Sorry, but it’s answers like that that perpetuate the myth. When taken for pain, narcotics are not going to to make you an addict.
People who abuse drugs rarely start out as patients with pain. Drug abuse is a phychological problem. The drugs themselves don’t grab hold and hang on.
It takes three days to wean a patient who has been in pain, and on a continuous morphine drip for a month.
Pain managment is finally being seen as a necessity, but not all doctors are on board. Call or e-mail your Gyn, letting her know you are firing her and why. It’s one way, sometimes the only way, of educating them. Every health care coverage system has a way to change doctors. If you have to call to request a change, tell you insurance provider why too. This is something important to every woman.
Sweet merciful crap!
Why are we women expected to suffer so much? I went to three different doctors before one of them decided that maybe “doubled over in pain and unable to move for three days a month” was worth an investigation. :rolleyes:
Hope you feel better soon, Kalhoun. And I also sincerely hope that I never ever need an endometrial biopsy.
IANAWoman, but this is really barbaric. WTF is wrong with giving people heavy-duty painkillers if they need them? Most of us are not eager to become junkies, will strive not to develop a jones, will try to be parsimonious with the meds–but give us what we need, give us what we want, warn the hell out of us if you prefer, but WTF is the reason we’re experiencing intense pain when you have painkillers to distribute?
This is positively sick.
I hate to sound like a paranoid conspiracy-nut, too, but it really does sound like the women-stuff is just not treated the same way as other medical conditions with regard to procedures and pain. I think you might have hit the nail on the head, WhyNot. Still, you’d think any doctor would get the message when patient after patient acts like they are in extreme pain, that maybe, just maybe, it IS a little painful. 
It depends on the woman. My mom had an ablation because she started hemmorhaging (sp) blood from her uterus for THREE WEEKS, to the point where they almost had to give her a blood transfusion to keep her alive. There was nothing wrong with her - no cysts, no cancer, ovaries working fine, she just had a very long, very heavy period, so they just used the boiling water method to get rid of what gives her periods. She hasn’t bled since, and only bloated a bit after the procedure (which has since, btw, gone down). She dealt with the cramps afterward a lot better than bleeding out for three weeks.
Then again, she had a pretty good doctor who prescribed her the right kind of pain meds.
~Tasha
Another thing that pissed me off is that she wouldn’t respond when I asked her why I couldn’t have pain meds. So I’m thinking…maybe they need a “clean” tissue sample that wouldn’t contain any traces of medication (hey…I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt). But I always came back to why won’t she prescribe something for after the procedure? It just doesn’t make sense. I really wish a doctor would jump in here and try to explain to me why an insured patient with no allergies who is going through a widely understood PAINFUL procedure would not be a prime candidate for pain meds before and after that procedure.
This thread has me extremely upset. I’m still crampy, but I’m feeling progressively better and I’m sure everything will be ok. Now I’m just fucking PISSED OFF about the apparent disregard for pain management in gynecology.
Thanks all of you for the tea and sympathy. Now if we can just organize a march on the offices of the AMA…
Next time a doctor causes pain to the point “to the point where I was near screaming”, I recommend screaming. At the top of your lungs. They’ll probably give you pains meds just so you stop scaring the other patients. At worst, they’ll ask you to take your business elsewhere (small loss), but they’ll almost certainly give you pain meds first.
The one thing I’ve learned after knee surgery, is they don’t give pain medication to people who don’t complain. That served me in good stead when I had an ovarian torsion and the bozos kept trying to give me asprin for it.
msichievous
omit the first “to the point”, please.
mischievous
picu is absolutely correct. Pain is considered the 5th vital sign by the Joint Commission (a body that inspects and regulates hospitals). As a nurse, I have advocated time and time again for pts in pain–as did my recovery room buds(to no avail).
I don’t know why some docs have this hang up re pain. My father is a doc and I used to think that old school docs were the ones who were guilty of this. Au contrere! I am now older than probably half the docs I deal with on a regular basis–and some of the young ones are just as insensitive to this matter as the gray haired ones. (back in the 1950s, my dad was taught that children don’t feel pain, because their nervous systems were not fully developed. So when he tried to stitch my chin after a fall, he was shocked and amngry that I kicked him in the face from a supine position).
Also, just FYI–alot of pescription pain meds already contain Tylenol–do not take Tyl with Vicodan or Tyl #3 (duh) or Darvocet–there are more, but I can’t think of them just now.
Taking meds to relieve pain is not drug seeking behavior. And I have to conclude that there is an element of sexism at work. I cannot imagine any guy going in for say, inflammation of the foreskin or epidydimitis and NOT receiving analgesia. Sad-but the answer is to speak up. It worked to get rid of labor rooms (trust me, a prison cell has more ambience)–why not this, too?
My favourite gynecological factoids have to do with the treatment for pain during sex. According to the internet, one reason is that you just don’t like it enough, and you tense up. The other has something to do with the vaginal tissue, and the treatment is - get ready for this - TOPICAL ANESTHETIC DURING SEX.
Well, I was “howling” during the entire procedure. “OW! OW! OW! JESUS! OW!” in a pretty loud voice. I think people must’ve heard me. It didn’t seem to have any effect on her willingness to fork over the dope. I will, however, demand it next time. And if she doesn’t cough it up, I walk. Period.
I woke up in recovery after a gall bladder operation, shaking, cold, and in pain from the surgery. I asked the recovery nurse for pain medication and she refused to give me any, she said I would be better in a few minutes. A few hours later, back in my room, a second kind nurse took pity on me and gave me a morphine shot. I think some medical professionals just are around people in pain too much and it stops affecting them, or they think people are exaggerating.
