[MudRat]

Hey Folks, I'm kinda in a spot with my pain doc and was wondering should I take my own advice of "be your own advocate". Now as most of you know i have had the Medtronics Pain Pump for about a year now. Ive had the best results one could ever ask for when it comes to nerve pain and CRPS. I feel like I'm 20 again. Now the problem I have, is every now and then I experience a little bit of breakthrough pain. Now it's nothing compared to life without the pump but it's still a little painfull. When I discussed this whith my pump dr, his answer was " Let's just turn the dose up". Now I have a Personal Therapy Manager that's never been in sinc with implant because the dr feels that it really shouldn't be in sync. So when I asked him to please sync the PTM instead of just an across the line increase, he rufused. Now we went round and round ( I'm taking my advice here )!! My position on this is that the PTM will allow me a bolus dose. Now a bolus is a fancy word for PRN in my opinion it just deleviers an extra dose of meds when needed but within the parameters he sets (dosage and time). It also allows me to easly interact with the implant by letting me know when my last refill was and the date of my upcoming refill. Not to mention it has a bunch of other features... His position is he dosnt want me adjusting the dose for a few reasons. One" it always changes the fixed date as to when the next refill will occur and I dont want to be out of town when that happens". The next thing was that " I don't think it's needed, my job is to keep you out of pain and Ive done that. None of my other patients have it and they are out of pain also. If you want to find another dr that will sync it then thats fine but let me do my job". "WOW" I said. Followed by the thought he's right I'm so happy with his results, but should I really let go and let him work his magic or should I call medtronics and find another Dr that will, hence the question "When do you let go".