So if a person has real chronic pain, the alternative is street fetanyl?
“So if a person has real chronic pain, the alternative is street fetanyl?
“
More and more, the answer to that question is YES.
I have serious nerve pain from damage due to an AV fistula, and started having widespread pain in my arm within 48 hours of surgery. When it didn’t improve, my GP gave me Vicodin (this was January 2009, and I was 21).
Considering I didn’t have perfect coverage, taking a pill every so often, those ups and downs created problems, exacerbating pain. I occasionally wound up in the ER, usually for nausea and vomiting, but a couple of times for pain that reduced me to tears. When they started using my fistula in February, they started using it prematurely due to an infection in my subclavian catheter. That made the pain worse. So did the fact that my arterial site was so underdeveloped that there was literally a half-cm spot where they could put the needle without collapsing my access. Unfortunately, that spot contained a nerve cluster that leads to the hand, thus causing MORE pain.
You see where I’m going with this.
The ER treated me like a junkie, and my doc didn’t feel comfortable prescribing high doses of opioids. I was referred to a pain clinic and expected the worst, but after a few months of trial and error, I wound up on the lowest dose of Fentanyl available. It was my first pain-free day in years. It was increased twice over about two years and I haven’t had a dosage change in more than a decade. I have Norco for breakthrough pain, but sometimes it’s worthless.
They said if I start having severe pain issues again, they want to take me off of opioids entirely, which makes SOME sense; or it would if my pain wasn’t chronic, but it is. My arm isn’t usable without pain meds, and would just sit in a sling, still reducing me to tears even while off of dialysis.
Going to the street would, literally, be a last-ditch effort during a national collapse. You never know what you’ll get nowadays, as literally EVERYTHING is being cut with illegal fentanyl; even coke and meth.
Because that combo never killed anyone.