SKIP TO BOTTOM OF MY POST FOR CLIFFNOTES IF FULL POST IS TOO LONG FOR YOU TO READ! THANKS! Hello everyone, first post here.
Okay, so basically here is my situation and my question:
Situation: I have had chronic severe stabbing pains in my pelvic area (genitals mainly, believe it or not... what luck I have...) for quite a long time now (over a year) and though I have them basically every single day, some days are much worse than others. The doctors have not been able to figure out what is causing the stabbing pains, and so I still have them. So in the meantime while they try to find the cause, I asked if I could see a pain management doctor so that I don't have to suffer as much while they fiddle around trying to figure out how to cure the cause of the pain itself.
Pain killing history: Okay, so I have actually been playing it very cautious so far with pain killers. Over the past year, I have only been prescribed one single bottle of 5mg
percocet and one single bottle on 5mg vicodin. I have only used about two thirds of each bottle so far, so I average less than one pill per week, since it has been only about 35-40 pills that I've taken so far, total, in a little over a year, and I never took pain killers prior to all this, ever.
Random interesting sidenote btw: At equal doses (they are both 5mg tablets), vicodin seems to kill the pain better for me than percocet does. Which is strange, since, from what I understand, percocet is normally supposed to be considerably stronger than vicodin at equal dosage, not the other way around. But for me it's backwards. This doesn't really relate to anything, just thought it was something weird to mention.
Anyways: So basically, I have intentionally tried to only use the vicodin or percocet on my absolute worst days, so once every week or so, and not take any on the other days. This means that I am in a lot of pain every day, but, on the days when it is just totally unbearable pain, I am able to take a pain killer and have it ACTUALLY WORK. Since I have not really built any tolerance to it yet, due to intentionally not taking it as often as I might feel I "need to" (which would be every day).
So: As you can see, I am EXTREEEEMELY tolerance-o-phobic. This is because I know how utterly ridiculously bad my physical pain can get, on a really bad day, so I have a HUUUUGE fear of building up a tolerance to opiates rendering them ineffective, leaving me with no way of reducing my pain on the really bad days, short of asking a neighbor to knock me unconscious with a sledge hammer or something. I really want to try to keep it where when I take a pain killer, it is actually effective. I do not want to build up a tolerance any time soon, because I have no idea how many years or decades it'll be before they can cure me of my severe stabbing pains.
Okay so I went to my pain management doctor finally for the first time this week, and told him all about what's been going on with me. He decided to put me on one 50mg nortryptiline per day (mild antidepressant with mild analgesic side effects) along with 50mg
tramadol 3 times a day, so 150mg of tramadol per day total, spread out every 6 hours or whatever.
Now, here's my question:
If I am taking 50mg of tramadol, three times a day, for many weeks, if not several months, and thus obviously will build up quite a tolerance to the tramadol, which is an opioid, will this mean that if, let's say I have more pain after I stop taking tramadol, that if I try taking a 5mg percocet or 5mg vicodin, later on, after I'm no longer using tramadol, some months down the road, that I will no longer get any pain killing effect out of vicodin or percocet, due to tolerance I built to tramadol in the months past?
Cuz I really don't want to take tramadol daily, if it means that I will no longer be able to use vicodin or percocet in the future to control my pain on my worst days. That scares me, because I have heard that tramadol can only reduce medium pain, but that the most extremely severe pain can only be helped by the "real stuff" (aka
morphine, vicodin, percocet etc). So I want to know if me taking tramadol dailu for a couple months will make me immune to the effects of vicodin/percocet in the future after that.
Thanks. Sorry for making the post so long. I guess I'll write cliffnotes for those who don't want to read the whole thing:
Cliffnotes:
- I have severe stabbing pains every day
- Some days are much worse than other days
- I have a super bad day about once a week, so I only take vicodin about once per week, on my worst day, so that it is actually EFFECTIVE when I use it, due to not building up a quick tolerance to it by taking it every day.
- I love the fact that vicodin is actually able to significantly lower my pain when I do take it, and I do NOT want to jeopardize this with the tramadol I have been prescribed for daily use
- My doctor prescribed me 50mg tramadol tablets to be used daily, 3 times per day.
- Will my 3-a-day daily use of 50mg tramadols for a month or two make me not be able to have any effect from vicodin/percocet (I use only 5mg of vicodin/percocet and I'd like to have them be effective at this low dosage for as long as I can), or, will I still get a decent pain killing effect out of the vic/perc's even after using tramadol daily like this for a few months prior?
thanks!
