Saw a pain specialist

[yasmina27]

who is also an anesthesiologist. He was appalled when he found out I've had 4 back injections (3 epidurals & 1 SI) since April. He said the earliest he could give a nerve block would be Oct./Nov., which is fine with me b/c the cortisone causes me HORRIBLE leg cramps. He also referred me to a neurosurgeon. He said my back is 20 years older than I am - IOW, he usually sees MRIs like my back in patients in their mid 60's! He also told me that he rarely refers patients to a surgeon - 99% of his patients are referred TO him by surgeons!

I am now up to 1800 mg/day of neurontin, naproxen 250 mg 2x's/day (which is doing NOTHING!) and flexeril 10 mg. at bedtime. Woohoo! Better than any legal or otherwise substance I've ever had! I took one about an hour ago, dozed off into lala land (the zone where you still know what's going on, but can't move) and could have sworn I had a cigarette in my mouth.

Anyone else have experience with flexeril?

[Warpy]

1. Flexeril knocks me for a loop, so I only take it when I'm desperate

My doc originally prescribed it every 6 hours. Try every 6 WEEKS. Not only does it flatten me for about 10 hours, there is an 8 hour period that is so foggy I can only describe it as chemical dementia.

I have bizarre reactions to a lot of drugs. I'm just lucky Ultram has been working for me without any ridiculous side effects.

[hyphenate]

5. Talk about bizarre reactions!

Ultram produced hallucinations in me. I remember one night when I woke up yelling in the middle of the night and thought I saw a ninja standing next to my bed!

[mopinko]

2. i take 20 at night.

helps me not wake up and start my day feeling like a toasted pretzel. i was taking skelaxin, but decided that there was not a lot of sense in taking the new fangled drug that is supposed to be non drowsy, when i take it at night, and i want to sleep. so....
not much difference that i could see between the 2.

[ncrainbowgrrl]

3. Flexeril and I didn't go together well 2x

First time, it pooped out.
2nd time, it was too strong and I couldn't work while on it.
3rd time was fine.


I have NO idea...

[hyphenate]

4. Been taking it for about 15 years on and off

It doesn't do a lot for me. I began taking it when I was first diagnosed with fibromyalgia in addition to the amitripyline (Elavil) to try and stay asleep through the night. I can't notice much of a difference when I miss a dose or not. After a while, I'm sure tolerance makes dosage increases necessary--I've gotten to the point where I don't miss much of my prescriptions if I forget them or have run out of them. The exceptions are my Effexor (which I am physically dependent on--my psychiatrist knows this and will take me off it slowly) and my Innopran XR (a sustained release form of propranolol--a heart medication for tachycardia among other things) which produces palpitations if I miss a dose.

I recently had my doctor switch me off Naproxen to Mobic (meloxicam) which has been absolutely wonderful--it helps a lot of the pain caused by fibro and arthritis, but unfortunately doesn't really help with the neuropathic pain. I'm currently on gabapentin (Neurontin) but it's not as helpful as it could be because if I try to take the recommended dosage, I might as well just forget doing anything other than sleeping. The pain specialist I saw two weeks ago wants to shift me over to the Lyrica because it helps (supposedly) both the neuropathy and the fibro and it is less sedating.

But remember--different drugs do different things on different people--it's one of the reasons there are categories of medications with many similar drugs: some people can't take one while they can another.