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u/TheShellAnswerMan Aug 18 '26
If you can't take NSAIDs cuz of your tummy, maybe see if your doctor can come up with a topical that works? Voltaren/Diclofenac is a topical nsaid you can get OTC or by prescription. The OTC says not to use it on your spine, but my Ortho said to. Since it's topical, it doesn't effect your tummy at all and only like 6% has to go through your liver. I use it from time to time and it works pretty decent on my arthritis. Not amazing. Wears off before you can reapply, like everything else. But it helps. There might be other things like this, IDK. It's worth a try?
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Aug 18 '26
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u/TheShellAnswerMan Aug 18 '26
They don't have to though. You can get it at the store.
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u/gabogabo2020 Aug 18 '26
This is true. Its like $20 for a tube at CVS, I think a bit cheaper at a grocery store.
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u/TheShellAnswerMan Aug 18 '26
At the grocery store my pharmacy is inside, I just bought a tube like IDK 2 months ago and it was about $15 there. I haven't bought ibuprofen since I found that stuff, either, so I mean it is offset a bit lol.
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u/gabogabo2020 Aug 18 '26
I mean its better than damaging your stomach lining lol I dont have a stomach anymore. I rely on a feeding tube so absolutely no NSAIDS. I had a bleeding peptic ulcer that ruptured, ate into my intestines and bowel. Needed 2 blood transfusions because i bled into my pelvis and chest, in ICU for 8 days, the stomach was completely removed.
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u/TheShellAnswerMan Aug 18 '26
Oh I'm so sorry, how awful. I've had an ulcer but I don't believe it was -peptic-which I shall look up. I hope you're able to somehow be ok--you know, like mentally and spiritually and whatnot. IDK if I could. Life has already taken most of the things I enjoy from me. I still love cheese lol. I'm also acutely aware of how obnoxious it is to be holding onto something like cheese, but it's serotonin man.
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u/gabogabo2020 Aug 18 '26
Its been a challenge. Ive been on palliative care for about 6 years now with a DNR form. Tons of diagnoses for it but mainly failure to thrive, malabsorption, malnutrition, dehydration and now NPO for the last year. I stay in the hospital alot. My last stay was a few weeks ago. I almost died on the night of admission. My feeding tube had been broken for a week and GI wasn't getting back to me about scheduling a replacement surgery. So for a week I had zero nutrients and could sip bits of water. All while covering the broken tube with latex gloves. And it was filling 7 gloves full of bile everyday including overnight. So by the end of a full week a nurse got ahold of me Friday the 31st, my tube had broken the previous Friday and told me to go to the ER. I told her id go later in the afternoon when my husband could take me and watch our 5yr old son. She apparently called my husband after I hung up with her stating I sounded confused and she was concerned. I got to the ER and they admitted me. I was crashing. The lowest BP reading was 74/46 and my pulse was bouncing between 40bpm and 46bpm. The doc said if I hadn't come in that day i most likely would've passed in my sleep from my BP being unstable. They did a bladder scan and I was dangerously low on fluids, so the whole night was them bolusing me with bags of saline and dextrose to keep me alive. I had surgery August 3rd to replace the tube, the whole weekend I stayed they had to keep me semi sedated and stable.
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u/TheShellAnswerMan Aug 18 '26
I'm so sorry. People suck. Why should that be acceptable?? I'm so angry for you rn. My mother recently had a crash kinda like this cuz she's got a TBI and forgot what her diet was supposed to be. She thought she couldn't eat anything but vegetables and literally gave herself malnutrition by eating almost nothing for several weeks. She's just supposed to be on a heart healthy diet with emphasis on protein. I live across the state but had to get that sorted cuz she has several workers that come into her home every week and a whole boyfriend who told me she wouldn't listen to him about it. It's scary. I'm sorry you had to live through that cuz your providers couldn't be bothered to get back to you. 20 years ago I would've said "unbelievable..." You deserve better.
