Comparing Fentanyl vs Hydromorphone

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 After a radical hysterectomy associated with ovarian cancer, I was in severe pain and no other pain med was helping, so I ended up with hydromorphone. As a pain med it works very well, but there are very many severe side effects. The worst one is that it is very addictive and there is no real help . My journey became serious in that I tried to go cold turkey when my doze was down to 16 mg a day, and I became so ill I could barely walk. The doctor ordered me to take a doze, and it took another 2 months to ween off it for a total of 4 moths. Now I have been off it for 3 weeks and I still have sweat attacks 4 to 6 times in 24 hours. My mind is slowly starting to feel more normal and my body is a little less painful and "heavy".

For Pain Works great for break through