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Old 04-14-2011, 04:21 PM
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fmichael fmichael is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: California
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15 yr Member
fmichael fmichael is offline
Senior Member
fmichael's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: California
Posts: 1,239
15 yr Member
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lovefamilypets View Post
Hi Mike,

I did speak to a nurse last week regarding Stanford and I briefly asked her about the inpatient pain program and how long people stayed in it for. She said usually 3 - 7 days, which I was very surprised at since I had assumed it would be something longer like a month or so. Perhaps they shortened it due to insurance reasons? I do have to wonder how much improvement one can have in 3 - 7 days after having CRPS for 3 years? Any thoughts?
My first thought is that something bizarre happened last year, when I would have sworn that my long-time doctor at USC, who gave me a non-working number to contact Stanford regarding their inpatient pain program and - after I checked the website for Standford's Pain Management Center and found nothing pertaining to any inpatient program - he later confirmed that Stanford's inpatient pain program had in fact shut down, but when I saw him this morning, he made clear that he never told me any such thing!?! In fact, its director is his good friend.

That said, I was hot to trot at the time, and I would encourage you to do so.

My guess is that 3 - 7 days is just long enough to take you off all of your meds, at which point they can not only observe you at your "best," but take subtle measurements of autonomic nerve functioning that could easily be obscured by thing like Neurontin, and then perhaps try a change up in your medications based upon their test results and observations. I'm unsure what they could do in 3 days, 7 seems more reasonable. And in keeping with what you were thinking, I KNOW (as well as I can) that the figure that was bandied about a year ago was 3 weeks, which may well be ideal and the way it used to be, but is probably not what insurance companies are willing to cover anymore.

Apologies again for the confusion.

Mike
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