I was mis-diagnosed with MS in 1988 as some of you might know by previous posts. I lived on pain medications increasing the doseages over the years to deal with extreme pain in joints, weakness, burning skin etc. I am now diagnosed with Lyme Disease, via a Pos. spinal tap. I weaned off and am now free from pain medications thirty days today. Now the problem. I have progressively gone in to extreme pain, weakness of limbs, hearing loss and ringing in one ear, and the list goes on as I was weaning off the pain meds. I am soon to start IV therapy after Dr. said I have had this disease for many years. Do any of you believe that the pain medications "masked" the symptons all these years, and now that I am off them the LD has reared it's ugly head? Thank you.
Posted by lou (Member # 81) on :
Sounds like it is possible the pain meds did mask some symptoms. Will the doc consider going off gradually? You need to prepare for an intensification of symptoms when you start treatment.
Impressive that you got a positive spinal tap. Not a lot of people achieve this.
Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
I agree with lou. You may need those meds down the line.
Posted by Kings Park (Member # 11390) on :
I would really hate to go back on any narcodic. It wasn't easy at all getting off them. But as we all know in this forum, we do what we have to do! Thank you for the feedback. And in one way I believe your right, I was lucky in a sense that the spinal tap came back positive, I found out that it's not very often people get a positive spinal result.
Posted by Tincup (Member # 5829) on :
Less than 10 percent get a postive spinal tap... so you were lucky to find out the cause of your symptoms.
Rather than narcotics.. have you tried ibprofen or something similar? Works for me. But you can't wait till you are in screaming pain before swallowing one pill and expect it to fix everything.
Take as directed by your doctor.
Hope that helps.
Posted by Kings Park (Member # 11390) on :
Yes, that's exactly what I have done and it helps quite a bit, thanks.
Posted by spookydew (Member # 8432) on :
You could try non narcotic pain med for chronic pain. Sometimes elavil works for this.
It masked my pain for 11 1/2 years. I had constant deep burning ache in my head with muscle pain and arthritic. It masked it all.
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