Tag: medications

A Christmas Catastrophe: How Getting Lost in the Medical System Strains My Sanity And Hurts My Care

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chronic christmas (1)

A day in the life of an angry advocate:

I barely slept last night because of endometriosis cramps. They assaulted me early this month and that’ll makes Christmas harder thanks to the painsomnia.

I called to cancel an appointment with my GP today as result. Brain fog and pain flares don’t result in productive meetings. We were supposed to talk about lowering and re-organizing my medications because I am about to start fertility treatments. I want to find the safest possible combination at the lowest reasonable dose.

Shouldn’t this be done by my pain specialist?

You’d think. But I get shuffled between my GP, OB, Pain specialist and fertility doctors instead. No one seems to want to pre-plan with me. I still don’t know who to call or what I would do if my pain spiked or my insomnia made me entirely sleepless during pregnancy.

My pain specialist has been busy focused on nerve blocks vs nerve ablations for my pelvic pain. That’s important. But he keeps deferring the medication chat until the next appointment. Which is always months away.

He’s too busy.

To make matters better, I’m playing broken telephone with the pain clinic office. They gave me an appointment time to follow up from an October nerve procedure but apparently never scheduled it. When I called to confirm and found there was no appointment, they told me the next availability was in six weeks. Great.

Then I realized not only would the medication chat happen too late, but if I waited to book my next nerve block until the Jan 21 appointment , then the procedure would have to wait until the spring because his schedule would already be full by then.

So I talked to the pain nurse earlier this week and asked to get the nerve block on the books asap. Two days later I got a call saying a completely different procedure (nerve ablation) was booked for Jan 22.

Are you for real?!? So I wrote an email to him sharing the results of the last procedure and all of my questions and thoughts, since that’s the only follow up from my surgery I’m apparently going to get.

I called my OB-GYN for help. She told me to contact Mother Risk (“an  information service providing up-to-date information about the risk and safety of medications and other exposures during pregnancy and breastfeeding”).

I’ve already done that. 3 times. But I have yet to sit down with a doctor to discuss their advice.

MotherRisk says it’s unlikely my medications will cause birth defects. As a result – and I’m not making this up-  my OBGYN and nurse practitioner asked, in that case, WHY I WOULD WANT TO TRY LOWERING MY MEDICATIONS?

Are you f&*!ing kidding me?

Because the less I take the better? Because if one is slightly safer than another, I’d rather take more of that and less of the other? Also, similar organizations to Mother Risk in the US and UK do identify increased risks with two of my medications!

To top things off- Surprise!- my period came two weeks early. I’m having a normal 30 day cycle for the first time in a year. My usual 44 day cycle is how I got my PCOS diagnosis. So now I am beginning fertility drugs just in time for Christmas, with all the joyous side effects.

So basically, HO.HO. HO.

Humbug.

Pain, Pregnancy & Prescriptions: Why You Should Treat Your Pain and How to Manage Safely (While Trying to Conceive & Pregnant)

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The first question I had after we decided to start TTC was about how to safely manage my medications during pregnancy. It’s vital not to under-treat your pain! Here’s where to find the info you need. And to those of you who criticize women in pain who are taking prescriptions while trying to conceive, my message is: get out of here with your stigma!

How To Find Out If Your Medications Are Safe During Pregnancy

During my 20s, I spent a lot of time and effort trying not to get pregnant. I used pills, patches and IUDs, coped with side effects, sat for hours in waiting rooms just to get prescription renewals, had a couple of scares thanks to late periods, and experienced all the other joys of being a woman using birth control.

It’s a surreal moment when you and your partner make the terrifying and exciting decision to you flip the switch, and start trying to conceive. Suddenly it’s all basal body temperature, ovulation predictor kits, and cervical fluid checks (and acronym hell – TTC, BBT, OPK, CF, TWW and BFP – it’s like a secret code!). Learning and tracking all of the ovulation signs is hard enough, never mind the challenges of pregnancy and parenthood, But for those of us with chronic illness, we face the additional hurdle of managing pain and other symptoms along the way. It’s vital to have a pain management plan while trying to conceive and pregnant:

“Because of fear about use of drugs during pregnancy, some pregnant women would rather suffer than treat their pain. Consequently, it is possible that such women are at risk of undertreatment, or no treatment, for painful conditions. Chronic, severe pain that is ineffectively treated is associated with hypertension, anxiety, and depression—none of which is conducive to a healthy pregnancy” (Motherisk).

The first hurdle you will most likely face, like I am right now, is how to safely manage your pain and other symptoms while you and your partner are trying to conceive?

How To Find Out If Your Medications Are Safe During Pregnancy

The first question I had after my husband and I decided we wanted to start trying was about the safety of my medications during pregnancy. At the time, I didn’t realize how complex this issue would turn out to be. It seems simple enough – a medication is either safe or unsafe, right?

Not so fast. In fact, a whopping “91% of the medications approved for use in adults lack sufficient data to determine the risk of birth defects due to use of medications during pregnancy” (CDC – Treating for Two).

The problem is that there are no double-blind, placebo-controlled research trials involving pregnant women. Why? Because it’s unethical to test the safety of a medication on a pregnant woman and her growing fetus – the potential consequence of causing a birth defect is too great a risk (CDC – Treating for Two).

Instead, the information doctors have about the safety of medications and pregnancy usually comes from observational studies of women who have chosen to take a medication during their pregnancy.

“Registries enroll pregnant women who have taken a certain medicine. Then, after these women give birth, the health of their babies is compared with the health of the babies of women who did not take the medicine” (CDC – Treating for Two).

The best you and your doctor can do is learn what information there is about the safety of the medications you take, weigh the potential health benefits and risks, and make a judgment call. But don’t fear prescriptions while TTC or pregnant. In fact, “Medications used in therapeutic doses for acute and chronic pain appear to be relatively safe in pregnancy” (Motherisk – click for a general overview of medications and supporting studies).

So where can you find the information that has been collected about prescription medication use before and during pregnancy?

In the United States, you can contact an organization called Mother to Baby, a nonprofit run by experts in birth defects. You can call toll free at 1-866-626-6847, text 855-999-3525, or visit the website at https://mothertobaby.org/.

In Canada, you can contact Motherisk at 1-877-439-2744 toll free or online at http://www.motherisk.org/

Prescriptions And Pregnancy: Get Out Of Here With Your Stigma

Prescriptions And Pregnancy: Get Out Of Here With Your Stigma

I take medications to manage my pain, including nortriptyline, tramadol and pregabalin. When I first went online to research this issue, I faced a wall of stigma and guilt-tripping over women taking prescriptions while trying to conceive or while pregnant. I felt a lot of stress and guilt about my “choice” to continue taking medications – as if I was somehow failing as a mother before I even became one.

I want to push back against any notion that taking medications to manage your pain while TTC or pregnant is in any way selfish. Yes, some medications are dangerous during pregnancy and the information we have about them is sometimes limited. You have to do your research and perhaps switch medications and emphasize non-pharmaceutical strategies to manage your pain (like massage, acupuncture, gentle exercise, yoga and meditation). But we also know that being in pain, stressed, and unable to sleep while pregnant is harmful to a growing fetus. Reducing those illness symptoms is actually a responsible act, something that a caring mother would do. So to those of you who criticize women in pain who are taking prescriptions while trying to conceive, my message is: get out of here with your stigma!