My physician has mentioned oxycodone for pain management, so far I am resisting. I currently take Vicodin 10-650 mg. tabs, four a day.
They are not doing the trick anymore.
I was taking oxycodone when I herniated a disc last year. It shuts down your excretion system and turns on your depression system. It does it’s intended job but be careful with the side effects.
Do you realize that you are already taking oxycodone?
They are both synthetic Morphine.
I was on Oxycontin which is Oxycodone in a sustained release formula. I was given Percocet (5mg Oxycodine immediate release along with 500 mg Tylenol) to handle break through pain.
When I started going to the VA clinic, I was told that they didn't handle Oxycontin and they put me on Darvon which was worthless. It was a major step backward going from the Oxycontin/Percocet to the Darvon, but they didn't seem to care.
It took almost a full year to get into the pain clinic where they put me on Morphine, but that still wasn't enough. It took another three years to get a high enough dose to be effective.
After fighting with my Primary Care Physician (PCP) he finally sent me to a different PCP rather than prescribe enough pain medication.
My new PCP and I talked things over and he increased my dose AND he gave me Oxycodone (Immediate Release) for times of breakthrough pain.
Darvon has been taken off the market as both ineffective and unsafe.
Anyone who has been on any of the opiates and that includes hydrocodone/Vicodin will build up a tolerance and require ever increasing doses over time.
The VA's opinion is that there is only so much medication that one can take and an overdose will have no further pain relief effect. It is believed that when all of ones pain receptors are fully occupied with the medication, the best they can hope for is 25 to 30% pain relief.
It is only after many years of being on a pain medication and developing a tolerance that the higher doses are necessary.
As an aside, the formula for Oxycontin has been changed so that if one grinds it up or chews it, a chemical is released which negates the effect of the Oxycodone.
I am suprised that people are still abusing it for recreational uses since it is no longer effective when crushed. The abusers used to crush the Oxycontin to convert it from a slow continuous release to an immediate release formula.
The reason they chose the Oxycontin rather than Oxycodone is that the Oxycontin due to it's sustained release nature was sold in much larger doses than Oxycodone in it's immediate release formula.
Even though the VA doesn't seem to provide Percocet, I effectively achieve the same result by taking a 500 mg Tylenol along with a 5 mg Oxycode pill.