Hey Lisa

firstly oral ketamine - this is the best thing I have ever tried to help manage my pain - i get almost no side effects (apart from visual - but that could be RSD anyway). Before going onto the ketamine I had been on MST (380mg?)/ methadone/ fentanyl (250mg + MST and not controlled)/ oramorph/ various DF118s/ diazipam/ gabapentin/ lyrica/ capascin/ clonidine/ permidronate/baclofen/ carba/amytrip/ nortrip - there is nothing me and my drs havent tried!!gosh knows what else so with me it was last chance saloon really.

I find that to strat with the ketamine only works for a while or so and made me very groggy and tired for the first week- BUT for me I've found that when the ketamine is working I can actually concentrate on getting tasks done - instead of before when I was in too much pain to do anything all the time I found that I was able to more or less do stuff for an hour or 2 (admittedly, ws diificult as I can't use/ move my arms/ legs etc but I was able to concentrate on work etc). I have now been on oral ketamine more than a year and I find that it is working longer as the amount builds up in my body. Also we have only had to increase the dose like 3 times - wheras with my MST we were increasing it pretty much weekly to try and get the pain "under control".

However, I have learnt one thing. in the end no matter how many meds I take my pain is always going to be out of control - meds will only take abit away - and even at my best I haven't had a pain level lower than 10 since I got this... so I try to pace myself etc as well as using meds to balance the pain out...

oh - and ketamine is very useful for things like getting dressed - i get my morning dose before I am got up / dressed in the morning because then it doesn't hurt as much... also before physio/ spints time and going to bed.

eugh - so the conclusion is - for me, ketamine has really helped me - I can stand more stuff being done to me and it does help for gettingi nto the first hour of sleep at night. I have few side effects with it. However, not everyone finds it as good. But if you have an option to try it then give it a go. any more qs?

LOL. you can tell I had a lecture this morning!

hope you're feeling better

Rosie xxxx