Reply #32: i was lucky [View All]

[paulsby]

in that i already knew my surgeon was very good, since he did my sister in law's ACL. your primary care physician, if you were still under active care for this incident , wouldn't want to issue you pain med scripts CONCURRENT with those issued by your surgeon. that smells of "dr shopping" when one has concurrent scripts for the same malady from different doctors. it's totally acceptable when the scripts are for different maladies, from different docs. like if you have a GI doc who prescribed nexium for GERD and a primary care who prescribed lipitor. generally speaking, another surgeon won't want to take over from the guy who did your surgery. it's kind of an honor among MD's kind of thang.

i would be as forceful as possible, and if he flat out refuses, get a second opinion.

i once had this issue with a doc who (imo) was prescribing the wrong (and ineffective) medication for an ailment, and just wasn't up on the current research ,etc. this was not a pain issue, fwiw. i asked for another dr. in the same clinic, and he was AWESOME and we were on the same page.

pain levels, response to pain medication, etc. varies GREATLY amongst individuals. good dr's are sensitive to this. i know people who can get relief from moderate pain with vicodin. vicodin has 5mg of hydrocodone, which gram per gram is about half as strong as oxycodone (used in percoset percodan and oxycontin). vicodin is also C-III, whereas oxycontin is C-II. vicodin is useless for me, because i have to take so much that it means i am ingesting WAY too much APAP (acetaminophen). vic's have 5/625 of hydrocodone/APAP. just as some people can get pretty drunk off two beers, and another person won't barely feel an effect, the same is true of opioids.

i'm a decent guy, and also am not particularly responsive to opioids, or analgesics in general (even my dentist gives me like twice the amount of mouth numbing meds he gives a "normal" person .), and a good doctor will recognize that people vary. dosages need to be large enough to work. sure, a larger dose is going to be more risky, and ceteris paribus, cause a more difficult withdrawal. oh well. that's the tradeoff.