Endorphins caused severe pain from no pain meds?

[diananana]

My husband had artificial disc replacement surgery in January this year at L4/L5, L5/S1 in spine.  It's been 4 months post op and he still takes heavy duty meds....morphine, percocet, dilaudid, vicodin, oxycontin and oxycodone but alternates so as not to become dependent on any of them.  After surgery he was stricly on dilaudid 4x a day in addition to oxycontin 12 hr pills taken 2x day.  He stopped suddenly with the dilaudid cause of constipation problems even though he takes colace, milk of magnesia and mineral oil and went back to vicodin 4x day with the oxycontin 2x day then last week he ran out completely of all pain meds cause they got held up in the mail-away pharmacy so he went 3 days with no pain meds.  Pain got so severe more than even b4 surgery that he literally crawled on hands and knees to bed one night and couldn't move the next day at all.  Neurosurgeon said the endorphins (natural pain relief stimulators in brain) decrease when you take opiates in it's place.  When you stop opiates suddenly, the endorphins don't work and send severe pain signals to the body wanting you to "feed" it.  Has anyone ever heard of such a thing??  We are thinking they just don't want to admit that something is not right with the surgery and that the surgery has failed but they insist it's the endorphins because he did not wean himself slowly before running out of meds.

[kcore]

did your husband have more than one artificial disc put in?

[SHY]

Hi there. I do think that each person is different and each surgery as well. Some are successful and some not. Plus, stopping highly addictive pain meds suddenly like that is very dangerous, and can cause all types of withdrawel symptoms. He is probably using the "Endorphin" excuse so he does not get in any legal trouble, because it was VERY irresponsible, if not illegal, for his Doctor to have rx'ed all those meds at once, and not "managing" his pain on a regular basis! I hope he finds something to help him through this w/d period,, otherwise he is on for a very painful next few weeks :(

He should immediately ask his rx'ing doctor to help him with the titrating process! Good luck!!

[Heather3418]

WOW...with the drugs that your husband was taking for pain, I can definitely see why he was in so much pain, when he ran out of medication.  Of course, it is true that your body's "natural painkillers" are affected from taking artifical pain relievers.

All of us have natural painkillers in our body's.  If we didn't, none of us would make it through the day.  Imagine what a skinned knee might feel like, if our bodies didn't produce a chemical to minimize the pain.

I really feel for your husband.  Since it is almost 4 months from his surgery, I would think that he could start reducing the massive doses of painkillers, soon.  If not; he needs to revisit the doctor.  Something isn't quite right.

Please keep us posted...I personally would like to hear how he is doing in the near future.  Good luck to both of you.

Heather