Sue:

didn't understand the first part of your fentanyl question, but you ask how much Fentanyl Alan was on??

They started him on 25 every 3 days. 'Then after a while, he went to 50 every 3 days. The fentanyl completely takes away the pain, but in Alan's case, he went to the bathroom only once every 5 days.

Soon, they had him on 75 and then 100, and then it was 100 every 2 days. You should have seen the face on the pharmacist when Alan went to fill the prescription for Fentanyl every two days. The pharmacist went nuts trying to tell him 'you can't take this every two days, it's a 3 day patch". Then Alan calmly explained that he went to a pain management clinic and it's different when it's prescribed for a chronic pain condition. The pharmacist actually contacted the pain management clinic and made a face when he had to fill the prescription.

Then Alan went up to 125.

Oh, here's a story for you. When Alan was on the 100 (I had some left over 25 patches in the closet). Well, one night, he had pain in his toes and said "rub the capcaicin cream on them. We didn't know that Alan had a scratch on his foot. I rubbed in the capcaicin creme and I thought he would have a heart attack. He started screaming (it was 1 a.m.).

I just looked at him and he was moaning from the burning from the creme. I just went and got the .25 of the patch and slapped it next to his 100 patch.

He just looked at me and said "whoa". I then got cold water and completely washed all the capcaicin creme on his feet and that's when I saw the long scratch on his foot. Seems he scratched one foot with the toenail of the other foot. Since that night, he is NEVER without a pair of socks on.

Then soon after he went to 125 of the patch (can't remember if this was still every two days or whatever).

I know that his doctor would not prescribe any higher dosage of the patch. He had changed primary care doctors by that time and was on a medicare HMO plan.

Then we found Dr. Theirl and in a few months he was able to completely go down to 25 but had to detox to get off of the 25. That was murder but he did it.

He has taken no pain meds ever since.

I guess when you need Fentanyl, well, you need it. Just be sure to watch the digestive system. That's the really bad side effect of the patch. The constipation, I mean.

Mel