I went through what your dealing with 10 years ago. I have lower back pain chronic, left shoulder pain, carpal tunnel, and anxiety at times from ptsd. I went to my local clinic for 5 years, and went along with the tens to hundreds of ointments and flexeril( which just knocked me out). At my last appt I finally straight up asked my doc if I could get a script for just a few ( like 10-20) vicodin for the really bad days. I was informed that they didn't give narcotics for my type of pain. After 5 years I gave up, and with no ins started seeing a private pain doc. I was instantly prescribed 8 norco(10mg hydrocodone), 1-2 klonopin a day for anxiety(clonazepam) and at the height of it I was on 100mg of methadone a day along with norco and klonopin.
Throughout my life I have been on oxycontin(up to 240 mg aday) cold turkeyed that one. Pure hell. I've been on fentanyl, dilaudid, ms contin, I am now leaving the private pain doc and going back to va with current scripts from pain doc to see what they will do. Throughout this process I have found that although these opiates can help, they are only masking the pain. I live in a MMJ state so I am hoping to be able to use that in conjunction with a low prescription of norco and klonopin. I don't know how VA docs fill about continuing therapy other docs started but I'm gonna give it a go. I actually have found just lately that the MMJ helps more than anything. Any advice on the right route to take to get what I want from VA will be greatly appreciated. I dont want much, and I'll jump through there hoops. I've also cold turkeyed from 100mg of methadone with alot of help from MMJ so for those that think withdraws will kill you. They will make you want to die but you wont. Keeping your heart rate down is key.
From what I'm reading in other posts I dont think I'll ask for anything, I'll just show them what I'm getting and see what happens.