I savaged my knee about 14 years ago and had 2 surgeries on it. The second was a PCL reconstruction and I was told then that I would be a candidate for a replacement by the time I was 40. I'm 31 now. I'm also way overweight (which I know doesn't help, but I'm trying to fix that and it is what it is at this point) and that is complicating things. My side job requires me to be up and walking, squatting, standing for up to 10 hours at a time on weekends so I finally broke down and asked for a referral to a PM doc.
I've been seeing my current PM doc for almost 2 years. He and I have a pretty decent relationship and I've not any issues with missing my counts, negative urine tests, etc. He started me off on 90 10mg Norco and because of elevated liver enzymes we ended up on a dose of 120 10mg IR oxycodone for the past 18 months. I do share my meds with my partner and that is not likely to change in the near future, unfortunately. I screwed up about 6 weeks ago and tried suboxone for the first time. Before then a 10mg oxy would knock out 99% of my pain and last a good 4 - 6 hours. I could usually break one in half and get decent pain relief for a couple hours if I took it before the pain ramped up. I have a LOW tolerance for suboxone and .4-.6 mg tore me up for almost 12 hours. It worked great for some recreational fun, but now my tolerance for the oxy is much higher. It now takes almost 15mg to do what 5 mg did before I tried suboxone. Nothing else has changed.
I go back next week and I'm worried that if I tell him that my medicine is suddenly no longer adequate that he's going to be suspicious and I'm going to have a problem. Any advice on how to ask for an increase without throwing out a red flag?
TIA.
I've been seeing my current PM doc for almost 2 years. He and I have a pretty decent relationship and I've not any issues with missing my counts, negative urine tests, etc. He started me off on 90 10mg Norco and because of elevated liver enzymes we ended up on a dose of 120 10mg IR oxycodone for the past 18 months. I do share my meds with my partner and that is not likely to change in the near future, unfortunately. I screwed up about 6 weeks ago and tried suboxone for the first time. Before then a 10mg oxy would knock out 99% of my pain and last a good 4 - 6 hours. I could usually break one in half and get decent pain relief for a couple hours if I took it before the pain ramped up. I have a LOW tolerance for suboxone and .4-.6 mg tore me up for almost 12 hours. It worked great for some recreational fun, but now my tolerance for the oxy is much higher. It now takes almost 15mg to do what 5 mg did before I tried suboxone. Nothing else has changed.
I go back next week and I'm worried that if I tell him that my medicine is suddenly no longer adequate that he's going to be suspicious and I'm going to have a problem. Any advice on how to ask for an increase without throwing out a red flag?
TIA.
