In pain but cant afford to go to the Dr.

[pammyd29]

Has anyone had to deal with running out of your meds and cant afford to go to go back to the DR, and are in bad pain???? Should I try to call my Dr. office for help/or would it help????

[sandee1818]

As sherry said I have a list of places that will help pay for your medicines. the Doctor' office may work with you but they will not if you do not ask as they don't know you need help unless you ask:)
There are also state programs. let me know if you need help.
Good luck

[teacher517]

I've been there.  Just call them.  Sometimes they may have something they can do on their end.  I know that my dr. works with me sometimes.  All you can do is ask!

[namnam46]

Hi pammy,

First I want to welcome you to the Pain Management Forum and let you know that we are glad you found this Forum. I want to let you know that there are NO Doctors on this Forum only CP - Chronic Pain - Patients that help each other with our OWN expertise and experiences that we have developed through our OWN CP Issues.

You didn't mention what type of Doctor this is, i.e. PCP, Pain Management, etc.  Also, you didn't mention which type of PAIN Medication that you are on.  These two things make a HUGE difference as to what could be done.  


For instance - IF it is a Schedule III such as Hydrocodone etc. then THAT type of medication can be CALLED in as a refill by your Doctor. :)  NOW if you are under a Pain Management Doctor then you will have NO recourse as they NORMALLY MAKE you come in monthly. I DOUBT that a Pain Management Doctor will give you MUCH leeway at all as the DEA keeps a STRICT reign on them.  

As Flower said you could ALWAYS TRY to call them but from the tone of your post I have a FEELING that this is a Pain Management Doctor OR at the very least even IF it is a PCP the fact that you are on Pain Pills they probably REQUIRE you to come in.  I used to live in Spring Hill, TN and I KNOW how strict the Doctor's in Tennessee are when it comes to handing out Pain Medication and I DO understand why, as there is a HUGE amount of misuse going on in Kentucky and Tennessee with the people that go down to Florida to the "Pill Mills". Because of that, it SURE makes it difficult for the people - LIKE YOU - that take their meds responsibly to get their refills WITHOUT going in as the Doctors have to be SOOOO careful in the way that they hand out the prescriptions.  

I think that the VERY best thing that you can do is to call and explain the situation and SEE what they say.  I can't figure anything else out for you.  IF you would give us the information about what type of Doctor and which particular Medication you are on that MIGHT enable us to come up with something better.  ALSO, IF you need help with paying for your medications then I've copied the following information from one of Sandee 1818's journals so that you can have easy access.  This is the information that I BELIEVE that Flower12345 was talking about. :)  Flower and I BOTH hope that this might be of assistance should you EVER need it:

Here is the link to the Purdue Patience assistance program.

http://www.rxassist.org/Search/Prog_Details.cfm?program_Id=178&PD_Id=518&Drug_Id=1158&Company_Id=103&search_type=2&CFID=4378027&CFTOKEN=49364786


As I said before - I hope that you will update us on the TYPE of Doctor that you are seeing as well as the EXACT medication that you need as that will DEFINITELY let us know whether you have ANY type of a chance in getting a prescription WITHOUT seeing the Doctor first.  :)

Best of Luck and looking forward to your update.........Sherry

[flower12345]

As for not being able to afford seeing the doctor, I would call them and explain your situation to them. Maybe they have some type of payment plan that they can set up for you. Do you have a good relationship with your doctor, or is this a new doctor? Please call them! They are there to help you, and they probably deal with things like this often.

There are assistance programs to help pay for medications. I know that there have been posts here about them. There are a lot of great resources on this site. I'm hoping that someone here can help you find some of the older posts about prescription assistance programs.