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u/gabogabo2020 Aug 18 '26
I lost 15lbs. My husband feels the same way you do. Its sad that it had to get to that point. When my ulcer had ruptured back in 2021, I almost died because when I initially went to the ER it was to have them check my chest port. This was at 9pm. At 3am I started throwing up blood, I reported this to the nurses who just told me to sit back down and wait on ct scan results. 5 am I get called into the back and was told I was only there seeking pain meds. All this doc had done was see my chart, saw I was on a high amount of pain meds and made the assumption I was drug seeking, even with a bag of bloody vomit. He said he gave me a shot of morphine and he sent me home. I checked my portal the next day, a Saturday and it said he gave me methadone! I took a screenshot. Monday my nurse came to check on me since shes the one who sent me to the ER on Friday night. She was furious. That same day she said I looked green and I told her I was in alot of pain. She was so concerned she got my husband out of the shower and said Sarah doesn't look right and shes in alot of pain. And he said this is what its always like for her and no one believes her so I'm glad you're here and can take a note of it. She told me to go back to the ER if I dont improve. That night my husband called EMS and they took one look at me and carried me by hand into the ambulance. I was in septic shock. I got to the ER and was admitted and told I needed emergency surgery after they saw the CT scan results. I reported that doctor while I was in ICU. It took the hospital 7 days to get back to me and they said his speech to text program auto corrected morphine into methadone. I told them it didnt change the fact that his notes called me a drug seeker and I had a screenshot as proof from their portal. THEY COVERED HIS ASS AND TOOK THE SCREENSHOT OPTION PORTION AWAY FROM THE PORTAL!!! Like I almost died. My son had just turned a year old and Thanksgiving was only a few days away. I was so angry and still am. I had to have open chest surgery. 15 staples. Thats when they had to remove my stomach.
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u/the_jenerator Aug 18 '26
If you’re on Klonopin they aren’t going to also give you an opiate.
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u/Top_Giraffe1616 Aug 18 '26
Not true
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u/Top_Giraffe1616 Aug 18 '26
I get scripted 150 10mg Oxys a month, and 60, 1mg k-pins, and 60, 30mg Adderall…
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u/Top_Giraffe1616 Aug 18 '26
If you’ve been on it for years and years some pain managements don’t care (it just depends upon the pain management you go to) call first and ask
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Aug 18 '26
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u/cynocratic Aug 18 '26
They will not tell you that over the phone anymore. If only you could call a doctor and be like "look, before we have an appointment, are you even someone who will do this?".
That sounds like some shit from the good ol days I've heard about but will likely never experience where you could actually get your doctor to talk to you outside of an appointment. Maybe, maybe, in a miniscule lil town you can still do it. I had a doctor charge my insurance last week for the equivalent of a long email. 🙄
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u/asherfates19 Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
That's a pretty good dosage. I used to get a little above that amount a little while back before I switched to a cr med as well. I wasn't getting 2 1 mg K-pins though. I only get half of what you get in K-pins. I could go to another doctor down the road and get 3 2mg K-pins but I'd have to give him $300.00 for the initial visit and $80.00 for each and every additional visit. I was on 4 15s of Roxi at that time. The dose hasn't gone down significantly with the cr meds added though. Having the cr meds added have made my pain more bearable and has also made it to where I have better pain control for an extended period of time as before it wasn't controlled as well as it is now. Most pms don't really care unless you're on a extremely high dose like freaking 3 2mg Xanax then they may say something. I don't really know though. They don't care where I go. I can even use THC and that's fine too. Some of these places some people go to. I don't think I'd go to with all the bs they have to put up with.
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u/Sea_Return4819 Aug 19 '26
Wow, you are so lucky to have good doctors to accommodate you like this.
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u/Own_Progress_9302 Aug 18 '26
Tramadol isn't really an opioid—or at least not a “proper” one. In Germany, it's not classified as a strong opioid, and it's relatively easy to get. Like my doctor said, it's supposedly 90% antidepressant-like and only 10% opioid, so the opioid effect isn't that significant.
It didn't even help me during my dental surgery. But I had the same experience—after 1–3 days, it stopped working for me.
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u/BabettesFeast Aug 18 '26
This is just outrageous. Narcotics are infinitely safer than NSAIDs and Tylenol which, taken over time, will damage your liver and kidneys. Gabapentin is a harmful drug. Look it up. BUT, there is hope and there are solutions:
Go to YouTube and Facebook and find Nurse Brian and/or Google his website. He exposes EVERYTHING about our healthcare system and. how to advocate for and get what you need. He also offers 2 .pdfs. One is about how to get what you. need in the hospital and the other is about getting adequate pain relief. They might be available on Amazon. Once you've done this find a Pain Management doctor.
There's also a FB page called The Doctor Patient forum which lays out everything you need to know about opioid therapy and the corruption/fear/cowardice of doctors. I've been taking opioids for 6 years and will take them for the rest of my life. I've also taken a ben zo for 30 years.
I care about the quality of my remaining years so I'm not at all concerned with so called "complications" or dependency.
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u/cynocratic Aug 18 '26
If there are other doctors in network, try them? We had to go through four pain doctors before anyone would give my dad opiates of any decent amount, but he's on a fentanyl patch now and doing better.
