will Morphine work for percocet withdrawal?

[jenniferk86]

Ok, here is my story in brief, and then I will in detail ask you my question. I am a 25 year old with 2 children 1 and 3 yrs old. In April of 2010 I experienced a Seizure. Shortly after I began experiencing debilitating fatigue, short end I went through extensive testing and found nothing except for sub clinical hypothyroidism that was helped minimally by treatment and vitamin deficiencies again which were treated but did not help my fatigue.

about 10 mo. ago I started experiencing crushing and severe pain in my lower back and hips.  I was told without even physical examination that I probably had fibromyalgia. I tried tramadol and it did not even touch the pain and muscle relaxers and nothing seemed to help.  I ended up starting percocet in November.  

we did even more tests to check for lymes, lupus, arthritis, etc.... and nothing... and then I started getting neurological symptoms which I think saved my life. Double vision, balance problems and severe severe and chronic daily headache and neck pain. numbness and tingling and memory cognition impaired motor... u name it so i was sent for mri to rule out ms...

They found Chiari(short easy def. Malformation of small skull causes big brain to squish into spinal canal causing increased spinal fluid pressure, pressure on discs, compressed nerves, compression on brain stem, compressed everything, neurological symptoms and pain and severe headaches...) sent me for mris on my lumbar, thoracic and cervical spine to rule out syrinx... and guess what.. they also found degenerative disc disease, arthritis, 2 bulging discs in my lower lumbar and a severely herniated disc in c5-c6 and kyphosis in my cervical spine(reversal)... but my doc never even examined me.. just thought I was faking or something I guess and called it fibro....

So I am having surgery to decompress myself and hoping it will stop most of my unbearable pain.. if it does.....I was asking is if I could in fact use my surgery as a way to stop my pain meds all together I do not want to take them I do not like the way they make me feel. But I do know and realize I cannot go through brain surgery without some type of anesthesia afterwards or I simply will not heal well.

I go some days now when my pain is not that bad sometimes 24 hours (rare) but I've done it and do recognize that I get percocet aches but they are manageable and bearable if I didn't have other pain...but again that has been 2 times in the last month and zero times in the last nine months before that, and I think it's because of the pain blocks I had and would much rather continue to do over narcotics. If it wasn't extremely painful(sacro Illiac Joint injections and didn't have terrible side effects(steroids gave me bad side effects) and took 10 days to work and lasted a mere 4 days at only 30% relief. But 30% relief is about what I get from my percocet right now.  

I have never abused the percocet.  I have only taken them as needed and as directed and prescribed.  I have never sold or given them away.  My mother, father, sister and most of my family had a drug, alcohol or some other addiction problem and I am my whole family suffered and I have made it a point to make sure I will never do the same.

I'm hoping my surgery gets rid of a lot of my pain, at least the pain that's unbearable and I could possibly treat the rest with pain blocks and anti-in flammatories. this is hypothetical as I do not know which pain is coming from where as it is hard to tell, but if....

if I change to morphine for my immediate surgery pain, will I still experience percocet withdrawal pain while on the morphine?

Also since I will only be on the morphine for 6-10 days the morphine would not cause withdrawals when I stopped if I were to go this route would it?  Normally I know I'm strong enough to handle it, but after surgery I don't even want to try. But if it's a good way to transition and then stop altogether once the surgery is over and have no narcotics at all, that would be my goal.

I am seeking and trying to find a way to relieve my pain through other methods I do not want to take pills, I have only increased once in 10 months since the onset of my pain, not because I haven't needed too, because I don't want to become addicted, and I am afraid of addiction as I have seen it in action.  I want to be free of it if I can and if there is an alternative therapy.

[Milton53]

I'm going through the same thing thanks for posting so I can run some of these symptoms to my Dr as I too dont want to do the pain med thing too much addiction in my family and myself good luck!

[remar]

To Milton53. I do hope you're able to find out what's going on. Most of us that are chronic pain patients do not want to take medication. Sometimes we have to just to live a some what normal life.
You can always make a post of your own so you'll get more comments.

[Tuckamore]

Babypup,

Your input is always welcome - please do check the dates on the threads before responding. Often a thread that is years old finds the poster inactive. This date is 2011. Sadly our original poster is no longer active.

I do hope you'll be active in our community. We welcome new members wholeheartedly - and you sound knowledgeable and compassionate. We'll look forward to hearing more from you.

Best Regards,
~Tuck

[remar]

Tuck. I've been seeing this happen a lot lately, people responding to old posts. I wonder if it's because the date in on the bottom of the post instead of the top? So many changes and I'm still finding it hard to get used to them. I'm wondering if it's confusing for the new members too?

[Babypup14]

No sweetie the morphine will do the same as percocet you should not have any with draws the morphine is a narcotic pain realiver same as percocet.so your body sees it as still get that feel so there want be any withdraws hope this helps.

[Mannas]

I am not sure in regards to the withdrawl but thought I would share something from my experience.  Let me start by saying I normally have a VERY high tolerance for pain.  It is an annoyance but I rarely take anything no matter what is going on.  For the first few days after surgery I really did not have that much pain.  I thought at first that I really must not have had surgery.  :)  Then the anesthesia wore off.  I was definitely in pain from then on.  I was on Morphine immediately after my surgery until I switched over to Oxycodone for pain to get me adjusted before I went home.  I did not want to go on the morphine, as like you there is a lot of addiction in my family.  Not with me personally but I did not want to take a chance.  The morphine really just made me feel out of it.  It did nothing for pain.  It just made me feel like I was high and basically distracted me from everything going on thus sometimes forgetting the pain because I was so loopy.  The surgery was the first thing I have ever had to have pain medicine for sure for.  I could not do it.  Now that I am home I take Oxycodone for pain and Baclofen for my muscle relaxer.  The muscle relaxer is really the one that makes the difference.  That is where my pain is coming from but I can only take it every 8 hours.  I would discuss your options prior if you can.  I would not recommend morphine but that was based on my experience and everyone is different.  For me, it just seemed like a waste of time.  A week out I am still taking both the Oxycodone and the Baclofen at the regularly scheduled times and don't see any hope of that letting up yet until things wear off a bit.  Hopefully soon.  Good luck and I hope things go well for you and you find the right combination.  Don't be afraid to tell them if you need something more.  I don't want to scare you but in my experience it was rough.

[lgboy93]

Yes the thing about the withdrawls and what makes it so painfull is the opiates are unbinding from your recepters. i mean even 5 mg of hydrocodone would atleast make it feel better

[Tuckamore]

Hi Jennifer,

You have so many reasons for chronic pain, including SIJD, if I understand your post correctly. My heart goes out to you. SIJ injections were not effective for me either. Many insurance companies are refusing to even pay for this treatment other then as a one time diagnostic tool. Multiple reliable studies conclude it is not an effective procedure for the treatment of SIJD.

I understand your concern for addition given your family history. It is true that the tendency for addition can run in families. Meaning if ones parents, grandparents, etc where alcoholics one would have a greater likelihood of becoming an developing alcoholism or a similar addiction disease.

Often one opiate will ease withdrawal symptoms from another, at least that it my understanding. I do not have personal experience in this arena. I would discuss this with your PCP and/or surgeon. You could also post your question in the Addiction Substance Abuse Forum as they have much more knowledge in this arena.

I wish you the very best and hope that the surgery will greatly reduce your chronic pain. please let us know how you are doing.  

Warmest Well Wishes,
~Tuck