I think chronic pain has to be one of the most debilitating conditions around. Acute pain sucks, but when there's no end in sight it's a terrible thing. I can't start to imagine what it must be like.

As a very wisewoman has said, staying ahead of the pain is the currently recommended strategy for chronic pain. It's probably a good idea to talk to your doctor about longer acting pain relief. We don't have Lortabs in Australia but we do have longer acting versions of the same ingredient which I am sure are available elsewhere (US?).

As far as drugs are concerned, another thing which seems stupid but oddly enough does work for some (depending on the type of pain) is taking regular acetaminophen/paracetamol (Tylenol) - 1000mg four times day, every day (or a long acting version less often). This may often need to be supplemented with something stronger, but it can help and works together with the stronger medicines to give an added effect. Other advantages to this are that it won't destroy your stomach or cause constipation and it's cheap.

Non drug stuff is sort of specific to the cause of the pain - if you want to talk about it more I can tell you what I know,

Take care,

Zoidy (Pharmacist and medical student)