I Have Been Taking Methadone For 9 Years Went To My Appointment And The Place Was Shut Down Now Cant Get Records Live In Chronic Pain But

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I am in immediate need of a pain doctor who will write methadone,my spciatic nerve is crushed and I have 2 slipped disk and a herneated disk,I have been seeing a pain doctor,when I went to my appointment this month,the doors was locked and a note on the door that said "permanetly closed",now I can't get my records or anything and no one will see me without the records and referral,if you know anyone who can help,please let me know,because of all these doctor shoppers and abusers,with all my other conditions,I'm so scared and I just had major surgery.alabama woman suffering,needs help.

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Have you tried contacting the social work department of a local hospital?

If you explain to them what happened, they may be able to help you find someone that will see you and assist you.


https:/­/­www.medschat.com/­wiki/­Methadone/­

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Thank you so much,I'm willing to try anything for help,thank you and may God bless!

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for a start if it was a proper company they wouldt just shut up and left, you would of been informed of this months before they closed. see you gp about it, i would then get your self referred to a proper clinic for methadone

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Let me guess, Dr Veluz??? I was going to him as well and I went in for my appointment too and it had the same note. They wont answer the phone or anything. Im looking for a new doc as well. Ive been so sick. Good luck with the search and please let me Know if you find another doctor.

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Hi All, I have been on Methadone for Intractable Chronic Pain for over 10 years. I had been seeing a Psychiatrist/Intractable Pain who was a "high dose" pain management physician. Long story short, he passed away unexpectedly and left a lot of pain patients without pain management. He passed away in 2010, so the last two years I have been suffering as the pain management drs in Beaumont, Tx. area of really afraid to prescribe the medications I was on, which ws Methadone and Actiq for breakthrun pain. I no longer am on the Actiq as I can't find a dr. to prescribe as it is what is called ""off label" since I am not diagnosed with cancer, but was approved by Medicare Part D due to many diagnosis that to lengthy to go into. Since 2010 I have gone from 120mg of Methadone a day to 30mg. By the way the dr that passed away was in Houston, Tx. My quality of life has been greatly affected and am looking for a dr in HOUSTON, TX, who will prescribe more than 30mg of METHADONE per day. If anyone knows of a good psychiatrist or pain management doctor please HELP....I am moving to Houston, Tx next month. Thank you

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I have been suffering from chronic pain for over 10 years. My pain clinic shut down and i cant get my records. I dont know what to do...

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I'm in rome georgia there is a dr.spencer here and dr. beckner 1 is a family dr., and the other 1 is a nerve dr. hit me up {edited for privacy}

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Wow; this is so. NOT. your. fault. That's AWFUL!!!

You have a severe, legitimate medical issue! You have a right to pursue proper medical care. You don't deserve to be lumped in with drug seekers. So, please, seek help at your local hospital and social work agencies and explain your situation; you will go into withdrawal otherwise, which can be very dangerous. To say nothing of the fact you will also be in excruciating pain!

When a legit doc sees your condition, he or she will prescribe appropriate medications, because diagnostics will verify that you have these injuries. They may wean you off one med and put you on another. There are a number of possible treatments. You might even end up taking the relatively new (about 6 years old) drug Lyrica (pregabalin) instead of your Methodone, all of which I will discuss in a moment.

But FIRST: that clinic you went to does not sound on the level. Something's hinky about the way all that happened! Your local friend who posted the name of the doctor, and other people who gave you responses pertaining to all of that, are correct: I don't think you were going to a legitimate clinic, and you have every reason to expect and receive appropriate medical care. You deserve better.

Some pain management clinics do suddenly go out of business, but not quite THAT way! I know because I went to TWO pain management clinics in a row that went bankrupt and shut down after 5 years. They were perfectly legitimate, and they both toed the DEA line very carefully; but they simply ran out of money. It could even be that their careful adherence to the law was part of what cost so much they couldn't afford to keep going. Sad but true!

