“Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.” – Orison Swett Marden
I wrote this piece for The Myeloma Beacon. I hope it helps those of you struggling with chronic pain, which can be so debilitating, both physically and emotionally. While Dave and I aren’t big medicine takers, if you need it, then my view is, it needs to WORK! So in light of that, we were fortunate enough to have someone who brought it to our attention and it changed our lives dramatically when Dave was in such pain.
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We had so much to deal with when newly diagnosed, and this was one thing that we were able to manage well enough that it allowed us to concentrate on all other stuff in the journey through treatment. At the time it seemed like I had several spinning plates on sticks to balance and not drop. This was one I was able to grab and handle, thanks to our dear doctor friend, Marilyn.
I hope it helps for some of you, and if you do decide to give it a try, I would be pleased to hear your results.
See Comments from Dr. Giles
With regard to wider reviews from users of Kadian, I recommend all patients considering the use of Kadian go to the website, Drugs.com, and look up Kadian. In the user reviews section, there are 28 individual reviews which almost universally rave about this drug just as Dave and I have. This information should certainly encourage anyone with chronic pain who is unhappy with their current pain control to discuss the potential use of Kadian with their physician.
Marilyn Giles M.D.
I am the physician friend Lori mentioned above. What I have to say requires more space than is supplied in the comments section, but I felt compelled to supply my personal perspective to what she had said in her article. I have had reflex sympathetic dystrophy (a chronic pain syndrome) since 1997. Through much personal experience and interaction with other chronic pain patients, I have learned a lot about pain medication, information that I certainly couldn’t obtain only through functioning as a physician. First, it seems that almost everyone on the patch complains that the pain control is variable and, more importantly, the pain control seems to almost universally wear off after about 2 days(although it’s replaced every 3 days). Oxycontin, another favorite, was not great. In my experience, I seemed to experience withdrawal type symptoms when I was due for my next dose. I can’t explain this medically, but combined with the degree of fuzziness I felt on this drug, this was definitely unacceptable. Additionally, both these drugs necessitated taking short-acting narcotics for breakthrough pain. After 1 to 2 years of this, I pulled my act together to do some research. I found Kadian in The Physician’s Desk Reference and was impressed with the graph describing drug levels over the day. At the end of this e-mail, from the prescribing info for this drug put out by the pharmaceutical company, I have reproduced the graph demonstrating drug levels over time.
The dark steady line in the middle shows how even the blood levels are over time with his drug. Once you’re on the right dose for pain control, you do not need any drugs or breakthrough pain. My personal experience corroborated what the data had shown. Also, once I was on a drug which I knew would control my pain, anxiety associated with the occasional breakthrough pain was much less. As with Dave, my life felt more livable. As a physician, I wish there was a way I could shout all of this information to the universe. If you are in the unfortunate situation of having to take chronic narcotics, this is the only drug which really does what it’s supposed to do.
If you can use this information somehow, please do.
Sincerely,
Marilyn Giles M.D.