New pain meds

What an early start to the day! We were in day two of the evaluation to see if mom would be a candidate for Tri-Life Pain Clinic's program for pain management. Part of Tuesday was spent meeting the physical therapist. Arlo turned out to be someone mom knew from mom's days as head nurse at the hospital many years ago. We also met with Bonnie the program director.

This morning we were to meet with the clinic's doctor and a psychiatrist. The doctor meeting was at 8 am. 8 am - when we usually start getting up in the morning.

I woke up numerous times during the night as I didn't trust the alarm clock. I had never used it before. Several of my dreams involved chasing and rounding up cattle. One place where I chased cattle in my dreams was where I grew up in North Dakota. This place was not a farm or ranch which explained why I had problems keeping the cattle on the land. Chasing cattle in my dreams also explained why I was tired when waking up.

At 4 am my brother and I each got up to ensure mom had her pain meds an hour before getting up. My alarm clock went off at 5 am. What an ugly sound!

It seemed to be touch-and-go a few times but we were ready for the bus several minutes before it arrived at 7:40 am. We waited in the cool early morning air out on mom's wheelchair ramp deck. Heather, a CNA from ManorCare, arrived across the street to help Donna get Bob up for the day. Heather saw mom and came over briefly to greet mom. This is the first we had seen Heather since mom was at ManorCare. Heather is very nice and is a good and competent CNA.

The visit with Dr. Olsen went well. He is an ER physician but has an interest in pain medicines and pain management and also works for Tri-life one or more days a week. He seems to be very knowledgeable in addition to being very nice. The net of our meeting is a goal to eventually switch, in phases, all of mom's pain meds to new ones.

Lyrica doesn't help hardly anyone and has bad side effects. Celebrex is not a good pain med either. Both of these pain meds are not good for people with heart problems as one of their side effects is fluid retention. Having had congestive heart failure, fluid retention is a big problem for mom. The Oxycodones lose their effectiveness over time as they are narcotics. Effexor is an anti-depressant and not good either. Effexor is expensive also as a month's supply costs mom $25 and the insurance plan pays $104.10. So much for the month's supply mom has left.

Cymbalta is a new pain med mom will start. It is part anti-depressant and part pain relief. It seems that chronic pain is because nerves gates get stuck in the "on" position. Apparently cymbalta helps close some of the nerve gates reducing the pain. It also is not a narcotic, another plus.

The meeting with the psychiatrist was canceled. It was decided from Tuesday's evaluations that mom is not a candidate for Tri-life's program right now. The three week program is very intensive and goes from 8 am to 5 pm each day. Mom is not up for this intensive program right now.

The Homesteader restaurant is right next door to the Tri-life clinic, and since we had such an early start to the day and no breakast, we went over there for breakfast before calling the Commission on Aging bus to return home. Mid morning on a week day there were not many people in the restaurant, but the food was good.

By the way, another "med hassle history" item I forgot to mention in my previous post, was that I found out Monday that Celebrex is to be taken with food. In ManorCare, and in the instructions they sent home for mom's medicines, they had Celebrex taken at bedtime. Bedtime at ManorCare, and at home, does not involve food. All this time...