Julie, you said that your employer will continue to pay your health insurance while on Disability. Is that true? Sorry for not introcuding myself. I'm Jason. I'm sort of panicking because my wife has to go on disability because of her pregnancy... but I'm worried that if she does, she will loose her health coverage at work.

Hi - Just reading that some of you are using this patch for PN. I am really happy to know it works. However, my husband used it for a few months prior to surgery for a herniated disc in his neck. Coming off of this was hell. He had never taken any kind of long-term meds before and as I said he went through painful withdrawl. But if it works and you always use it then there's probably no harm. Just something to consider before trying it. Just my 2 cents.

Thanks, Cheryl:

Cheryl:

Hi,

Re: The duragesic patch, my husband was on it years ago. It was the only thing that brought him complete pain relief. He also took Vicodin for breakthrough pain. He had been on 125 of the patch. His doctor would not prescribe any higher dose for him, and he was on it every two days. It did the trick but he never went to the bathroom.

But when he went to a chiropractic/neurologist who did manipulations, adjustments, a G5 machine, WHATEVER!!!, my husband improved so much, that he went back to his primary care physician to get off the patch and he was told "you cannot go off this cold turkey, you have to reduce the amount slowly". So Alan did the 100 for two days, then 75 for 3 days, (all I know is, it took him weeks and weeks to titrate down from the 125 of the patch), until he got down to 25. He could not, for the life of him, get off the 25. He had to go into the hospital to detox from the 25.

So what happened??? He was pre-approved by his insurance to go into the hospital for detoxing of the 25 of the patch.

He was in the hospital de-tox ward for one day. He went in WEARING THE PATCH. The next day, they discharged him telling him, "we can't find any trace of drugs in your system, so you can't stay here".

Alan said to them "are you out of your mind, I came in here with a Fenanyl Patch on". The doctor said "well, we didn't detect it, so you can't stay here". He was released and came home and stayed in bed for one week. I couldn't go near him. It was tough. Like a really really bad flu.

But he got through it.

So while it works, it's a tough road to go off of. But hey, if you need it, you take it.

Melody