Osteoarthritis

Hi Carole62, you poor thing, it is to your credit that you can keep down a job. for that reason it is important that you learn to manage your condition without dulling your capabilities with increasingly heavy duty medicines. Are you happy that your GP is working with you and offering good medical support to you for your condition?

  I imagine there are a number of options available to you and your GP.

 It seems to me that you need to be properly assessed by an appropriately qualified specialist in arthritic conditions.  Are you sure it is osteoarthritis you have and not rheumatoid arthritis? In which case you need to be seen by a rheumatologist.

  A physiotherapist will help you develop your core strength which will in turn take some of the strain off your back. Another thing that you will find beneficial is to learn to pace yourself - do little and often rather than all at one time.  (This is always the hardest bit for me - just get on and get the thing done and then suffer for days afterwards !)

  In essence Carole I think my advice is that you need to ask a few more questions of your doctor about what is happening to your joints and the best way to protect yourself from pain and further damage. Remember if you are unhappy with your current doc, you can ask for another opinion.

 Best of luck,  Scruffymum

All that was available to me was the ever increasing dose of opiates. I worked my way up from Codeine to Morphine in about 8 easy stages. Opiates are not ideal they don't have any effect on inflammation, stiffness or anything else. They do nothing but relieve pain. I have to admit that they do this well.

I would have preferred a different route but I was carer for my father who was slowly dieing and not functioning just wasn't an option.

I am on the waiting list for our local Pain Clinic but the waiting list is awful. Things might be better where you are.

Steve

Like many of us I to am on opiates and have been on many other drugs since 1977 when I was diagnosed with my condition. I had been working and had served in the royal navy from leaving school way back in 1966 up until 1977 when it came to light.  I was at first just given the usual types of pain killers but come 2007 after been working with all the pain for years I was made medically retired, it came after being unable to move from bed one morning  after being at a fatal R.T.A and having to direct traffic for over 5 hours as I was then working as a police support officer with the Road Policing Team. I can not remember all the pills in between but I have had the gabapentin, current opiate is Longtec 30 mg, Venlafaxine 75mg,Mirtazapine 15 mg, Amitriptyline 25mg,Targinact 20 mg, Ibuprofen, codeine, and many others that I can not recall including some creams all of which at first are OK. I think your body soon gets used to them and they then become ineffective. I survived on spinal injection when first diagnosed with my Spondylolisthesis/Spina Bifida Occulta every few months but then they stopped doing them now you only get 3 chances with them and no more. So I was referred to the pain clinic which the waiting list for was some 16 weeks then in 2008. It helped somewhat but again it is not for everyone. I was however impressed with the meditation course that went hand in hand I thought at first what a load of old rubbish but after saying to myself that this was for hippies and the like. then I thought ok lets try it I have found that it did help and still does from time to time. My condition has begun to worsen over the last 2 years plus. the pain levels are all on the increase and despite seeing my GP just recently little or nothing is done apart from saying that I was going back on the  gabapentin which are now back at the maximum dose. She has told me that she does not wish to change the opiate or increase the dose which is currently 2 every 12 hours which now really doesn't cut it in fact it has no affect at all. I was never a candidate for surgery as I could be left paralysed as it is a 50/50 thing.  I now have trouble with my left leg which goes away from me regularly and I end up in casualty with a cut or cuts to my head. The pain now extends into the neck and shoulders. I do not know about any of you but I have over the years found that this is a condition that has affected mainly the males in my family 2 older  brothers now deceased had similar to myself my 2 sons the oldest with Rheumatoid Arthritis which is bad at times but he still working my other son who is like me but affects his shoulders and arms mainly.

I feel at times that you are just a guinea pig for them that the never really listen to what you tell them it is as quick a turn round as they can possibly have. I can only remember one doctor who showed any real interest in anything you have or had to say and did his very best to help he run the pain group at the time and was the man who helped me with the spinal injections. He was an Anesthetist who became interested in pain control when his wife became diagnosed with it, never been anyone to beat him since. It has been only through exchanging ideas and experiences that have been of help to me over the years.