YES! That is VERY important! I found that going to the pain doctor. But if you are seeing an MD or neuro, etc, rather than a pain doc, sometimes it's harder to get thru to them. For instance, all the md's and specialists I've seen wanted to prescribe the shortterm drugs. But my pain was CONSTANT, so I'd have to take the medication ALL DAY LONG. I was taking so many pills a day, it was horrible. And what happens then is in the middle of the night, you wake up in pain cuz the medication wears off...and when you don't SLEEP WELL, the pain gets worse. And when you miss a dose (cuz you are sleeping perhaps when it's time) then the medication wears down in your system, and it takes a while for the levels to build back up again when you wake up and take another. So it's too many "ups and downs" or "peaks and valleys" with the short acting drugs.

So what helped ME was using the term "longer lasting medication." Try that, Trix. When you see the doctor, tell him/her that you get okay relief with the medication, but you find that it just doesn't LAST long enough. That you find you are in pain before it's time to take your next dose, so you get a couple of hours of good pain relief, then a couple of BAD hours, and you just wish there was something that LASTED longer. You don't like that you have to take so many pills a day, or that there are so many good and bad hours. It's like they're "even" - like you have 12 good hours and 12 bad hours, cuz you are in CONSTANT pain all day - and the T3's work good for 12 of those hours, but wear off way before it's time for another dose. Try that.

Then...you can also say that you were looking on the internet for different medications that help control pain and you read that there are some patches that last a couple days at a time....don't NAME it...tell her/him you can't remember the name. Maybe try that.

But if you word it that way, maybe you'll get him/her to listen better.

Hugs
LisaM