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ProfessorTomoe

Changing Medications (Level of Trust Required)

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6 hours ago, ijuin said:

Yes, and we must ensure that they remain fully gruntled.

Yes, that would be a good idea.  A very good idea.

Possible Trigger warning:

From the Great Wiki

Quote

In 1993, the United States Congress conducted a joint hearing to review the violence in the U.S. Postal Service. In the hearing, it was noted that despite the postal service accounting for less than 1% of the full-time civilian labor force, 13% of workplace homicides were committed at postal facilities by current or former employees.

Hence the term "Going Postal"

 

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I don't know what's going to happen today. I've got three of the 10-325 hydrocodone-acetaminophen pills left. I iced down the spot on my back and spread out the hydrocodone dosage to two every six hours yesterday (4:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 4:30 p.m., and 10:30 p.m.), but I had to take Advil with it to prevent headaches. I'm going to run out of the hydrocodone today, and the sciatica pain is just as intense as it was yesterday. I'm having a hard enough time typing this note.

My doctor's call center opens at 7:30 a.m., so I'm going to give him a call and ask what the hell I should do. God, I hate this,

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5 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

I don't know what's going to happen today. I've got three of the 10-325 hydrocodone-acetaminophen pills left. I iced down the spot on my back and spread out the hydrocodone dosage to two every six hours yesterday (4:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 4:30 p.m., and 10:30 p.m.), but I had to take Advil with it to prevent headaches. I'm going to run out of the hydrocodone today, and the sciatica pain is just as intense as it was yesterday. I'm having a hard enough time typing this note.

My doctor's call center opens at 7:30 a.m., so I'm going to give him a call and ask what the hell I should do. God, I hate this,

This sounds absolutely horrible. :( I am keeping you in my thoughts. My wife has sciatica, too, and she sends her best wishes.

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5 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

I'm going to run out of the hydrocodone today, and the sciatica pain is just as intense as it was yesterday. I'm having a hard enough time typing this note.

My doctor's call center opens at 7:30 a.m., so I'm going to give him a call and ask what the hell I should do. God, I hate this,

That totally sucks.  I hope the doctor extends your pain meds.

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9 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

I hope they can do something for you.  If you were closer, I'd bring over our therapy laser and see if that helps; it seems to help some of our Inter-Vertebral Disc Disease patients.

Right now I'm willing to try almost anything.

4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

This sounds absolutely horrible. :( I am keeping you in my thoughts. My wife has sciatica, too, and she sends her best wishes.

Thank you, and please give your wife my thanks as well, along with my sympathies.

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

That totally sucks.  I hope the doctor extends your pain meds.

Thanks, everyone. My doctor gave me another thirty pills of hydrocodone. He also referred me to a spinal specialist. I've got an appointment this coming Thursday, to which I'll likely have to have my wife drive me. The specialist is supposed to look at the right-side sciatica plus the compression fracture that's been screwing with my left side for the past seven years.

My biggest worry is that they might not be able to do an MRI on me. I honestly don't know if any of the hardware they installed into my ankles and my vena cava back in 2009 are at risk for magnetic-related problems.

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Spine doctor appointment tomorrow (Thursday) at 1:45 p.m. at an office somewhere east of us. Meanwhile, I've managed to keep my hydrocodone usage down to three two-pill doses today. Damned stuff still gives me a bad headache at that dosage, so I have to mix in a couple of ibuprofen tablets each time I take the stuff.

Meanwhile, I've filled in the new patient online forms and printed out my medicine and operation lists (not enough room for either in the online portal forms). I'm scheduled for an X-ray at the end of the appointment.

Mrs. Prof is going to have to drive me, since there's no way I'm going to try and make it through the day without the help of pain meds (I learned that agonizing lesson when I picked her up after her flight home after the Caribbean cruise). She may also have to drive me to my psych doctor appointment on Monday, so it's a good thing that she telecommutes 4-out-of-5 days a week.

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8 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Mrs. Prof is going to have to drive me, since there's no way I'm going to try and make it through the day without the help of pain meds (I learned that agonizing lesson when I picked her up after her flight home after the Caribbean cruise). She may also have to drive me to my psych doctor appointment on Monday, so it's a good thing that she telecommutes 4-out-of-5 days a week.

Give her my best regards and tell her that we are thankful for her efforts in keeping you healthy. The community appreciates your presence so we are indebted to her :)

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9 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Give her my best regards and tell her that we are thankful for her efforts in keeping you healthy. The community appreciates your presence so we are indebted to her :)

She appreciates your support as much as I do. Thank you, everyone.

Got back from the spine specialist around an hour ago. He verified a small compression fracture in my L1 vertebra as the source of my left side pain, and said he thinks the right side pain is due to a pinched nerve just below the fractured vertebra. I'm scheduled for an MRI on Monday. I'm also on a gradually increasing Topamax dose along with the hydrocodone (which may be switched back to Tramadol, depending on what my primary care doctor decides). I'll find out about the MRI results on Friday of next week.

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I am almost done with changing my meds.  Have not had any brain zaps, thank every thing lawful good, but my random muscle twitching isn't getting better, if anything getting worse.  Need to call the clinic Monday.

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2 hours ago, mlooney said:

I am almost done with changing my meds.  Have not had any brain zaps, thank every thing lawful good, but my random muscle twitching isn't getting better, if anything getting worse.  Need to call the clinic Monday.

Good about the brain zaps; bad about the twitches. Please keep us posted about how you are doing and I hope they start tapering off soon.

