An Unsuccessful Plan A

Well, so far, trying to detox off my pain medications has not gone well.

I went to see my doctor that handles my medications on Monday and who is also THE doctor to see about addiction and detoxing.  He has the highest credentials a doctor can get in regards to addiction and being able to prescribe certain medications for detoxing.  So I'm in good hands.  Anyway, I go to see the doc on Monday morning and we have a good talk about my reconstructive doctor's wishes for me to try and get off my pain medications so they can better control my pain after a surgery.  He then proceeded to talk about opiates and they're effect on the brain as well as explaining how some different medications work to help you go through the detox process.  After that discussion, we got down to business about our plan of action, which turned out to be two plans: a Plan A and a Plan B.

Plan A consisted of taking a medication that would take care of the withdrawal symptoms, particularly the withdrawal symptoms that I described I go through.  At the same time of taking this new medication to handle the withdrawal symptoms I would still be taking the morphine but I would slowly wean down from on it on a  monthly schedule for 6 months and on that 6th month, if this plan worked for me, I would officially be off all my pain meds for the first time in over 3 years.

Plan B was the Suboxone route, which is a pretty successful detox medication.  Suboxone is actually an opiate drug but as my doctor described it, it works both as an accelerant and a brake so it would help with pain but at the same time kill my withdrawal symptoms because with Suboxone, I would not wean off the morphine as I would with Plan A.  I would be completely off the morphine immediately and be taking the Suboxone in it's place.  Sounds pretty good, right?  Well, yeah it does but there's one hitch.  It's a small hitch, but at the same time an awful hitch because this is how you get on Suboxone: you stop taking your pain meds completely, cold turkey and (this is the awful hitch part) I have to wait and suffer through withdrawals before I can start the Suboxone to alleviate those withdrawals otherwise it doesn't work.  The amount of Suboxone I had to take to alleviate the withdrawals is what determines my daily dose.  And that's Plan B.

So, on Tuesday morning I began Plan A and by Wednesday morning, it was over.  The new medication I started wiped me out that day and when my mom came home, she had an idea to take my blood pressure and   it was low, quite low.  We continued to take my blood pressure throughout the night and it continued to drop to dangerous levels.  It went to an all time low that night when I went to bed.  So Wednesday morning I called the doctor and I was told to stop taking the medication, continue with the morphine for the rest of the week and scheduled another appointment to see him the following Monday, which is July 25th.  I'm not sure if we will begin Plan B, go another route, or not try anything until after this next surgery, which I still haven't heard from the doctor for when that will be.  But this new medication he put me on to detox really messed me up this whole week.  I am just now, the last day of the week, coming out of the haze it put me under.  I've been fatigued, tired, feeling like I am sick with something and on top of just feeling like absolute crap, I had three low blood sugar attacks three mornings in a row, which in themselves make you feel like crap so I was doubly feeling like crap all week. That's a lot of feeling like crap.  If he decides to continue with detoxing this next week with another plan of action, I fear it will be another week of feeling like more crap.

So that's what's currently going on with my detoxification.  It hasn't started very well but fortunately I have been very blessed to have my family, particularly my mom and also a few crazy awesome friends, dear friends, who all have helped me get through this first week.  I knew detoxing was going to be hard, I wasn't delusional about that but after this first week when I was on the medication for only a day and it made me feel so terrible for most of the week I think this is going to be even harder than I imagined.  And I imagined awful.