Shoreline

Hy jack, I think tha lack of response is a good sign that folks are trying t live a nomal life and participate in family functions during the weekend. This forum always slows down during the weekend.

As far as going to addiction, you will get responses but how 15 years of abusing opiates or being on meth maint compares to 15 years of PM are two entirely different subjects.

THe main reason I went to the pump was all the negative side effets and the need for meds to compensate for side effects from other meds to manage the side effects of meth.



Meth and amphetmaines would be consderd a speed ball on the addiction forum and foks wuold probably love to have your docs name on the addiction forum.

Due to the heart atack, amphetmamines were not an option for me and the side effcts were exacly as you described, Dramataic drops in T evels, or labido, the meth Blahs where you have no motivation to do anything and even the thouht of going out in the heat and sweating through 3 layers of drawers is enough to keep you inside.

The best thing abut the pump, aside from medicare paying for the meds and refills, is clearing your head and somewhat of a return to normal ambition or no longer being satisfied with just pain relef when you feel you have no life outside of meth and managing pain.

The biggst noticable difference between oral meds and a pump is the clearing of your mind and going from a very grey world to a world filled with vibrant colors and thinking of the future and how you want to spend you life. How long you can tolerate living like that varries, but once your head is cleared by mniscule amounts of IT meds and meth isn';t an option you would be surprised by how accomadated you may have felt to these meds untill you discontinue them and T levels return to normal, you ambition comes back and you realize just how impairing these meds actualy are.

I reached a point after abou 2&1/2 years on the same dose of meth "120mgs a day" that I needed an incease to keep up with the pain and the slow detirioration of my spine. The increase pretty much pushed me over the edge where I couldn't stand living that way any longer, I didn't like my daughter seeing med nod out from meth and my marriage was going to hell.
I don't know if the marriage can be salvaged.I also don't want the fact my wife could easily documant the number of times I simply fell asleep watching the cartoon network with my daughter. It had to be scarry for her and was unexceptable to me. So after one failed pump trial I did another that was succesful.

I was doing well on IT morphine but there is a risk of deveolping a granular cyst from the morphine concentration I was at. Not that the dose was exrordianritly hgh but with an older pump I needed refills every monh.

Medicare will pretty much pay for it all except our hopitilaization copay, last year it was 800. It may have gone up a bit. Refills cost about 50 bucks, adjustments cost about 30 bucks and it can take lots of adjustments and trials of meds. I'm not gettng the relief I got on morphine and develeoped extreme UA retention when they doubled the baclofin n the mix with dilaudid, so my last refill they reduced it back down and that relieved most of the symptoms.

I did tell the doc I got better relif from morphine and the level of relief just isn't exceptable now when morphine provided so much better with fewer side effects. I magine we will try one last increase on the dilaudid and add clondodine but I can't do several more months of minimal pain control, so I'm hoping to switch back to morphine and deal with the monthly refills,they have me coming n for the stupid DEA ats where a nurse simply checks the refill dates on the bottles and if she's ambitious she will do a pill count. But hte pump at the right level of morhine had sustained the best pain relief , the clearest head and the least side effects for the 4 months prior to switching to dilaudid.

Feeling like crap the last few years is just a constant reminder of is ths what the rest of my life is going to be like, another 20, 30 o 40 years of this ?

The pump cetainly changed my outlook,I was able to help coach my daugters softball team, was more productive around the house and had my labido back.

The folks that say there are no negative side effects when using opiates only to manage pain are simply kidding themself or have forgotten what it was like to see a blue sky and want to go out and enjoy it. Yes accomadation ocurs but your dealing with all the things you are acomadated too, low T levels, lack of motivaton, the meth blahs, nodding out and seeing the world through a pair of glasses that removes all color from life.

If you have medicare, you don't have to live this way if a pump is effective at relieving enough pain for the thought of how are you going to live out the rest of your life to be a concern. Nodding out on the couch if you don't take speed and Testosterone is a crappy way to live. You can try to return to some type of normalcy which a pump can do and orals can't when you requie doses high enough to efect homone levels and require speed to stay awake.

I'm sure the lower dose patients won't agree but that's not what were talking about. 600 mgs of oxy is not a minimal dose or a medium dose, It's high. Needing to combat side effects of meth with more than one drug starts to get rediclous and when one day just blurs from one gray day to the next, it takes a huge psychological toll.

Personally I would want to know if a pump would be a better option. The new pump has more capability than ever, a resevoir 3 times the size of the old and IT meds don't cross the blood brain barrier. You have an exponentially higher number of opiate receptors in your spinal cord than anywhere else in your body, meds don't have to cross the blood brain barrrier to be effective and the lower effective doses used in pumps don't cause everything you have described. Been there, done that, couldn't live that way on meth and that was my only financial alternative too. What's the harm in doing a pump trial and potentially clearing your head, restoring all that meth has robbed you of and finding a financial alternatve to feeling like crap all the time.
Goo luck, Dave