I'd like to apologize first of all, I'm sure this has come up many times on other forums/threads whatever they are called, but I am brand new to this so please bear with me. I've had chronic back pain for about 7 years. Original injury was a herniated disc. I re injured it 2 more times to the point that I've been told I need fusion surgery. I've also got a bad disc at C3-C4 but since its not causing horrific pain, no one has really paid any real attention to it. In October I was diagnosed with a nasty staph infection that had gotten into my spine and lungs. After over a month in the hospital, then several more weeks of IV antibiotic treatment at home, the infection was gone. Shortly before the infection, I had been discussing changing doses on my meds with my pm Dr. His bedside manner pretty much sucked, so while in the hospital I asked for a referral to a different pm Dr. Before the infection, I was taking Opana ER 30mg 2xdaily and 2 15mg oxi IRS 3x daily for breakthrough pain. They were already losing their effectiveness prior to my illness. I guess my Dr was giving me oxi 15's instead of 30's because of some shortage. I was on that same dose for about 16 months. When I finally got out of the hospital and went to see the new pm Dr he said he'd put me back on what I was taking before but he prescribed me 4 oxi 15's a day. I thought it was an honest mistake, so I suffered a little bit more figuring on my next visit I could get it straightened out. Unfortunately, my Dr was unavailable at the time of my appointment so I only got to speak with his P.A. who didn't help me other than to write out the wrong scripts again. I go see my Dr in 13 hours and need to explain to him that my pain is still worse than it was pre-hospitalization. I'm willing to try more injections, RLF, anything to get some relief. I know my insurance company will take their sweet time to authorize any of those treatments. So what I really need to know is what is the best strategy to get my Dr to up my meds in the meantime. I need to achieve enough pain relief so I can return to work. There is no more disability $ and my husband was just deployed to Afghanistan and his pay alone is not enough to cover our expenses....so, if anyone could please offer some advice asap I'd be very greatfull. I'm not trying to get more meds so I can be high, I really just need the meds to function. I'm currently hovering around a 7 with my current doses and I need to get down to atleast a 5 to be able to do my job.
