Pain-killers... Oh, How I Loathe Thee.

Greetings,

I need to be a little specific with this topic, and I suspect that this is going to be a little shorter than my usual post. I am going to talk about pain-killers. More to the point I am going to talk about the reasons why I am so disinclined to take them if I can find any other way in which to solve a pain issue. This is probably going to seem a little odd to some.

So, you have a headache. Straight to the medicine cabinet, pop two pills, be they aspirin or paracetamol, and everything is good, right? For most people I would say that this is how things work. So I had a headache last night, with neck pain and back pain. According to the description above it should have been simple, follow the instructions have the pain-killers and be done with it, right? In my case not so easy. This is more than a simple choice to make, in fact it can be quite a bit more complex.

First of all, due to being on methotrexate for sarcoidosis (which is on the retreat I am glad to say) I cannot take aspirin due to the blood-thinning agents in both medications, also I cannot take paracetamol due to the liver issues associated with the combinations. This effectively takes out things like panadol, panadol forte, aspalgin, mersyndol and mersyndol forte. Pretty much all the over the counter stuff is gone, along with some which you can need a prescription for.

What does this leave? This leaves wonderful things like MS Contin, which is a morphine derivative, and Tramadol which is a synthetic drug designed to stop the pain signals to the brain. Or at least these are the two wonderful drugs I have been prescribed in addition to my usual drugs taken for FM. The Tramadol is the main one, but in order to take this I have to make choices.

I don't like taking the MS Contin for obvious reasons, however I can take that whenever I need it as it has no real reactions besides the above to anything else I am on. The Tramadol on the other hand reacts with the anti-depressant that I am on in the evening, so I need to make a choice of one or the other. Not a great choice I can tell you.

In the taking of either of the drugs, I know for a fact that I am going to be have "brain fuzz" for at least 24 hours if not longer. This is like the good old FM fog, i.e. can't think straight, lose track of things and all those wonderful symptoms. The big reason why I really dislike taking the pain-killers. Pain goes away, leaves the disgusting fuzz behind. For the most part I will do anything in order to not take either of them. This includes putting up with the pain, having a warm shower (which helps a surprising amount), going to bed early if it is in the evening (and sometimes during the day, not all that often if I can help it), or just trying not to think about it and working around it. 

Of course the other big reason why I do not like taking the pain-killers is because I do not want to end up dependent and upping the doses as my body gets used to them. I do not feel like being dependent on "big-dose" pain-killers at all. The concept of being like this and dependent on them is something that I will avoid as best I can, and if that means I go without, well so be it. Needless to say, I keep my pain levels under reasonable control as best I can, and will put up with the pain for the most part until I can't. Pain-killers for me are a last resort.

Cheers,

Henry.