Shifting Gears

After four months of taking high doses of oxycontin, both my doctors and I agree it's time do something different. So far the narcotic was the best choice to help ease severe pain. After taking it for months, I have become completely addicted to the drug, which is no surprise to the doctors and pharmacists. Within two hours of missing a dose, my body reacts, resulting in cold sweats and feverish sickness. Oxycontin also has other negative side effects that hopefully will dissipate when I switch to the medicines prescribed by my new doctor at Duke's Pain Clinic.

I plan to start with two medications, a patch and a nighttime pill, to both help with the chronic pain and ease the transition off oxytontin onto methadone. High doses of methadone are used to help addicts with addiction to drugs like heroine (at doses 4-5 times higher than mine), but methadone is also used successfully to treat chronic pain. After the first medicines are in my system, I'll start taking methadone in a full dose and slowly lower the amount of oxycontin for 10 days until I'm not taking any. Methadone gradually builds up in the system and should be operating at its full potential about the same time I stop taking oxycontin altogether.

After I've transitioned to methadone, we'll lower the dose to find out how little I can take to keep the pain in check. I'm just trying to find the best way to manage the chronic pain with the least side effects and narcotics. My doctor explained that the goal of these intense pain meds is to attack new pain aggressively to give the body a chance to heal and hopefully figure out how to handle the pain on its own. There is a decent chance that I'll take some form of pain medication for the rest of my life. With help from the pain team, we'll figure out how to make pain management as painless as possible.

Try saying that sentence three times as fast as you can.