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Asked my daughter about it tonight, she is a nurse at a large hospital. She says they get a lot of patients suffering from the various side effects of gabapentin. First chance I have had to talk to her for a while. The hospital is so shorthanded, she has been working 5, 12 hour shifts a week.
That is the very reason I've warned her and am asking for testimony from patients that use it...
I will pass this along to her....thank you....
I hope the hospital your daughter works for hires new people soon....that is a whole lot of hours, she must be exhausted....?
Gabapentin can block nerve pain but doesn't do anything to heal the nerves. It just masks the underlying problem instead of addressing it.
A good, basic B complex vitamin (with B1, B6 and B12) would be better to try for nerve pain/neuropathy. These vitamins are neurotropic. B1 for nerve pain and inflammation, B6 protects nerves and B12 repairs nerve damage.
Many people do this instead of gabapentin. Some people find that they need to add zinc as well. Some B complex products contain zinc.
Gabapentin can block nerve pain but doesn't do anything to heal the nerves. It just masks the underlying problem instead of addressing it.
A good, basic B complex vitamin (with B1, B6 and B12) would be better to try for nerve pain/neuropathy. These vitamins are neurotropic. B1 for nerve pain and inflammation, B6 protects nerves and B12 repairs nerve damage.
Many people do this instead of gabapentin. Some people find that they need to add zinc as well. Some B complex products contain zinc.
I was originally prescribed gabapentin for arthritis pain. That is not even a suggested use for it.
yes, it seems they are using it off label for a gamit of different things, and here is what I learned....they start you on a low dose, it doesn't work, so they up the dose, and keep doing so, until your walking around like a zombie.
I cannot believe the incompetence of SOME Doctors today....and I repeat, SOME....not all!
Was prescribed to me for phantom pain after amputation. Stupid prescription for that. Doesn't do anything for the pain, but slows up your brain....gives you aphasia....I stopped it myself. Learn to live with phantom pain. I don't want anything to do with a drug that messes with the brain and cognitive thinking.
Same thing happened to me. I had a hip replacement that went bad (damaged nerves) and when we moved to DE I went to a new ortho. He prescribed the gabapentin and within a month I had such horrible brain fog that I could hardly function. I stopped it myself and after a couple of weeks of getting it out of my system I was finally getting back to normal. And it didn't even help the pain.
I had a friend whose son was a highly regarded ER physician and researcher and he told her that no doctor should ever prescribe it.
I quit taking it and all my pain meds completely a few days back. The difference in my mobility is amazing. I am walking so much better and have my balance back.
I had to take it for nerve pain, sciatica, and loss of function in my left leg stemming from bulging and slipped discs in my back, just last spring and early summer. The thing with gabapentin is that if you are taking more than about 900 mg per day, when you want to come off it, you need to come off it slowly, with a taper. In my case it went like this:
Physically, I didn't mind being on it as far as it felt. Along with meloxicam it brought my pain down from a 7 to about a 3: there and annoying, but not debilitating. Mentally it made me a little spacey, which was fine for sitting around watching TV, coloring mandalas with glitter gel pens, chilling on the balcony watching birds, gentle walking, and other activities that don't require a whole lot of mental effort.
But working while taking it was a problem. I have to read a lot of complicated medical research and "translate" it into plain English, and it was VERY difficult for me to focus. Sometimes the words I was reading would "swim" on the page and I would write the same sentence, backspace over it because I didn't like it (as writers do), then write the same sentence over again (as writers sometimes do when second-guessing themselves), but I would do it four or five times or more because I would forget what I had just backspaced over and needed to see it again to know I didn't want it (if that makes any sense at all). Plus, even with the meloxicam and a muscle relaxant (Flexeril) to keep my back from locking up, the pain relief was not enough to enable me to start the physical therapy I needed. No way could I drive on it, that's for sure.
Between the mental haze and not being able to do physical therapy, it wasn't enough for me to really thrive, so my pain doctor and I decided to try an epidural steroid injection in May. I only had that one shot and haven't needed another shot or any gabapentin since then, as the sciatica and nerve pain is gone. Now I just have to manage spinal stenosis, arthritis, and degenerating disc disease all the usual ways. If my back starts to feel like it's threatening to "go out" again, I take a meloxicam and go easy for a day or two (nothing high impact) so things don't get too inflamed in there and cause big problems, but that's it.
Not for nothing, but it works in pets, too. Mine had an inoperable tumor inside that sat on a nerve in his hip and gave him pain like we get sciatica. He, took meloxicam for arthritis, too. Along with tramadol, the gabapentin and meloxicam gave him a decent quality of life for five years before our goodbye, so I'm grateful twice over that someone invented them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cremebrulee
So I posted this thread to see if anyone has taken this medication and has had a bad reaction to it, or if you know someone who has suffered a bad reaction from it....and what the reaction was....
Anything other then that, I don't need to know, but many thanks to you.
Maybe you feel you don't need to know, but keeping perspective and not creating fear in the general public through selective bias are good things, so I shared anyway.
My wife has been on it for about 10 years. Started out at 1800 mg/ day. After her gastric sleeve surgery 3 years ago she's down to 600. Never had a bit of trouble with it.
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