Posted on 12/27/2016 7:44:49 AM PST by Mariner
I will have a knee replacement in about a year. I am holding off as long as I can.
But the big question I have for you, was it worth it? How is your mobility and pain now? Would you do it over again?
I don’t look forward to some surgeon sawing my leg in half.
Ditto. For people who live with irreparable pain (cannot be repaired with surgery, or exercise, massage, acupunture, Lyrica, gabapentin, pregabalin, Cymbalta, etc.), opioids are a godsend. I have wasted money on just about every alternative medicine, supplement, FDA approved meds for fibromyalgia and none of it adequately gave me the quality of life (pain relief) that 1 1/2 tabs of an opioid did. I'd stop cold-turkey for a week or so to give myself peace of mind that I wasn't addicted to the medicine itself. Like you, umgud, I never had withdrawals, either. Opioids are a good drug that definitely has it's place in the treatment of pain and has been crucified by people who either don't know what they are talking about because they don't live in a painful condition that's not going away, or else they have skin in the game (i.e. federal & state dollars rolling in for addiction treatment and/or law enforcement).
This hysteria over opioids reminds me of the 1930s marijuana demonization by Aslinger, et al. Always follow the money. Human history is filled with people addicted, wasted, and dying from addictions to everything from opium, mushrooms, alcohol made from various plants, toad secretions, meth, bath salts, etc. etc. It is futile to try to protect addicts from addictions. We have always had addicts and will always continue to have them.
The horrible stats of overdoses on opioids (when looking closer and beyond the inflammatory rhetoric) is that it is rare to OD on a single opioid when taken as prescribed. The fact is ODs are happening by taking a medicinal prescription of an opioid WITH alcohol or WITH a joint or WITH other opioids. We're having more deaths because physicians are pressured not to prescribe opioids to ANYONE period. So, addicts risk his or her life on a homelab-cooked opioid from China or Mexico and made to look like a pharmaceutical opioid. Unfortunately, these are laced with the very dangerous fentanyl. The baby has been thrown out with the bathwater.
We now have pharmacogenetic tests that will help weed out patients who are prone to addiction of opioids based on the way their bodies process the medication. Ugh! Sorry for the rant. I'm climbing off my soapbox now. Thank you for allowing me to blow off steam.
I recognize that the medical profession prefers a different characterization.
It’s important for them to assuage the guilt a patient might experience if they believed themselves to be an addict.
“Dangerously stupid”?
Dangerous for whom, exactly?
This was my experience on the first dose after back surgery. I felt SO good, I knew I had to throw them away. Never had another dose.
This article has an agenda, that is clear.
That people get addicted to prescription drugs is not arguable, people in pain want to escape the pain.
That people take recreational drugs and get addicted and die from overdoses on them is also a reality. Because this happens, we don't have to characterize them as evil, but we most certainly can characterize them as weak. They can be helped back into a normal life, but because they are weak (as shown by their recreational addiction) and drugs are strong, the recidivism rate is going to be high.
Pain management is important. To throw out an important tool without thinking it through risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
And reading the article, I get the distinct impression that the shakers and movers in this effort to ban have a liberal agenda, that they write for the LA Times only makes it more likely that is the case. It is sentences like these that give me that impression: "...The spectacular success of OxyContin has generated nearly $35 million in revenue over the past two decades and made the Sacklers one of the nation's wealthiest families..."
Looks like a hit piece on "Big Pharma" which is, to liberals, like "Big Oil" and "Big Tobacco". Not saying opiate addiction isn't a problem, I am saying we should not listen only to these activists, because people like these have a history of forcing decisions to be made for political and personal reasons without knowing or caring to examine problems that might result from their actions.
Really? Then why does the title mention OxyContin?
When they started showing commercials for opioid related constipation medicine on daytime TV you know that the pill/heroin problem must be pretty darn huge.
Freegards
Ditto everything you said.
the Times made an error.
The number is actually $35 billion over 20 years, not an outlandish number.
