I can't straighten it from a sitting position, or lying on my back etc. When walking I can straighten it a bit more, but it really does make it difficult, and intensely painful to walk.
Lost my cane in town a couple of weeks ago too, I'm really struggling lately. Between the steroid shots, and my appt. on tuesday with the pain clinic, I hope they can do something.
I'm not content though with just being on pain meds, antiinflammatories and corticosteroids for life though, I want the root problem FIXED, crows bloody take it.
Its unbelievably difficult to get adequate analgesia here in the UK, I had to fight like a demon for YEARS to get on the oxycontin. I understand perfectly the docs' point of view, not wanting to overmedicate a patient, or create an army full of junkies.
BUT, undermedicating is just as much of a problem. Ever been in so much pain you threw up? or had to drag yourself to the bog to do it, because your leg won't bear your own weight?
Or passed out cold?
No patient should be left like that.
After I had my operation, all they would give me were some codeine 30s, never mind the fact that I was already opioid-tolerant. And when I was in hospital after a dental abscess, christ. They expected me to put up with an IV paracetamol drip. I don't take the stuff in general, unless I am truly, truly desperate. Mainly for the reason that I find it as good as inert, regardless of the use. It will help lower a fever, but as an analgesic, it is inactive.
Eventually got 10mg of oral morph out of the buggers, after pleading for days on end. Every something like 6 hours, and they literally demanded I have the APAP drip anyway before giving me that.
I had to sneak off every time into the loos, and plug the oramorph, diluted in water (its a thin syrup in consistency), holding the damn stuff in my mouth, as morphine has a piss-poor bioavailability by mouth, most of it gets torn a new one in the liver before it ever gets to the brain, IIRC its as low as 30-35%.
EVENTUALLY managed to get them to switch to IM shots, after making it perfectly clear that A-I was tolerant already, and had to actually explain the low bioavailability of oral morphine. Damn glad one nurse forgot to take the unused half a vial of the stuff with her, and that at the time one night, somebody left a full box of codeine pills unattended (I would never, ever have stolen from a patient, this was simply stores left unwatched)
Was told that the dental problem could have killed me, it was that bad.
Fucking ridiculous, and unfair that patients in need should even come close to having to go that far. What really took the piss that time, was when eventually I managed to get the analgesia done IM, they were freaking out at my going off the ward to buy something to eat, in case it was so bloody much, I passed out, fell over, etc.
I almost choked when they were acting all worried and stuff, jesus H.
Here in the UK, one can walk into any pharmacy (assuming they carry the product) and BUY small amounts of oral morphine, in the form of a 20mg/100ml bottle. Expensive though to do it that way, very expensive, about a fiver a bottle. It isn't even a single dose for me, if I were to have taken no oxy, I'd need first to take a bottle of codeine based cough mixture to saturate hepatic cytochrome P450-3A4 and CYP-P450-2D6, which in both cases, chew up morphine and spit it out, although P450-2D6 is important for the processing of the prodrug codeine to more active things, and once thats achieved, then take 4-5 bottles of the morphine based one (which is a fucking nuisance, pharmacies are only allowed to sell one at a time per customer, means walking around everywhere, and go all out for a saturation-bombing campaign after the codeine takes full effect, with grapefruit juice (love the stuff anyway, which is good, but not easy to get down 2 liters or so!)
Getting a sleeping pill rx isn't that hard though, which I find strange. Depending on the doc you see of course, some of them have it personal against them, I did have one of them that was generally against the use of them.
Thing is, if it were my practice, I would be FAR more wary of scripting benzos and the like, the dependency formation if it does occur in a patient is infinitely more dangerous, far more unpleasant, and can prove fatal. Opioid withdrawal is nonlethal, save in the most extreme cases, mainly in people who are already severely weakened in constitution, or due to dehydration from emesis/diarrheoea, or due to starvation if a patient is jailed etc. and can't eat.
I've spoken to people who have seen the latter happen, whilst locked up, in the US. Guy with a huge habit got nicked, no effort made whatsoever to detox the guy, and he literally starved to death because he couldn't eat, or keep food down.
Even in the case of a guy who is known to have whipped up a batch of a hugely potent synthetic opioid, etonitazine, he died, but it wasn't the withdrawals that killed him, he had downregulated his opioid receptors so severely that when busted and forced to go cold turkey, he checked himself out.
I sure as hell knew I was not going to overdose for Hades' sake.
Hopefully your old man will recover soon CF. Does sound like he is going hypo.
