Yesterday morning, I went into the hospital with fairly high hopes of seeing a new pain doctor, despite the fact that my pain is currently being managed at the best level it has ever been.  Everyone had been going on about how nice the doctor was, but I was also aware of his negative thoughts on narcotics, and the efforts that he goes through to take people off of them.

Within moments of the appointment starting, I was cracking into pieces.  He was trying to figure out where exactly my pain was, and as anyone with Fibromyalgia knows, it changes from place to place depending on the hour of day and the circumstances of life.  He claimed that Fibromyalgia was usually caused by a psychosomatic situation, and was pressing me for the time it started – saying it had to be something like a car accident or a death of someone close to me.  It worsened after I had been taken cold turkey off of a bunch of psych meds, but this answer didn’t please him and he said that was impossible.

He told me that the narcotics that I’m on are likely causing more pain in my body, despite the fact that I was in unbearable pain before I ever started them and am much better now.  He completely dismissed my medical history and was only interested in the pain that I had that day on all of my medication.  He scared me by saying that my body would just destroy itself on this medication (especially at my age) and that it would ruin my life through my future major addiction.

At this point I was crying a little to myself, as he had this demanding and frustrated tone of voice, and with my Asperger’s, when anyone uses a tone of voice like that on me, I just panic and burst into tears.  He kept touching me in ways that felt absolutely horrible to me (but probably would have been fine for a non-aspie).  My panic came across to the doctor as a massive fear of my narcotics being taken away from me, but sadly I didn’t once think of the narcotics as I was too busy feeling completely disbelieved and not remotely safe.  All I wanted to do was run away, but I know at this stage in my life that I can’t alienate the doctors who have the treatments too much, or I’m left with nothing.  I waited to have my major meltdown at home.

After going over my body and determining that I did in fact have the Fibromyalgia diagnostic points, he proposed his treatment strategy.  I’m supposed to go in to the Intensive Care Unit in the hospital for at least a week, if not more, and be put on a steadily increasing ketamine infusion while tapering off the narcotics.  No one knows if it will help, or how long it will take before the pain returns, and when it returns, I have to go back in for another week plus to get another ketamine infusion.  Is this better than my daily narcotics?  I’m not really sure and I respond terribly to changes in medicine.

Since there is so little information out there, and I would only be the second person to have the procedure done here, I’m putting off my decision for a little bit until I can understand the situation more.

Has anyone been on ketamine infusions?  Is there anything you can tell me about them?

xoxo,

Annie