Hi everyone, so happy to find your site - I have been searching the web for a while now for help with my wife's problem, and hope someone can offer us advice, she was prescribed 25mg fentanyl in 2006 for pain from a spinal injury and gradually since then her patch strength has been increased as her condition worsened until she is now prescribed 200mg fentanyl, plus she has oramorph and diazepam on her repeat prescription for breakthrough pain, However during the last two months through sheer grit she has managed to decrease her patch strength without her specialist's help (he told us both last year that he doubts that she will ever get off the medication because of her condition) even though she often cries in pain the side effects from the fentanyl have been so bad as during the last few years she has lost over 2 stone in weight, has no appetite suffers with anxiety and depression and having a conversation that she can remember days later is becoming a big problem, she begged me to help her get off the patches a couple of months ago as she says she wakes every morning feeling like the world is ending which sounds quite dramatic but she genuinely suffering, I have tried to support her by giving her massages and heat and cold treatment plus staying up during the night with her when she gets the electric shock pains and as you know there is nothing that can be done with those but I have just tried to support her during the really bad nights, gradually she has managed to reduce her patches to 150mg every three days but on reading the information available have we done this correctly? we have been cutting a sliver of patch off every couple of patch changes and she is now hoping to be down to 125 mg by Christmas, does anyone think this is feasible? we haven't mentioned it to the specialist yet as she is not due to see him until the first week in January. By reducing slowly is it likely the problems with the anxiety and depression will ever go away or if she can only ever get down to 100mg will this help the side effects or are we just fighting something that will never get any better and should she just stay on the patches and suffer the side effects so the pain isn't as bad? I wonder if she will ever be the same happy go lucky person as she was, I feel like this medication has robbed me of my wife, but if I am being fair she was in so much pain when she was given the patches Oh and also so that you have the full story she should also be taking pregablin 75mg twice a day and she had managed to reduce these without mentioning it to me first to just one once a day starting in march this year but might all this be contributing to her anxiety? thanks for any help,