Hi bp,

i'm sorry about your chronic pain and your difficulty in finding safe relief. As the Dr that posted said, you should never cut the sustained-release pills in half.
They're meant to release slowly and i find that for pain relief i have to take it every eight hrs instead of every 12 hrs. i go to a pain specialist for chronic severe pain that has been very bad for fifteen months now. i fisrt started with medicines like vicodin then tried the fentanyl patches and became sick in the summer at work (i work in hot greenhouses and the medicine gets released too quickly). So the Dr put me on oxycontin- the SR type and oxycodone for breakthough pain which i usually take between doses. i don't have very many side effects and when eight hrs is up i wake up in pain, like now. Somehow i ended up going to sleep early a few days ago and have this schedule that i need pain meds in the middle of the night since a few days ago. i never can miss doses because the pain comes back. i worry a lot about how it will be to get off of this- i take 60mg of oxycontin three times a day and 10mg oxycodone for breakthrough three to four times a day. i only weigh about 100 lbs so it's a large dose and it scares me so much but i need to take it because the pain is very bad. If it isn't treated it's horribly bad and if i don't pay attention to the time and am late on a dose it gets hard to get back on track with pain control and nothing helps for a while.

It's a good medicine - it's terrible to be in pain that 's unbearable. i'm really afraid of going deaf or making a mistake and overdosing by accident or on purpose, i have DID and have separate parts that don't remember what others in my system do. The Pain medicine dr may do a nerve block so i won't have to take medicine any more- or as much, but that is scary also because of the nerves that will then be blocked. They control many important body functions and there is a risk involved that my life will be so different afterwards. i'm still in the process of having all the tests to rule out what is wrong. i have too many M-proteins in my blood. It isn't high enough to definately say i have multiple myeloma but i have very severe pain. i've had so much testing and bone marrow biopsies.

Anyways, bp, i hope that you're able to have pain relief without so many problems soon. Oxycontin seemed to work the best to help me live as pain free as possible. i still feel pain a little and between doses it's hard but it's so much more bearable and i can be active- just not as much as i would like because the pain will be worse. i used to love to backpack two years ago and hiked 8-12 mi. every weekend. now i can't but am trying to get back to doing more of the things i love.

Another thing about oxycontin worries me- i have almost constant ringing in my ears and i'm so afraid that i'll lose my hearing. It's terrible to have to take pain medicine but nothing is as bad as constant sharp unlivable pain if you have it. i hope that my dr won't desert me and not help me off it when i have to get off it.

Another thing is really difficult- picking up prescriptions. The pharmacies automatically label and treat me like a drug abuser. That's been that most difficult thing about taking oxycontin for me. It's been really hard dealing with them- they refuse to fill prescriptions sometimes despite the dr's instructions. Sometimes it's so hard to find pharmacies that carry it.
That part is a nightmare. i'm happy i only have to go through that once a month.

i hope that you find a solution that works for you.
Take care,
kerria