Question for anyone who has had surgery
Hello, I hope you're all doing as well as can be. I am possibly facing a big surgery and would like to know what the process generally is for reducing mme preoperatively. I would prefer to be on the lowest dose and mme possible in the time leading up to a surgery but I don't know much about how this works. Rather than weaning down, I was planning on seeing if my doctor could switch me to something else that already has a much lower mme than I am on. Ideally I would like to get to taking pain medication as little as possible so that I have a better outcome after. It sounds like pain control can be tricky when you're already used to a significant amount of opioids compared to the opiate naive person. Has anyone dealt with this situation? Looking for experiences, not medical advice. I will be working with my health care providers on this too. Do they usually understand conversions so that I don't end up super under medicated after surgery? I know when I had no chronic pain and wasn't on anything, 5mg of a hydrocodone worked very well. At this point, I don't think that would even work for half of the day for me. I am allowed 12mg hydromorphone per day and have taken 6mg per day at the lowest increment. I would like to switch to possibly oxycodone since it lasts very long for me personall, but only one per day at the lowest dose that is reasonable. I don't want to be taking nothing and suffering, but I want to lower my mme as much as I can. I'm terrified, only because this situation is new to me and I don't like the unknown. Any insight would be helpful. For reference, I have chronic neuralgia and I am in the diagnosis phase for what appears to be ankylosing spondylitis. Since a procedure could be quite soon, or could be in a few months...I would like to decrease my meds very soon but still be able to take something every day at my highest level of pain. So that would be evenings for me. Also concerned with anesthesia while being on meds. I'm sure the anesthesia people deal with this a lot, but I'm a nervous patient and I would love to know how it worked out for any of you who have had surgical experiences as a chronic pain patient on medication. I am hoping that this can all go as smoothly as possible. Thank you.