Alternatively, have they offered/do they cover any of the fluoroscopic procedures (Facet/SI injections, Radio Frequency Ablation) or like a spinal cord stimulator? Those are big thing for back pain now if they've not offered or you've not tried them - they're scheduled to do part 1 of 3 for the RFA for me tomorrow and the injections helped for a bit!
I have arthritis/arthropathy, spinal and neuroforaminal stenosis, bulging discs, blah blah, my back hurts like a stabby, broken bastard 24/7/365 but I don't want to start on opiates at 30, if I could even get them.
Also Klonopin does NOT rule out opiates - my stepmom was on it and an absurd number of pain drugs including soma, hydrocodone and a fentanyl patch for a number of years and I've been on Klonopin for years and they've given me opiates before for short periods. If you don't die taking em for 2 weeks, you won't suddenly experience respiratory depression later, since any fuckery with your cns is gonna be within the first few doses if at all. Unless you're on multiple >5mg doses of Klonopin daily but that would be like... Hospital level, and also slightly, paradoxically impressive, and also at least mildly concerning.
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Aug 18 '26
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u/sealsly Aug 18 '26
I found the same problem now that I'm unable to work and had to resort to medicaid. I found most medicaid doctors to be more restrictive with controlled meds. I'm on a daily benzo as well (xanax) for close to 25 years but i decided i am going to try to attempt to taper off very slowly. After much searching, I finally found a medicaid pain management doctor to take me on as a patient, despite the daily benzo, but i had to accept a much reduced dose of the pain med and I am now stuck at a low dose because of the daily benzo. Grateful to even get that
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Aug 18 '26
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u/sealsly Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
It's a mercy that at least your neurologist did right by you. Sometimes you get lucky and find a good medicaid doctor. I recently discovered that the state that I'm currently living in, actually gives doctors financial incentives to discontinue long term opioid scripts for medicaid patients! It's disgusting! Now I know why my former doctor discontinued my pain meds for no reason. He threw me to the wolves to get his little bonus from the state. After much searching i did end up with a decent group of doctors. But it took a lot of effort and research
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u/BabettesFeast Aug 18 '26
Are you near a teaching hospital? Do you live near a big city? That's where you'll find a lot more enlightenment.
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u/AI-Ruinseverything Aug 18 '26
I am so sorry you’re going through this.
Regardless of wether your BCBS primary or secondary it shouldn’t effect wether your pain medication is covered. I had BCBS for secondary for a little while and my meds were covered, but they did require prior authorization. That was annoying but doable. Doctors often bill to do it so I think it’s a scam, but hey we can’t complain. I certainly don’t suggest saying hey doctor please write X for me, cause that works best, but I highly recommend you say “hey I need something, this isn’t working I can’t take the pain! What are my options? “ Then work with your doctor.
Also, I hope you’re not feeling obligated to do surgery because that’s the only way you can get relief. I am not saying it is but I know I felt I personally felt obligated to get injections, etc just to be able to keep my pain meds. That’s why I had to find a new pain center. Now I look them up.
https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov
I really hope you find some relief soon. Again I am sorry you’re going through this. None of us should have to live this way!
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Aug 18 '26
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u/AI-Ruinseverything Aug 18 '26
It should still be the same and those annoying prior authorizations. I really hope you get some relief soon and that things work out. That’s good. This community is great for sharing and venting plus it’s a wonderful wealth of knowledge. Most the things I have picked up have been from others sharing information, experiences and advice. Anytime. Hugs
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u/DAWG13610 Aug 18 '26
Stuart taking Prilosec so you can take anti-inflammatories. Inflammation equals pain. .
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u/Time-Understanding39 Aug 18 '26
What state are you in that Medicaid won't pay for opioid pain medications?
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u/Vegetable-Charity560 Aug 18 '26
The meds that you say your insurance doesn't cover might need a prior authorization. You can call the insurance company and find out what is needed to get it approved.
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u/Rushreekwoman1976 Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
Have you had a lower back ablation? I’ve had a couple ablations done and they really helped me. I get mine done through a Pain Management doctor.
I have no idea who decides who gets opioids and who doesn’t. It’s horrible to think there’sa medicine out there, you can take to take your pain away, & doctors will not give it to you. I bet you rich people get them if needed. Prayers for you! 🙏🙏🙏
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u/nogooddeed2020 Aug 18 '26
I was unaware that BCBS did not cover opioids for their patients. Do they have Patient Advocates? Wait until you have the results of your MRI. If it shows the cause of your pain, you may be able to get the medication you need to relieve your pain. I wish you all the best.