Ah, pain meds and back pain. My Doc gave me a script for Tramadol when I first hurt my back in '08, didn't work. He gave me a script for Hydrocodone (Vicodin, Lortab, Lorcet, Norco) two days later. They worked much better. I've been on all types of pain meds over the last two and a half years. Tramadol, Hydrocodone, Embeda (Morphine ER), Morphine IR, Nucynta, Oxycodone (Percocet) and Oxycontin. I've had seven spinal injections, radio graphs (where they burn nerves in the facets) and a discography (the most painful thing I've ever had). Had two different Chiropractors and went to Physical Therapy.
Had back surgery Mar. 11th. two weeks ago today! They took two disc's out, the disc between my L4 and L5 vertebra and the disc between my L5 and S1 vertebra and put spacers in there place (on each side of my spine), screws in each side of my L4, L5 and S1 vertebras, affixed rods to them, scraped bone from my pelvis and wrapped it around the rods. Still using the walker and taking pain meds. 1 to 2 10/325mg Hydrocodone every 4 hours as needed along with two 50mg Embeda a day, one in the morning and one at night and 3 Flexerils 10mg 1 every 8 hours.
I was having horrible low and mid back pain. My MRI's only showed a slight bulge in the disc between the L5 and S1 vertebras so the insurance company (workers comp) thought I was full of $h!t. They never denied any treatment, but they made me wait as long as they legally could before they would approve what my doctors wanted to try next. Even after I had the discography which clearly showed internal disc damage to the two above mentioned disc's and BOTH my Dr. and the Dr. that did discography said surgery was necessary, they made me wait until the absolute last minute.
If you're having back pain, I'd try to find the problem and fix it. Pain meds get old real quick. Hopefully I'll start feeling better soon and can start weaning off of them. My surgeon and pain management Dr. say it'll be a while before I'll be totally off of them. That's our goal though, the sooner the better.
