[southvalley]

Hi, I am new here and was looking for some wisdom.

I have dystonia, a relatively ignored but not uncommon movement disorder. I have had it for 18 years. It twisted me like a pretzel until I found out about peripheral denervation surgery. My pain was extraordinary; my muscles were pulling my bones apart. I had Botox injections into my spasming muscles and, for awhile they worked.

As for the pain, I was prescribed hydrocodone 7.5 100 a month! That hardly touched it. I became addicted to the stuff and a doctor cold turkeyed me off it. I really haven't been able to take much since as it now makes me sick.

I feel I have my pain pretty much under control with the Botox injections and taking tylenol 3 and 1/2 of a 5mg hydrocodone when I need it for the pain in my right shoulder.

I have a primary care physician who I had a very good relationship with until the last few years. He has been my doctor for 12 years.
I got sick from an unrelated cause this last month and a half and a tooth died and I was in quite severe pain from it. My dentists prescribed more vicodin and I took it gladly as it was the only thing that touched the tooth pain.
Well, I saw my doc yesterday and I told him, as I thought I was supposed to do, that I had gotten more vicodin than he usually prescribed me as a result of the tooth pain.

He then concentrated all his attention on my medication ( I think I should have had a blood test to see if everything is alright) and asked me questions he has asked me in the past about why I need both T-3 and vicoden. I explained once again.

Now, I don't take these things lightly and I don't take them if I'm not in pain. Frankly, I don't like them, but I like pain even less after years of it and I thought with all the history between me and my doctor and this being the pain protocol which has worked for me, the question was closed.
It's like every time I've seen this doctor in the past few years, he acts like a stranger, like he's never seen me before. He's made strange diagnoses which could have really hurt me and were not based on anything but some seeming hunch. Actually, I'm beginning to wonder if HE'S taking drugs! He's so different.

Anyway, I'm concerned, as he is leaving for private practice ( good luck to him!) that he will leave notations that I am a drug-seeking individual, even tho I have never asked for a change in my medications or for something stronger, nor do I "doctor shop".

I feel actually rather frightened right now. These doctors have so much power over our lives, we chronic sufferers, and on a whim, they can wreck us.

I don't know what to do. Except hope that the next PCP I get will actually listen to me. And that's harder and harder to find as the disability benefits are cut to bone and the doctors are overwhelmed with the poor and sick.

I would like to talk to him again but I just think it might make it worse. Anyway, anyone else out there who' s taking their meds responsibly and still getting suspicions from their docs? Or wise suggestions?