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19 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Good about the brain zaps; bad about the twitches. Please keep us posted about how you are doing and I hope they start tapering off soon.

Oh, like I am not going to post about random body problems. ;-) It's almost a hobby of mine.

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On 2/18/2017 at 5:25 PM, The Old Hack said:

The EGS Off Topic Forums, Venting and Bitching Post of the Internet.

Hey, I resemble that remark. ^_^

Primary care doc took me from 2 hydrocodone tabs down to one every 4-6 hours. Had to go pick it up from the after-hours staff. Also had to deal with Mrs. Prof being sick with an upper respiratory infection. We went straight from my doctor to the CareNow center (no, we don't share a doctor—never have, don't ask me why), where she got prescriptions for antibiotics and codeine cough syrup.

My painkiller began wearing off rapidly at this point.

We finally wound up at the pharmacy, where we waited for the scrips to be filled. My pain got worse with each minute that passed. The medicines weren't ready until a good thirty minutes later. As you can imagine, the walk out of the pharmacy was excruciating. Mrs. Prof didn't quite get how bad it was—she asked if I wanted to go somewhere for food. I told her I just wanted to go home. She tried again, suggesting that we go to a Sonic, where I could get food and drink to chase down the hydrocodone. I finally begged her, "Just please take me home." She didn't argue with me after that.

The fun starts over tomorrow. She's going to have to drive me to the MRI appointment around noon and a separate doctor's appointment after 4pm, all while she's still sick and I'm unable to drive due to the hydrocodone and the pinched nerve. Oh boy, what a wonderful day it'll be.

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15 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

The fun starts over tomorrow. She's going to have to drive me to the MRI appointment around noon and a separate doctor's appointment after 4pm, all while she's still sick and I'm unable to drive due to the hydrocodone and the pinched nerve. Oh boy, what a wonderful day it'll be.

*wince* Not good. My wife sends her sympathies. Sciatic pain is nothing to joke about.

On a slightly different note, she used a salve to treat it with that her cat absolutely adored the smell of. The furball spent the next hour rubbing against Mommy, which did not help with the pain but did provide her and me with considerable amusement. "I loooooooooooooove Mommy's salve!"

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10 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

On a slightly different note, she used a salve to treat it with that her cat absolutely adored the smell of. The furball spent the next hour rubbing against Mommy, which did not help with the pain but did provide her and me with considerable amusement. "I loooooooooooooove Mommy's salve!"

Be careful about that!  Any medication that can be absorbed through the skin of a human can be absorbed through the skin of a pet and/or be ingested off of their fur when they groom.  Depending on what the medication is, that can lead to bad things for the pet, including a lot if expensive and annoying tests trying to find out the cause of their new symptoms if owners don't think to mention the ointment.

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1 hour ago, mlooney said:

The Shrink says that the muscle twitches should go away "soon after the Cymbalta is out of your system".

That is a common variant of the "zaps." Some feel them as brain zaps, as I did. You got the muscle zap version instead. Very disembodying experience, either way. Good luck getting through them, seriously.

In other news, the MRI that was supposed to happen yesterday? Didn't happen. I wound up catching a bad case of bacterial sinusitis—probably what Mrs. Prof had. Since she was laid out bad, I took the risk and drove myself to the doctor, who BTW reassured me that he had not decreased my hydrocodone dose (even showed me the scan of the script). He put me on Augmentin horse pill antibiotics. I spent the remainder of the day trying to cancel/reschedule other medical appointments. You should see the pile of notes I've got now.

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1 minute ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

That is a common variant of the "zaps." Some feel them as brain zaps, as I did. You got the muscle zap version instead. Very disembodying experience, either way. Good luck getting through them, seriously.

OK, I know what my butt feels like when I get a "zap".  I'm trying to map that to the brain and really failing.

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4 minutes ago, mlooney said:

OK, I know what my butt feels like when I get a "zap".  I'm trying to map that to the brain and really failing.

Something in your brain is misfiring and causing you to experience that sensation. It's a binary neural pathway: brain misfires and tells butt to move, butt moves, butt tells brain it's moved, other parts of the brain wonder WTF is going on. It's complicated.

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1 hour ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Something in your brain is misfiring and causing you to experience that sensation. It's a binary neural pathway: brain misfires and tells butt to move, butt moves, butt tells brain it's moved, other parts of the brain wonder WTF is going on. It's complicated.

Yeah, it almost feels voluntary, and makes me wonder if I'm doing it.  So I try to "twerk1" and fail.  Very weird.

1Me twerking is something we can all agree isn't for the best.

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14 hours ago, mlooney said:

Me twerking is something we can all agree isn't for the best.

'Sokay, I stocked up on brain bleach during my /4chan/b/ days. * dips into reserves *

Meanwhile, day four of the sinusitis, and I'm not feeling any better. My Nest thermostat says it's 74°F, but I could swear it's 63°F. I'm coughing up stuff, but thankfully nothing like when I had pneumonia back in the late 80s. I've been waiting to take my hydrocodone (yep, the spine and the Chronic Pain Syndrome are still in full play) so that I don't run out of it before my pharmacy and my doctor think it's been 5 days.

Translation: I'm farking miserable, even after a cup of Tarrazu coffee. Going to say screw the schedule and take my morning pills anyway (24½ this particular morning).

 

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My muscle twitches got way worse about 6 hours ago.  Enough so that I almost didn't go out with David for our weekly meal together.  I did, however go to a QT to get my weekly 3 gallons of milk instead of doing a mini shopping run at either Reasor's or Wally World. 

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