Hi folks,

New here but have done a little digging around. I know there are a lot of threads on here relating to the subject, but I was hoping to get a consensus from other folks in the same boat as myself as to a recommended daily/weekly regimen that shows success.

I am, as many of you are too I suspect, victims of back pain. I have had a total of 4 surgeries on my spine, the first a cervical fusion in '04, followed by laminotomy and laminectomy at the L5-S1 joint. While the cervical fusion was a moderate success, reducing pain by ~40%, the lumbar surgeries were total failures. As a result, I had L4-S1 fused in '09. As with most fusions, this too was a total failure.

Since that time, I have been on every opiate out there, from morphine to fentanyl to opana. My tolerance was increasing so quickly that I was concerned as to what would happen later in my life (I'm only 38), so I explored my options. Neurostimulator trial was a miserable week, so I ended up with an intrathecal pain pump installed in July 2010. I now receive just over 1mg/day thru the pump and take 10mg Percocet for breathru.

Throughout the course of all this, I have has some battles w/ constipation, mostly minor, but one moderate to severe impaction from the Fentanyl patch back in '07, that I had to digitally remove.

Just recently, things have began getting very bad again and the constipation has spun out of control. I now watch everything I put in my mouth and am downright scared of taking a percocet for fear of what it will do to me.

I have used prune juice, suppositories, enemas (saline & mineral oil), dulcolax pills), Milk of Mag, Miralax, and of course, mag citrate when absolutely necessary. I eat as much insoluble fiber as possible, and try to get in a large salad every couple days, but I am still constipated, to varying degrees, almost all the time.

I went in today for a pump refill and talked to my doc...he recommended the usual (fiber, veggies, MOM, a brown cow--milk of mag mixed w/ prune juice and all the other usual things), but stopped short at any kind of daily or weekly plan other than "If you're on day 3 with no action, drink 1/2 bottle of mag citrate." I know mag citrate works, but I don't have the time to spend 6 hours, twice a week, camped out next to the bathroom.

Does anyone have any sort of regular routine that they use to remedy this? Is there something I'm missing here?