A Visit to My Doctor's

Saturday, December 12, 2009 - 12:10 AM   After two weeks of being stuck in my apartment, I finally managed to get out yesterday. The temperatures rose into the 30s, and the snow stopped coming down. It was nice to see the sun shining again.   I saw my primary care physician yesterday afternoon. It was a follow-up visit to the one I had last month. Although there is nothing urgent or serious, my doctor wants to continue seeing me for another month, so I will return in January.   My doctor agreed to prescribe four medications for me that I get at my mental health clinic. My psychiatrist used to prescribe these, but I am no longer going to be seeing him. I am hopeful that the prescriptions will be phoned in by the middle of the week because I am running out of some of them.   I talked my doctor about the panic attacks I had last weekend. He said he was quite sure that they were not the result of anaphylactic shock because he always keeps a list of all my medications that I am taking, and he is quite sure that I am not having any bad side effects due to interactions between the medications.   He said that he was not sure what caused the panic attacks, but added that he felt my family was not giving me enough support, and he thought they were doing just the opposite of that. I could not agree more.   I have been concerned about the fact that I have been taking Percocet for nearly two years. I have a niece who does not want me to take it because it is a narcotic, and she was worried because I had been addicted to crack cocaine, which is also a narcotic. She does not want me to become addicted to Percocet as well.   I expressed these concerns to my doctor, and asked him how much longer I would need to take this medication. His answer to me was, "always." I was not quite ready for that answer. He explained to me that my pain was not likely to disappear, and I needed to take something so that I would not have to "suffer" with it. He also said that pain could increase my blood pressure, which could lead to other problems including, but not limited to, strokes and heart attacks. He added that there were far more addictive medications than Percocet.   While I am not too keen about the idea of taking a narcotic for the rest of my life, I guess there are worse things than that. I just have to change the way my mind thinks about this. I will make that happen, but it will not be overnight. My family will just have to accept this too.