The drug laws are made because of some people who have no medical need to get drugs but want to get them anyway to party, and they wreck everything for the rest of us. You are a person with a legitimate need for medication for a real, demonstrable physical condition. As am I. But because those other folks ruin it for us, we end up suffering. So not fair! Nor is it fair that the two wonderfully managed and very honest pain management clinics I mentioned, five-star level, that helped the poor (like me!) as well as the well-to-do, ended up shutting down because their finances were a disaster! But the clinic you were going to seems to have been closed by the DEA rather than by bankruptcy. It just happened in a highly suspicious manner. That's not right, and as I say, you need and deserve better care. Your local hospital may run a legitimate clinic that would be better off financially than an independent clinic.

In each case, the two clinics I went to, I recall telling the people who founded them that what was happening to them was unfair, because they strictly obeyed the law and complied with all DEA regs, and then they went broke! "No good deed goes unpunished"???

But before they stopped my care, they made sure I had secured a relationship with another doctor and clinic first. In each case they told me up front that they were facing financial ruin; they were in fact very distraught about it, as was I. As I say, I expressed my sympathy to them. In both cases, the founders not only lost their business, they had mortgaged themselves to the hilt to try to keep going and faced terrible personal losses as well. It was horribly unfair because they were only trying to help people.

The one you went to, however, DOESN'T sound legit, because of the way in which it all happened; that is EXTREMELY suspicious! So, you may have been misled.

It's not YOUR fault. You have a legitimate medical issue! You don't deserve to be lumped in with drug seekers. So, please, seek help at your local hospital and social work agencies and explain your situation; you will go into withdrawal otherwise, which can be very dangerous. When a legit doc sees your condition, he or she will prescribe appropriate medications, because diagnostics will verify that you have these injuries. They may wean you off one med and put you on another.

There are a number of possible treatments you might be able to undergo.

I have had a nerve block treatment but - not to scare you off - I had an unusual reaction and stopped breathing so they had to intubate me. But that's not the only time I've stopped breathing and had to be intubated. They did say my reaction to the spinal block was very rare. Most folks will respond well. You might benefit.

Other treatments include but are not limited to cortisone IV's (I had those but my current Doc, a rheumatologist, said they were causing dangerous systemic effects; again, that may NOT be typical of most patients). I've been through a series of meds: I have seizures as well as RA, Fibromyalgia, and a brush with cancer.

Good luck and I hope you find a really good Doc. It took me years but I finally did. So far HIS clinic hasn't gone bankrupt! I hope it never does. Unlike the other two, which were tiny independent units, this one is attached to a major local hospital.

I was on phenobarb for awhile as an adolescent but was suddenly taken off it, by a doc who as it turns out was being investigated by the DEA.

I was just a kid, taking my seizure med on time every day in my then-regimented "Straight A student type A achiever" life. I was a "Good Kid," but I didn't know until I was abruptly taken off the phenobarb that I was an "accidental addict". The resulting withdrawal very nearly killed me: no hyperbole here, no sarcasm; I'm serious. Among other things, I had terrible tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizures!

LYRICA WITHDRAWAL IS WORSE EVEN THAN THAT.

Again no hyperbole here ~ I know I've used both hyperbole and satirical humor elsewhere in my essays, but not right here. I literally say and mean THAT IN SOME CASES LYRICA WITHDRAWAL CAN KILL YOU. I'm lucky mine didn't.

And, think my Doc's a hard-a$$? No, he's just trying to be a good Doc and NOT AN ENABLER. Well, okay, the guy can be a hard-a$$, when all the cards are on the proverbial table and the symbolic chips are down; he has to be. And he's put me in my place a few times, right 'n' proper, and will brook no interference on my part; he treats me with respect but lets me know I had damn well better toe the line. He expects and deserves my respect in return. Under that gentle exterior is an Alpha Male. But usually he's soft-spoken and masterful.

And he is an excellent and very avidly sought-after rheumatologist and I'm lucky to have him! I'm just fearful that he's going to work himself unto a heart-attack. Another "Type A" personality. LIKE ME, except presently I'm not in a position of social leadership and authority. YET.

And so, he said the trouble is that I have not one but THREE legitimate medical reasons to take a moderate dose of Lyrica, and it would be extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, to find several substitutes that'd go together and do the job.

