Ever since I was a kid I had a hard time with things like Novocaine when they needed to fill a cavity, When I needed stitches in my head they had to give me triple. As I grew up and became a young mother I found during my breast cancer battles that regular doses of about any med were simply not enough! From benedryl to anesthesia. I would be on the operating table and the anesthesiologist would stare down at me and say "OMG I cant believe you are awake! I gave you a double dose!"

Fast forward to the MS years. The MRI scares me so. I am claustrophobic and when I lay down flat my tummy backwashes and they fear I will vomit in the tube, So, they "try" to knock me out. I have had just boat loads of meds, and I am sitting there like "what?" its amazing, I have a tiny sense that I was given a med, but there aint no way that is enough. They normally talk about how much they gave me, and knocking out a small village...dont care! im still perfectly awake! So now they just knock me out, tube me and get it over with rather than give me so many meds it stops my breathing.

Anyone else? Need more pain meds than the average bear? more novacaine? more anesthesia? Whats with that??

One anesthesia guy told me greater than 20% of the population doesnt react to medications the way they expect, so 1 in 5 have issues. im just one of them. That made me feel better.

Yes, this is exactly what I am talking about. The first-born in each generation of my family all have this. And the same allergic reaction to what is commonly refered to as "Truth Serum," Sodium Pentothal, which is used for anesthesia during surgery and oral surgery. My grandfather, father, myself & my son all have problems with it. My son had surgery & nearly died when a doctor decided that a synthetic form of the drug would be fine. Obviously, it wasn't.

Novacaine...ahh, the stories I could tell...I have one dentist, who was filling in for my regular dentist, who thought that it must be a misprint on the part of the medical transcriptionist, so he opted for only using half the dosage for my last root canal. Neither he or I will ever forget it.

Maybe this is another one of those Ripley's Believe It Or Not episodes?

I have a problem with novacaine at the dentist. Doc gave me 9 shots of it and it still didnt work. Every other med, Im too sensitive to it. Alittle does alot of damage.. so to speak Neuro gave me .5 valium to help with dizziness, and it knocked me out for almost 8 hours. He was shocked!

Yes, I have a high tolerence for pain meds. I only take more if the pain is *too much* though. I think that the more you take, the higher your tolerence becomes.

Sally, I totally agree. My sister, God rest her soul, was in a horrible car accident when she was 18. She had 2 fractured vertebrae in her neck and it took them 2-3 yrs before docs found it. Well, long story short, her neck was operated on and then came the pain meds. She was in chronic pain until the day she died. It had gotten to the point where she was at her highest level of morphine and it wasnt working.

My opinion:

You might want to get DNA testing to show your metabolic genetic ability to handle drugs. Some people are genetically fast metabolizers, and some are slow metabolizers.

23andMe is one site. You can also ask for Cytochrome P-450 DNA evaluation for this problem. It is not nearly as costly as what you are doing now, BTW. It may save your life someday.

https://www.23andme.com/

This is the direction of medicine today. If you wait, you'll see in the near future that many drugs may be used only after these tests.

I have always needed like 3 shots to numb me for fillings or dental extractions. I don't think I have found the same reaction with other medications but then again I take very few.

I'm totally into the genetic knowledge we continue to identify. Here is a link someone suggested for reasonably priced biomarker testing at a pharmecutical lecture I attended recently. No clue about the company itself just heard it from a fellow participant.

http://www.ilgenetics.com/content/ne.../q/news-id/241

I used to give sedation for a group of dentists and oral surgeon. One day I attempted to sedate a young girl. That doctor used valium IV and not narcotics. I titrated her dose up to 27mg IV. Finally, I went to get the child's mother and report that we would be unable to do her surgery because we could not get her sedated. The mother said she forgot to tell her husband (who brought the daughter to the pre-op visit) to tell the doctor that they have some enzyme that totally reverses valium. I would not have believed it had I not given the valium IV myself. So, you are not strange IMO.

Wow, interesting post! Do you think this is MS related, or just some genetic trait? Or both (since MS has a genetic component)? I never drank at all until I was 18, and immediately found I could drink guys twice my size under the table so it was not an acquired thing. I would get hangovers except on whiskey (my distant ancestors were Scottish, wonder if I inherited the ability to metabolize whiskey?).

I am now very hard to sedate. I know to warn the drs ahead of time for any kind of concious sedation like a colonoscopy, because I had one where I was awake and talking the whole time, watching it on the screen. I have to go to an oral surgeon for dental work because novocain doesn't seem to do much for me, so they knock me out. I can easily take 10mg of valium and not even show the effects.

Oh, and morphine doesn't work - at all. After my hysterectomy I woke up in terrible pain and they kept giving me morphine, finally I said, "OK, this is not doing anything! Go get the dr, she knows I'm not a wimp, this is just not working." They gave me Toradol, I think, and it worked like a charm.

When I read about Heath Ledger's death, I was shocked. I walk around with more drugs than that in my body on a daily basis without a second thought and never even feel it! It doesn't even bother me to have a couple of mixed drinks on top of my meds (many of which are potentiated by alcohol). I just blame it on my screwy brain chemistry!

I am not like that. I can usually take a low dose. The one time I had to have a high dose was when I had let tooth infection go too long before removing the tooth, because it did not hurt....then, they could not give me enough to numb the pain.

I have a genetic problem with the P-450 system, MrsD. In my case, it's called Porphyria. I did not know that other people besides porphs had this problem. We do not detox meds quickly, that is, the ones which challenge the p-450 system either "up" or "down". But some meds do NOT challenge that system.
For instance, i cannot take Lidocaine but can take Marcaine and Carbocaine. Very very large difference in reaction.
I cannot take many pain pills, but can take Demerol, although fortunately I have not had to take it much in recent years.
Without the diagnosis, I was in the dark for most of my life, wondering if a drug would poison me or not. When I saw the safe/ unsafe drug list, I knew I probably had Porphyria. But it's very hard to get diagnosed, due to many many factors. Doctors are inexperienced. Labs are inexperienced in how to handle test materials which they send to a specialty lab. Doctors are not experienced in reading test scores. Doctors ascribe symptoms to other causes, like saying Ab pain must be colitis, and never test at all for Porphyria. I'm in good company, though (put that "good" in quotes) as royals have this disease. One royal who admitted it was Prince William of Gloucester, a handsome man who died in a plane crash at 30; google his name and find a touching Youtube history of his life, and see a man who looked like a movie star, and who had Porphyria inherited from one or both of his parents.