When I first came into emergency with the abdominal pain, the ER doc said that women come in with ‘unidentifiable abdominal pain’ all the time. I got a generic printout to take home that said how to treat ‘abdominal pain’ with tylenol. :rolleyes: Luckily my Primary Dr. and my GI DR. are very good and willing to take me seriously and they were great advocates on my behalf. So I have learned that if someone won’t listen to you, ask to talk to someone else. Keep asking until you get an explanation, at the very least.
Slight hijack here - but along the same lines as the OP. When we lost my mother-in-law (who I loved dearly - no wife could have asked for better), she was in a local hospital when the doctors told the family that she was just “shutting down” and there was “nothing they could do.” I understand that. I cannot and will not understand why they refused pain medication to a dying woman who was obviously in great pain. THE DOCTORS REFUSED TO MEDICATE HER. I got so upset I dragged my husband to a small waiting area down the hall and told him “I know this is your mother, and not mine. You need to get on the phone to Hospice this very second and get her the fuck out of here so she can die in peace, without pain.” He did, and she died at home two days later without extreme pain, and with her family around her.
This, by the way, was the same hospital that put 69 stitches in my arms following a mishap with an air conditioner with no pain meds. The follow-up appointment for suture removal was with a plastic surgeon who would have charged me $150 to remove the sutures with no plastic surgery consult - he only does those a year after the accident. I told his receptionist to please cancel my appointment - I went to a Doc in the Box and got the sutures removed for $30. If I had been able to use my hands I could have taken them out myself.
The symptoms of endometriosis are:
[ul]
[li]Very painful cramps or periods[/li][li]heavy periods[/li][li]chronic pelvic pain (which includes lower back pain and pelvic pain)[/li][li]intestinal pain[/li][li]pain during or after sex[/li][li]infertility[/li][/ul]
The clots and pain are just what I have had for twenty-five years, only my periods are five days long now and not eight as they were when I was twelve. My mother hast the same heavy periods with nasty clots, and my daughter when she had false menstruation had the same thing scaled down to fit a newborn sized uterus.
The pain has not gotten worse over the years, and is, as I said, usually only moderate. I am fertile, and the only pain I have is very closely associated with cramping and passing clots. I do not suffer pain during sex, and in fact I find that sex during my period helps alleviate the pain. Sex and ibuprophen are enough to manage my pain, even the one or two periods a year it is severe.
Cysts and fibroids would likely have been visible during one of the many ultrasounds that I had during my pregnancy or shown up on the post partum uterine examination. My mother’s chunky days stopped with a normal menopause, and I expect mine will too. In the mean time I will stick to the yearly pap smears and monthly ibuprophen. As I said, I have talked to far too many women whose pain was much worse than what I get and far too many that had gynecological procedures that made their endometriosis worse.
Knocked out and given plenty of happy juice after.
Major problem was the startup of the blood thinners.
Mrs V. has had blood clots settle in her lungs.
Twice.
They were understandably nervous, but ended up thinning her out too much, too fast, so a return trip and stay to the hospital was called for
You guys might be interested in this thread I posted a while back about the disconnect between described pain and reality. A number of the SDMB medical types weighed in on doctors’ attitudes to pain.
Some doctors really don’t realize how much pain you’re in. My dentist turned out to feel extremely bad that I’d suffered so much, and now everytime I’m in there for work I am offered whatever painkiller I want. Last time I actually had to talk them down to prescription motrin because it really didn’t hurt that much (“I’m really okay. . . Yes, I promise I’ll call if it gets worse. . .”).
Other’s however. . .I have a lot of trouble with local anesthetic, such as novacaine. I’ve had dentists tell me, “You are too numb, it doesn’t really hurt.” As I child, I did scream. I mean, bloody murder screaming. No matter how much I screamed and sobbed, I was told I was being overdramatic and it did NOT hurt. I swear, with some of them once they’ve made up their mind you won’t feel pain, they will simply ignore or disregare any evidence to the contrary.
We used to go to a dentist who was also a friend of the family’s.
First time he had to do some work on me he shoot some anesthesia into my jaw, waited a bit and started working. I almost jumped out of the chair, OW! Shoots some more, waits, prods gently with one of his tools, I still can feel it. He says something along the lines of “oh, shit” and shoots a different spot. OK, that one worked.
He claimed Dad and me had our nerves in an unusual spot; when he shot the usual spot for “sensing” he hit the “moving” nerves instead. Thanks God it had been right before Easter vacation: I couldn’t shut the left half of my mouth for three days! At 14, can you imagine going to school like that? EEK!
My current dentist uses a spray, so things go all numb period. And y’all are making me dread my next gyn check, you know… 
When my husband had his vasectomy done, he drove himself there and back for the procedure (we were having a 6 year old bday party the next day) and I needed to go and get a script filled for him.
What did he receive for the pain? 30 days worth of Vicodine.
Chew on that for awhile.
Because of all the other stories in here, if I ever have to go in for any of these proceedures, I will be well equipped to take a hostage and demand good meds.
Ladies, your trials are not in vain.
And a big, double WHAT THE FUCK! to that. THIRTY DAYS? I don’t think I could have gotten four pills if I knelt down and blew the president of the AMA.
There is something seriously wrong with this picture.
Exactly. FTR, hubby never used them. He took it like a man. with frozen peas on his special features.