Good luck with your appointment tomorrow, and I hope that this Doctor will be the one that takes care of your pain, listens to you, and helps your recover some of your life back. Let us know what happens,

Hugs,
Tipper

I hope you have great success and a great relationship with the new doctor tomorrow. Try to breathe. You will be in my thoughts and prayers.

Best of luck with your appointment! I sure hope this doctor works out for you and will aggressively treat your pain. I'll keep you in my prayers ~ make sure you let us know what happens!! God bless and take care. Hugs, Lee

wishing you luck, and looking forward to hearing all about it

hugs sandi

good luck to you. i'm so sorry about your doctor. it's horrible to lose a great doctor this way. i really hope you get a doctor and some control over this situation soon!

with care,
jen

Wishing you the best of luck with your new doc.

Wishing you much success!!

Hugs,
Deb

Good luck! Its so hard to be tied down geographically because you have receive meds for an illness!! There are so few docs that will work w/ you and and be as flexible as possible to help you meet your physical needs. That's awful, particularly when it pertains to your livelihood.

Thanks everyone! It didn't go as I hoped but did go well. He's willing to take me on but he says he can't keep me on my current schedule of meds. He says the DEA made rules about long-acting and short acting meds together and he can increase one and decrease the other. So I can stay on the medication, just get used to a new dose. Or, if this doesn't work, there are other meds he is willing to try. I wasn't sure I'd heard about them but he says he'll do all he can to get my pain levels down. Basically, he is a very nice man and I think this will work better than the other option, which is suboxone after 5 days in the hospital, with no muscle relaxants, etc. At least this is the same medication, no changes there. And he is very caring. I think it went well. Definitely better than the first doctor I saw since my original doctor's death!

Glad to hear this. It does make you wonder what the heck there doing with pain management. So he can or can't keep you were your at. and that doesn't make since they would up one and decrease the other. how are you suppose to feel better if they decrease one.

well at least he is nice and you like him

hugs sandi

Thanks Sandi. I believe it is b/c of the new DEA rules that he has to switch my doses. They state that you can not have more than one instant release to one long-acting. Because morphine IR 30mg is the strongest available, that means I switch from 6-8 a day to 3 a day, but the long acting goes from 60mg to 100mg. It's all b/c of DEA rules. He has a lot of patients who would suffer if he got in trouble or lost his license. I had NO idea that the dose I'd been on for 14 years was no longer advisable. 3 years ago it was still allowed. I don't know if my original doc knew about this or just didn't care b/c he didn't agree with many DEA rulings & said he put his patients 1st. It doesn't matter to me as I don't feel the side effects after 14 years, and the new doc is able to keep me on the drug that has worked for me. He did say that if the new routine didn't work, there were other drugs available. I'm encouraged that he is by-the-book, and he did say he wished he could keep me on what helped. I don't foresee a problem- other than getting used to having the higher dose of the long-acting. I tried it way back years ago and it made me very tired and I felt odd. But after 14 years, the medication does nothing to me, so I am hoping my body adjusts. I've got some important trips planned for work and the sooner we know, the better. I don't happen to agree with the DEA on this one b/c I know what worked for me, but as long as I can walk, work, and live my life, I'm fine with a dose change. Summer is coming and my pain is usually less in warmer weather, so it is a good time to change. I'm a bit embarrassed to say this, but last month I was in New Orleans for work and my friend and I went to a gypsy fortune teller just for the fun of it in Jackson square. I wanted to "disprove" that stuff but 99.9% of what she said to me was so true that it made me cry, including her knowing that I had buried a child, had miscarriages and had a baby who wasn't mine but WAS. (Our son is adopted.) But what really got me was that she said I had a medical problem I was worrying about, and she said that I would get a resolution to my current crises, and find that solution in a new place. (I found the doctor through this website.) She also said I would have to see more than one doctor before finding the right one, and the solution would NOT be what I expected but it would surprise me and work for me. I've made fun of this stuff for years but she's right! I expected to find a doctor who would keep me on the med schedule I've been on all these years. The 1st doctor said "No one will prescribe that to you so let's put you in the hospital for a week and switch you to suboxone. My research showed me that suboxone wouldn't work for me. Instead I found a nice doc who said, I can't do what you expect, but let's work together and find another solution. I don't know if the gypsy got REALLY lucky in guessing b/c I don't LOOK like I have a medical problem, but just the stuff she said about this really hit home! And that's JUST the medical stuff! Anyway, I am hoping that it works b/c I want to get back to work!

thanks for updating! i'm glad that he is willing to work with you to some extent... i don't understand why he cannot keep you at the doses of both medications you are accustomed to, but, i can't keep up with all the DEA stuff so it's no wonder.
anyway, i'm happy for you. changing doctors really can be scary.

with care,
jen