stomach symptoms. The hands hurt when cold fronts come in and I am really looking forward to winter being over already!
Pain grinds you down, causes depression, interfers with what you want to do, and takes the joy of life away.
Taking the edge off of pain makes the difference sometimes between a decent day and a day in darkness.
It's important to make the right decisions, and have something like a decent life. It's easy for people to have minimal problems to say, go take aspirin, but it's not possible for some of us.
And to have weird, junk science news stories to judge by surely doesn't make the deciding easier.
I use herbals, too...especially a lot of ginger. Ginger is good when the stomach flares up and helps with inflamation in general.
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