Monday, January 21, 2013

Off Of Morphine!

I never thought this day would come.  I am, after five years of taking it everyday, finally off morphine.  Garrett has been wanting me to try and get off of it for quite some time because it was always so hard to control my pain in the hospital after surgeries because I was so tolerant to most all the pain medications.  Then he laid off of it because my PCP told him there was no reason for me to go through the torture of getting off such a strong opiate if I was just going to be going back into surgery again and again and needing it.  So that plan went away for about a year and then when I went in for a post op appointment in November 2012 after a couple surgeries, Garrett brought it up again that he really wanted me to try and get off the morphine.  He suggested just doing it a little at a time by reducing the amount 10mg's at a time for a couple weeks and if I felt OK, to reduce 10mg's again for a couple more weeks and so on.  So my mom and I decided we'd try to do it once and for all after my December surgery.

So since we only had 30mg and 15mg tablets, we would have to reduce 15mg's at a time since we couldn't cut them in half because they're extended release tablets.  I was nervous, to say the least.  I'd gone through the withdrawals a couple times when I forgot to take my pills and it was hell.  Absolute hell.  Now I was taking 45mg's three times a day.  So first we reduced the lunch time morphine right away and quickly cause I seemed to do OK without that lunch dose.  Then it was on to the morning and evening doses.  We reduced the morning dose first by 15mg's and 15 more a week later keeping the evening dose the same.  Then we tackled the evening dose by reducing 15mg's.  I started getting withdrawals now.  I was cranky and just felt like shit.  Just felt, well, like I needed the drug.  My stomach was upset, I got clammy, headaches, irritable.  But it lasted only a few days and I felt better so we started reducing again.  And once again, I felt the withdrawals and had a couple very rough nights where I had to take additional morphine in the middle of the night to stop the withdrawals and just get some sleep, even if it was only an hour or two.

And now, a month and a half later, I went my first day without any morphine yesterday.  And I made it through without any problems, even the night.  What a feeling!  I am off morphine!  After five years of taking it faithfully everyday, three times a day I am off it!  I never thought I would get off the morphine while still in surgeries and I never thought I would be able to do it the way that I did, by just reducing slowly without any other drug to counteract the withdrawals.  And in just a month and a half!  It has only been a day being totally off so I may still have some withdrawal problems in the days to come but I made it through my first day and night.  And I feel good about that.  I am still on short acting pain medications but I don't seem to ever have a problem stopping those when I don't need them.  It was the long acting morphine I had such a problem with.  But no more.  It's done.  And I don't know what I'm going to do when I have surgery again but I cannot let them give me morphine again after all I've gone through to get off of it.  So I'll have to try and stick to short acting pain medications.

Being off the morphine may help a couple things, too.  Like my weight since it got in the way of my weight loss attempts and better mood.  Long term pain medications like that can depress mood so I'm hoping my mood will improve and losing weight will be a little easier.  I want to thank my incredible mother for being patient and understanding when I had rough days.  I feel good that this great mountainous feat that has been looming before me for many years, knowing I would one day have to tackle it, has finally been tackled and I came out the other side triumphant.  I did it.    

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