Fentanyl Compared to Alternatives

For Pain: Had 6 surgeries for cellulitis advancing to sepsis. 60 days in hospital. They discharged me with 2 weeks of oxycodone, pretty high dose around 120 mg/day. My MD preferred Fentanyl patches with low dose hydrocodone for breakthrough pain. I definitely prefer the Fentanyl, no wild mood swings or sedation like the oxycodone. Just blessed pain relief. Only have to put the patch on every three days. It seems to weaken on the third day, so I use the hydrocodone, but it beats being tied to the very tight dosing of oxycodone, with all its weird baggage.

For Pain: I went through the myriad of short acting oral analgesics, and just couldn't stand the constant ups and downs, and always felt like I was only comfortable for half of the life of the pill. I asked my doctor to take me off OxyContin (40 mg.), he offered Duragesic as an alternative. I use 100 mcg every 3 days with no problem. Side effects are constipation, and short term memory loss. I'll happily trade that for effective pain relief. A huge plus is not developing a tolerance for it, so I don't have to have it constantly increased over the years. I don't use "breakthrough" meds, but I use Lyrica (about 6 years now) to help with pain from nerve damage. The combination works great for me.

For Pain: While getting an entire back tattoo, the artist in Thailand have me some tramadol to reduce the pain. As I had to visit him every day to get the tattoo done, so my dosage increased. After a month straight I was taking 500mg per day. Long story short, it was very hard to stop. This was years ago when the drug first came out and there wasn't any info on the Internet about it other than that the manufacturer said..... It's not addictive. Yeah, right!

For Pain: Worked good for pain but caused lots of nausea and blurry vision.

For Pain: Norco worked pretty well for me at the right dose and when rx'd with muscle relaxers. However, I was originally rx'd long acting opioids because I had liver damage due to Halothane toxicity and taking a single ingredient opioid was safer. With the new "guidelines" I can't even find a doctor who's okay with rxing Norco so I'm back to taking high doses of acetaminophen. The govt has really screwed chronic pain patients.

For Pain: I found hydrocodone to be more effective then tramadol, gabapentin then they changed the drug over the years due to drug addicts abuse. Once the gold standard until people learned how to abuse it. Taken as prescribed it is effective with little or no side effects. However, it has deadly side effects when abused or mixed with other drugs. It was made with 660mg of acetaminophen which is dangerous if taking 10 pills to get high, you could do irreparable damage to your liver. So the amount of acetaminophen was limited to 325 in each pill. Some drug addicts figured out how to crush it up, prompting even more changes in the medication to prevent that abuse. Then some unethical doctors started over prescribing it to people who didn't need it, prompting more tighter restrictions by the government. Government has moved it from schedule III to schedule II drug further limiting its use, while states make Marijuana which is listed as a schedule I drug, legal for recreational use. stop abuse.