Methadone Drug Addiction .com

A guy at work has a cancer in his neck, he seems pretty healthy and just has had his first cycle of chemo with the catheter and all stage IV
the hospice nurse just gave him a morphine prescription. I always thought morphine was the last thing they give you before the patient passed away. Does this mean that they think his time is coming already? he is working and seems healthy

The use of morphine has nothing to do with what stage a patient is. It can be prescribed for patients who are undergoing curative treatment for their cancer or it can be used in palliative patients for symptom control. The decision to use morphine is based on the patient's pain level. If the pain is mild, a simple anti-inflammatory can be used. Once the pain progresses, the next step is a weak narcotic, such as hydrocodone or oxycodone. If this still doesn't alleviate the pain, the next step is to proceed with a stronger narcotic such as morphine or dilaudid. The goal is to get the pain under control. The pain may be due to the cancer or side effects from the cancer treatments. If the cancer is curable, then once the side effects have resolved, the patient will be weaned off of the morphine. If it is a palliative scenario, the patient may be on morphine until they pass away.

Dr. Kelly
www.canceranswersonline.com

2008-11-21 15:22:40 by allen

Wouldn't people get addicted to methadone too? I know people started out believing that heroin is some kind of treatment for morphine addiction. What if methadone is the same way? I'm just really curious.

Methadone has already been proven to be safe and effective which is why it is used for addiction treatment. For so long as methadone is properly prescribed, it won't be sedating nor intoxicating. Its effects will not get in the way of normal activities. Its taken orally and prevents withdrawal symptoms for as long as 24 to 36 hours. Aside from that, when methadone is taken, it relieves the individual's heroin craving, the biggest cause for relapse. It is also medically safe, so even if people use it for ten years straight, it's okay. With the help of counseling and therapy, methadone will be able to bring people back their productivity and sober lives.

2007-07-23 00:58:24 by cintia i

Here is an abstract on the topic .......

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14622 155

2009-05-03 01:08:51 by nagendra

Price: $5.95 $5.95

I was in the hospital for surgery and they gave me morphine before and after the surgery to control my pain. A few days post-op they started me on percocet and tylenol with codeine in addition to the morphine. I was in alot of pain so they let me have the morphine every hour.

So this was obviously way to much medication all at once so I ended up becoming incoherent, my eyes rolled back in my head, I acted kind of loopy (accoring to my mom) and my pupils were constricting. My mom went to get the nurse and I started to become completely unresponsive.

The nurse gave me a drug called naloxone that reversed the effects of the pain meds. I started convulsing, (I was still conscious though) I was sweating like crazy, I was super nauseous, my pulse/ox droped, ohh and the convulsing was basically ripping open my incisions so the pain was fun but anyways my question is....

Has this happend to anyone else and if it did, was the convulsing classified as a seizure? I need to know because I already have a seizure disorder(I don't convulse during them) and I need to know if it could effect that condition. My nurse said this was not normal at all and she had never seen it before and I'm seeing my surgeon about it soon but I just thought I'd ask the internet first lol.

Sorry this was so long. Thanks for your help.

Btw- I'm 15

Your nurse absolutely did the correct thing by giving you naloxone.

However, naloxone causes such a rapid detoxification - blocks the opioids (percocet, morphine and codeine - incredible you were on all three) so fast that you may have actually experienced the same detox over an hour that a hardcore drug abuser experiences over several days when quitting pain pills. There's no wonder that your (likely petite) 15-year-old body (you don't stop growing until 22-24) may have reacted with a seizure, and seizure is, in fact, noted as a possible side-effect of naloxone because of this possible interaction. It is also likely to cause general sickness, vomiting, etc.

Naloxone is still the proper response to an opioid overdose - the side effects are much better than the alternative, which could have included coma or death. Your nurse was simply likely to have never seen a seizure as a result of rapid-detox, and uninformed as to the matter.

Please don't be concerned about that one-time experience. You are going to be fine. Whether this was or wasn't related to your seizure disorder, so long as you don't get into that situation again, a repeat performance isn't going to happen.

2010-09-27 23:53:11 by Emily

and ended up being reported to the police

jsut once I was featured on Cops in Miami...I was the whore in the tanktop biting the cops

2007-09-14 12:36:31 by mrmorphine333