On the news a few days ago, there was a report that the FDA was considering taking Percocet and Vicodin off the market because they contain acetaminophen and the number of overdoses from acetaminophen have risen sharply over the past few years. I was panicked. I take Vicodin for chronic pain. I used to take OxyContin, and weaned off of it successfully after being on large amounts for several years. But the non-narcotic alternatives didn’t do the trick, so I went on Percocet. That worked for a while, but then I started having pain again and my doctor wrote for Vicodin. It’s helped me so much, that I can live a reasonably normal life.
The pain I have isn’t the usual “Gee, I’ve had a hard day and my body hurts” kind of pain. It’s more the “keep me up all night crying and not able to walk a half block to the bus stop with my son” pain. I was diagnosed with lupus fifteen years ago and fibromyalgia later that same year. I also have osteoporosis in my lumbar spine, which doesn’t cause pain, but causes horrid muscle spasms in my lower back. On a 1–10 scale of pain where one is little or no pain and ten is the worst pain you’ve experienced, my normal is a 3–4. I can live with this constant, low-level pain. But without pain medication, along with water physical therapy and good sleep, my pain shoots up to 8–9. At times it was a ten, but in the past year I’ve started on the fibromyalgia drug, Lyrica, and just started on a newly approved drug, Savilla, which seems to be helping even more. I take less Vicodin and less Ambien than I have in the past and sleep better and more soundly than I did in the past. There were nights that my legs throbbed so badly that I was up all night and would finally fall asleep at nine or ten o’clock in the morning from sheer exhaustion.
When I was on OxyContin, I had to deal with paranoid doctors who were afraid the DEA would accuse them of writing too many prescriptions for the drug. I lived in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where a doctor was found guilty of writing prescriptions for the drug to anyone who walked into her office, pain or no pain. It left a lot of OxyContin addicts who had no source of the drug, except the streets, where one 80mg OxyContin tablet was being sold for over $100. If I hadn’t needed the drug, I could have made a nice living, but I wouldn’t give it up for any amount of money.
I weaned off of OxyContin purely by accident. I came down with a cold and took NyQuil, which contains alcohol, not thinking of the danger of mixing the two. I ended up in a coma for eight days and suffered from horrible hallucinations and other signs of drug withdrawal. After I recovered, my pain specialist had me on MSIR (Morphine Sulfate Instant Release), which helped a great deal, but I never had the same pain control as I did with OxyContin.
At one point, when our insurance changed and my pain specialist was no longer a provider, I decided to ask my internist to manage my pain. We tried tramadol first since I had been on it for five years while in Florida, before advancing to OxyContin. It helped for about five months. Then came Percocet, which didn’t really help, and then, finally, Vicodin. I was a little hesitant to try Vicodin; I had read all the stories of people addicted to the drug, especially those in Hollywood who obviously had more generous doctors than mine, who prescribed exactly the amount of Vicodin each month that I required. I recently asked him to increase my monthly amount because I was running out before the end of the month. But this month has been different. I still have a few left and can renew my prescription in a few days. I believe it’s the Savilla that’s helping, along with warm water physical therapy that I do three or four days a week at a local medicenter. I still have the fatigue associated with lupus and fibro, but I’m hoping that will change eventually when I get to the regular daily dose of Savilla.
Should Vicodin be stopped by the FDA? I don’t think so. I’m a RN and know the importance of patient teaching. I think some doctors and pharmacists are dropping the ball out there. Everyone who is on a combination drug that includes Tylenol should be very aware of it’s presence. I don’t fault my doctors for my NyQuil/OxyContin incident. It was totally my fault. I should have remembered that NyQuil had alcohol in it. I had taken narcotics for long enough to know not to drink alcohol, and I had taken NyQuil long enough to know that it had alcohol in it. Patients, too, should shoulder some of the responsibility for knowing what they are taking. Anyone with Internet access can go to WebMD and look up their medications. I use MedScape.com as a health care professional. Most pharmacies attach patient information to the medications they are dispensing. They don’t belong in the trash with the bag. The information is important and should be read completely. My internist, knowing I’m an RN, still goes over side effects and possible drug interactions of the new drugs he’s writing prescriptions for. I appreciate the care he gives me, because I know he does the same for all of his patients, medical professionals or not.
So now, I sit, with bated breath, waiting to see what the FDA decides. There are other medications I can take; oxycodone is OxyContin in its pure form and helped me with breakthrough pain when I was on OyxContin. MSIR helped but only if I took twice the prescribed amount. I’m not sure if my internist would be willing to write for twice the dose. Now that my pain is under reasonable control, I fear the thought of being up all night again, in agony because I don’t have enough pain medication. Pain is real. Those that take pain medications for the “high” should be in jail. They make things harder for those of us who really need them. Perhaps the FDA should lobby for stricter laws when it comes to junkies. It would make more sense than taking away the very thing that helps so many people live reasonably normal lives, like me.