but I was concerned that, being in my mid forties and this whole pain thing not ever going away, I would max myself out, so to speak, and have nowhere left to go down the road.

Hey there cmpgirl:
I just wanted to chime in and say that with the LA opiod/opiate medications, at least most of them can be upped indefinitely. The big "max" factor is the doctor or insurance company have a max in their head and won't go over it. Or the insurance company has a max amount of certain medications that they are willing to pay for. But, with the Oxycontin, theoretically you could go up indefinitely since it does not have acetaminophen in it like Percocet does. Oh, another thing that does limit things is when the side effects start to really take their toll on things especially the drowsiness, sedative factor although Oxycontin tends to have an "energizing" factor. There are many, many articles that say this in case you wanted to research it. Your doctor might say 400mg of Oxycontin/day is his limit and he would switch you to something else if you reached this dose. There is some need to worry about "maxing" things out but there usually are options especially with the opiod/opidate medications. The biggest thing to take care of is keeping your pain level at an appropriate one. So whatever it takes to keep you at a 5 or below then that's what it takes. Do you understand what I am trying to say? Hope that made sense. I used to constantly worry about the same thing but I am on the 50mcg fentanyl patch, 4 Lortabs/day, 2 Ultram/day and I am only 33 YEARS OLD.<---------;)

Brian