My New Meds

Remember how I've been extolling the virtues of my new meds? Remember how I've declared them an unequivocal success? Well, they are absolutely a clear winner! Let me clarify a few points about my treatment plan:

• I take Lyrica to control the symptoms of fibromyalgia and it does a masterful job of helping with the generalized pain of fibro. It falls down on the chronic fatigue end of things; I find that I still experience "completely out of gas from doing nothing" days.
• In addition to fibromyalgia, I also have bursitis in both hips (at least that is the diagnosis of exclusion that all the specialists have agreed to settle upon.) The right hip has been affected for some 30 years; the left hip only joined the parade about six years ago.
• I practice numerous pain management techniques to help control my pain while at home, including: home use of a TENs machine; home use of an ACUPEN; back rolls on every chair that I use in my home; egg foam insert on my mattress (which is already bought-to-order specific for my hip problems); frequent treatments in my jet-massage tub; a stair lift helps me up and down the stairs. I may be forgetting some things; there are so many things I just do automatically now to "avoid" the pain I know will otherwise follow.
• On top of all the home remedies I use, I also have bi-weekly massage therapy sessions as well as weekly visits to my physiotherapist. My physiotherapy sessions are actually neck-to-ankle acupuncture treatments.

Acupuncture is one of the modalities used at my physiotherapist's office for pain management (TENs application; ultrasound; interferential therapy; heat/ice packs are some of the other modalities used). These photos were taken several years ago when we first started treatment. We'll update the photos with more current ones showing the top to bottom coverage that I now endure. Once all the needles are inserted, I lay there for up to a half hour. Good napping opportunity!

• Anyway, in addition to all of the above, we had to find some big guns to address the bursitis in my hips. For quite some time I had been using codeine in various forms (Tylenol #3, Codeine Contin) but I was taking it in such a quantity that it was wreaking havoc with my bowel. So we had to find a replacement.
• We tried Oxycontin. No can do. I was supposed to take the stuff every twelve hours. It gave marginal pain relief for about six to eight hours. Then my body started telling me that it wanted more of that stuff. I wasn't on it three weeks when my body decided it was addicted! Every six hours it was demanding the stuff. Sweats - chills - dizziness - severe nausea - not a pretty sight. I refused to give in but I did run a test. At the 20 hour mark, I took a pill. Everything stopped. Sweats stopped. Chills stopped. Nausea stopped. I felt great. However, six hours later .... my body wanted more again. So that was it. I took me off that poison cold turkey (much to my doctor's chagrin) and took absolutely nothing for the ten days it took for the withdrawal symptoms to stop. It was nasty let me tell you!
• When I returned the unused bottle of Oxycontin to the pharmacy, that was when my pharmacist suggested a safer alternative, used very successfully by many fibro sufferers. The rheumatologist had recently suggested the same drug; my doctor and I had discussed that very drug as a possibility when he had prescribed the Oxycontin. So when next I saw my doctor, I raised the topic of this other medication.
• As I have discussed on this blog, I have been using these new meds since late June and I could not be more pleased with the results. One of the more interesting phenomena I experienced was during a visit to my dentist's office. Normally, it is quite painful for me to have my teeth cleaned -- I have extremely sensitive teeth. But when I visited the dentist shortly after starting on these new meds, one of my first comments was, "Hey, it didn't hurt. That stuff must really work!"

So, you can well imagine how surprised I was to open the Ottawa Citizen this morning and read the following article: National. Marijuana makes pain worse: study

You should read it. I don't know who participated in that study. Cuz it surely wasn't me! The "new meds" I'm taking? Cesamet. Check it out. It's active ingredient? Yup. Marijuana!

They've found a way to extract the medicinal, pain relieving properties of the plant, and put it in pill form. No munchies; no hallucinations; no funny business. My doctor told me that when it first became available in Canada, all the junkies came running in looking for it. But when they found out it "didn't work" they decided they didn't want it it any more. It does not give you a high. It just stops the pain. I said to the doctor, "That's better than a high isn't it?

In other news:

I had to drive into Ottawa again today (this should have been an R&R day and Lord knows I needed it to be!) Late yesterday afternoon, my audiologist called to say that my new hearing aids had arrived and she had them ready for me to pick up. Could I see her at 10:00am the next morning? You bet I could! I really wanted my "new ears" because I was tired of not being able to hear properly.

So now I have ears that work. Ears that I paid for. Ears that, when I'm in a restaurant or other super noisy environment, I should be able to notice that the background noise will be filtered out and the conversation will be "filtered in" so that I can hear my companion speaking to me! Can't wait to test them.