I woke up at 1 a.m. Saturday morning with an excruciating abdominal pain. I’ve had painful air bubbles deep inside before, so I got up and tried jogging and twisting and bending in order to shift it. However, it didn’t move at all and it got worse. After an hour of rocking and moaning, I woke up my husband and off to the emergency room we went.
Surprisingly, there were no other patients and I was seen straight away. The doctor questioned me, and it turned out that I had been overdoing it with ibuprofen and Alleve. I’ve had a lot of trouble with aching joints and especially with a bad shoulder pain (for which ailment I’m starting physical therapy on Monday morning). But I had no hints of stomach pain beforehand, and I never technically took more than the recommended dosage. The excellent doctor I spoke with said he had seen this before, that it can come on you without warning.
Luckily, though, it was not at the “bleeding ulcer” stage, which I feared. I wasn’t enthusiastic about having a camera snaked down my esophagus and having my stomach lining cauterized. I was told to cease and desist ibuprofen immediately and to take only Tylenol from here on out. Drat - Tylenol isn’t all that effective for my joint pain. But I’ll take joint pain over that horrific stomach pain any day. That was very bad news indeed.
Because it’s not an anti-inflammatory. Unfortunately, the big three over-the-counter NSAIDs are essentially the same when it comes to gastric side effects so it’s not like you can switch out one for the other.
You definitely should talk to your doctor about pain relief options for you. My mom suffers inflammatory pain a lot but can’t take NSAIDs because of a previous stomach condition, and it’s been a battle to figure out how best to help her without them. Her doctor just had her on something, a new antidepressant used to treat fibromyalgia apparently, that had side effects that were so terrible that she said “You know, I’d rather be in pain than deal with this.”
Glad to hear you are OK. Good luck with the therapy! My shoulders ache most of the time too. I have had some good luck with stretching, but it hasn’t been the final answer.
PT is okay, but try to find a good massage therapist for the shoulder. Also, ice works to bring down inflamed tissues when you can’t take the good stuff.
I have a neck injury that can really cause major problems with my right shoulder. I have a great massage therapist that works on it for me. Hurts like hell during, but almost completely pain free afterwards. It’s the only thing that really *works *for that problem.
My wife ended up in the ER last November for the same reason. She was experiencing the worst nausea she has ever felt in her life, for hours. The only thing that caused the nausea to abate was when the ER doctor gave her a cup of some sort of anesthetic to drink.
They determined it was due to Advil that she had been taking after some recent dental work. I have a new respect for the side effects of ibuprofen.
She is at the age where she has had more than one late night trip to the ER for various things, and this one tops her list of unpleasant experiences.
You should talk to your doctor about topical treatments for your joint pain. Voltaren gel is very effective. (Though it’s pricey, depending on how your insurance company handles it.)
Yeah, they gave me a cup of the same stuff, I believe. They called it a “digestive cocktail” - a mix of lidocaine, maalox, and other stuff. It helped.
I predict as we baby boomers hit our achey joint years, ERs will be seeing many more of us for this. We don’t accept the whole theory that we’re getting old and have to scale back our activities and so we hit the analgesics too hard.
I need glucosamine and chondroitin for my joints, too, but I can only find the combo in the huge, horse-choking pills that I can’t get down (they’re not coated, either, so after a couple stuck, I just gave up). I can get glucosamine in a liquid or chewable, but never with chondroitin. Bah.
Glad to hear you figured out your troubles, teela. My husband gets what must be some kind of air bubble thing, too, and he’s in terrible pain for an hour or two until it clears up on its own. He’s never been able to figure out what’s causing it; he does seem to get them more often since he had his gall bladder out.
pill splitter. I also used one with my calcium suppliments until I found a brand that the dose was 3 pills instead of one horse pill. I now take one pill 3x day instead of 1 horse pill.
Ask your primary care doctor if there’s a way to use different NSAIDs, or add a stomach-protection medication. There’s a combo pill called Arthrotec (diclofenac, which is generic Voltaren, plus misoprostol) which I’ve been given for my painful joints. FWIW, the combo pill is brand-only and a lot more expensive than buying the two components (which are both available as generic) separately.
I have ongoing stomach pain problems (the last thinking is it’s Irritable Bowel Syndrome), and arthrotec is what I was prescribed for my bad shoulder. People with stomach problems have to take all pills carefully; I take them with food and a full glass of water at all times (unless they specify you can’t take them with food), and stay sitting up for a while after taking them to minimize the possible damage.
I know, huh? And it was late Friday night/early Saturday morning. I fully expected to see the losing combatants of late-night drunken bar brawls and gang fights.
I do take a glucosamine supplement, but I don’t see any major effects from it. The therapy session went okay this morning, and I hope it’ll alleviate the pain in my shoulder. I think the technical term for what I have is “scapular adhesions”.
If this helps, Puritan.com delivers to Canada. These are capsules that can be opened and mixed with a tablespoon of yogurt or applesauce if that might work for you. They are pretty good-sized capsules, though, which I take 2 in the morning and 2 at night, in addition to some other horse-sized supplements. I know a lot of people have trouble with them, though!
Agreed! The Arthrotec specifically says to take with food.
Getting the two ingredients as separate pills also allows using the misoprostol portion with a different NSAID as appropriate (in my case the diclofenac happened to do a MUCH better job than OTC pills so I might stick with that for the NSAID).
Back to the OP: How are you feeling now that you’re off the NSAIDs for the time being? I know I’m always in a lot more pain when I have to stop (like right now - had to stop a week before a colonoscopy and it’s 2 weeks until I can have them again).