I had a ‘mild’ case of shingles last year, no rash but the lower back pain was excruciating. Three weeks worth.
Was on oxy and hydro .I can tell you around 3.5 hrs after taking a dose I was glued to the clock waiting for hour 4 and the next dose.
But.. what it does to the digestive tract! No way could I get hooked on it. Couldn’t wait to get off it.
And yes, I had the Zostavax shot several yrs previous.
That reflects poorly on them, but that was just one item that stood out. The rest of the article is full of things like that.
Of course, I don’t think any less of them for that error, I already think the LA Times is bottom-feeding scum, and can’t get any lower than that.
By cracking down a Oxy and Rx opiates it has caused heroin to make a big comeback as a relatively cheap alternative.
There is NO DOUBT opioids are the next do-gooder crusade for the institutional left.
Get ready for high-dose NSAIDS to comfort you after a knee replacement.
I was rear ended by a truck and had to have my neck fused. They want to fuse my lower back at several levels. I am trying to hold that off because that surgery never ends well. I am in agony all day, every day. I limit myself to two pills at night just to take the edge off. I actually knew the lawyer that Governor Christie spoke off on the campaign trail who succumbed to pain medication addiction. Great lawyer and an even greater guy. That wasn’t a stump speech. That was a true story. Awful to watch such a good man go down like that.
It was totally worth it and my mobility is probably at least 95% of when I was young and had good knees.
Yes. I would do it over again in a heartbeat, I was blessed to have a great surgeon. He was not only great with his medical skills but has a great personality and bedside manner. He also will only operate in two hospitals in the DC area. They are both hospitals that have no trauma centers thus their rates of infections are near zero. The hospital where he performed my surgeries had a brand new wing used just for knee and hip replacements. The staff were magnificent and my wife and I were treated with great care and respect. We treated them the same way.
Here is the biggist thing you should remember. Please do all of the exercises they tell you to do during rehab, especially at home. I was told to do my exercises three time per day and I usually did mine five or six times per day. I went to therapy three times per week and really pushed myself. The pain was quite intense but, with all my old sports training and time in the military, I used the pain to push myself further as I flat-out refused to let it beat me.
My Physical Therapists told me over and over how amazed they were at my recovery and that I was the best patient they had ever had. Both times, by week two, I was bending my new knee at over 140 degrees. They were astounded and it made me want to work even harder. They told me that in almost every case they had the folks who did not do well in therapy were the ones who refused to exercise and rehab properly and in all their cases they were averse to pain and most thought that once they were out of surgery their new knees should have been pain free and had normal movement.
Many people do not understand that the hardest part of the surgery is the PT afterwards and that the PT is the most important part of the recovery process. Do your PT and in a few months you will have your life back.
Also, you should plan on getting to a gym and keep using weights and a bike to keep the new knees/ligaments strong. Do that and you will love life again.
When boiled down to essence, what is the difference between any of the opiates/opioids?
I suggest that when somebody doubles their normal dose, the only difference is that when it’s a prescription people KNOW they are doubling. Often they do it anyway.
What is total downtime if you PT? 8-12 weeks?
I've had addicts tell me (I'm a criminal defense attorney) that the difference between heroin and a lesser opiate like morphine is qualitative and well as quantitative. The same way a dope smoker will tell you that you can smoke cheap Mexican ditchweed all night and never get as strong a buzz as a few hits of exotic premium stinkerweed will get you.
Yes. I think there are too many people (on both the left and the right) who pooh-pooh the positive aspects of opiates to people in genuine pain.
If people don’t have their pain adequately managed, they will take longer to heal, they won’t heal as well, and will be traumatized both psychologically and physically.
Would we send our soldiers into combat without access to morphine? Of course not, just because it is addictive. We shouldn’t make a blanket judgement about prescribed opiates either. Doesn’t mean we can’t do a better job at prescribing and managing them with patients who need them.
I cant stand OcyContin - makes me jittery. Rather have a Tylenol 3
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