My wife suffers from Fibromyalgia. The treatment regiment is lotz of pills of course. Her course of pain meds are 5 ES Vicodin a day. Because her pain is real, the opiate level she tolerates does not get her high, it simplly manages her pain. With her GP, we also regularlly make sure her liver is unaffected.
She recently had a kidney stone, just as anyone can have a kidney stone... And when it passed her pain was intense. It triggered a flare-up of her Fibromyalgia. The result was that she was in intense pain constently, as though still passing the kidney stone ( though it had passed ).
CT Scans showed it had passed, and had irritated the ureter ( tube between kidney and bladder ). However her pain never alleviated from the intense pain of the passing of the stone. She was given Percocet and it took the edge off. Days passed and the pain was not diminished. This is why her GP and a Consulting Physician came to the conclusion that it was a Fibromyalgia flare up.
The Consulting Physician used the following analogy to help explain it to us: Fibromyalgia can sometimes behave like a lawless child. It heard the alarms; it saw the lights; it was fascinated with the firetrucks responding to a real fire. And now it goes around pulling fire alarms, even though there is no fire, just to relive the response.
It seemed a logical enuf explanation that I shared it with our children. To her the pain is real, her body is responding, however there is no actual fire to put out.
Our insurance and her physicians hospitalized her, to treat the pain. Their first step was to move from Percocet to Morphine. First Pill form, then when it appeared useless Intravenous Morphine.
HOWEVER, the Morphine never touched the pain. I urged them to reduce to Percocet which at least took the edge off. Ultimately, they did. But the pain was still there. So they chose to start a regiment of Dilantin Intervenously. This worked as expected. Her pain was reduced to a minor ache, but of course she was foggy and dopey.
The regiment of Dilantin continued until the pain subsided on its own. But she was now "on the horse", and thus we needed to take her "off the horse". It has been a hard road to give up the higher opiate. My wife and our family struggled together.
Recently, she had a procedure done to look for and collect a biopsy, which included her being put under. When she awoke in recovery, they were aware of her daily use of ES Vicodin, and wanted to prescribe something stronger. In Recovery they gave her 10mg Intervenous Morphine. It did not have any effect. When I was allowed to see her, she was writhing in pain. I insisted they give her something... and they allowed her 4mg more of the Morphine. It still had no effect. Finally they gave her 2mg of Dilantin, and it knocked her out. I was able to reach her GP, and I had her GP intervene and set up a regiment of Percocet for recovery. Which worked very well.
Is it possible to be immune to the chemical composition of Morphine?
-DEJ