"So," says he, "you MUST learn to control that compulsion with Lyrica. The dose I'm prescribing, if followed closely, will resolve your medical issues without fostering a hard-core addiction."

In short, he knows I have a habit and craving for pregabalin specifically, but he expects me to master it. He's right: I must. I tell him how tough it is, and though he is generally a very empathic and sympathetic gent, he looks at me steely-eyed and says shortly,"I don't care. You're causing me no end of pain with your antics. If you don't get a grip on this, I'm going to have no choice but to cut you off! ARE WE CLEAR???" He rarely gets angry but I'd managed to make him absolutely furious. His hands were shaking. I felt awful; I kept apologizing and thinking he was going to have his heart-attack any moment.

Later, when he calmed down, I timidly joked, "Pregabalin-Gate!" He was still simmering but said with cool acknowledgement of my silly sense of humor, "Hmmmm," glancing at me out the corner of his eye as he entered data on my computer file, which the hospital requires him to do. At that time I started being afraid that when he finally had his massive coronary, it'd be ALL MY FAULT. Me and my precious LYRICA!!!! And not to be selfish here, but if something (Heaven forbid it!) DOES happen to my Doc, I might well be left high-and-dry, and if I cannot get Lyrica anywhere, it will be, not to put too fine a point on it, THE END OF THE WORLD. So, I know the feeling. I've been left high-and-dry before; it can happen to any of us.

As for the narcotic Hydrocodone, he tells me that some of his patients had become addicted to it from other doctors, and so he had to wean them off of it. Patients with severe chronic pain, however, including me, sometimes needed to remain on lower doses of narcotics if other meds didn't work or were contraindicated. In my case, I'm allergic to NSAIDs and many other pain treatments have had devastating side-effects, as I mentioned.

And, in my case, it also turned out that I'm NOT addicted to any narcotic, because of a limited tolerance inherited from both parents as a rare recessive gene; after all, on his cancer deathbed, my Dad ripped out his morphine pump; Mom on her own cancer deathbed refused morphine; they both hated it so much because the side-effects after a few days were agonizing.

It's NOT an allergy, just some kind of nervous-system glitch. We even have weird responses to our own endorphins, the body's natural opioids! Me, I can make some use of narcotics, but only in a limited sense or I will experience severe vomiting and other very unpleasant side-effects.

Even so, for all I know, if my Doc wasn't so very careful with it, I might have been hooked on narcotics by now anyway. So I'm grateful to him for taking a firm stand on that to prevent that from happening; AND being equally firm with the Lyrica: he knows what he's doing. I just need to work WITH him. I have a therapist I see. She's in the loop too. It's an ongoing process.

I now have a pill container/organizer that will help me to plan out my Lyrica doses each day of each month so that I do not run smack into this horrific and painful situation ever again...of course, because I had to use it to help keep my Lyrica withdrawal from killing me outright, I'm almost out of the Hydrocodone, which usually I'd have doled out to myself a little bit at a time, as my rheumatologist prescribes it to be used a little bit at a time if my pain levels really spike. But with Lyrica back, that won't matter as much. Some of my arthritis pain is not controlled by the Lyrica, so I will probably be a bit more stiff & creaky for awhile. But oh, having Lyrica back is Heaven.

My Mom had RA so I wasn't all that surprised when it started in on my hands and knees. I can't even bend some of my fingers at all any more. It's very weird not to be able to bend my fingers; the joints are starting to twist sideways! My fingers that won't bend have huge nobbly joints and are not straight any more. They bend in ways fingers were not intended to bend. My feet are doing it too, they don't even look like real feet any more; they're too deformed for most shoes, and I cannot afford the orthopedic shoes I need. My knees are developing big joints that look like a Cyborg monster or something. I watch them all change with a quiet horror.

I'm violently allergic (anaphylactic) to NSAIDs, much to my frequent extreme frustration! So, I'll kind of miss the hydrocodone, but my Doc has to be strict about it, understandably; he will prescribe a little bit more of them next month and since I will not be running out of Lyrica again (NO WAY!!!) I won't need to use the narcotic as a substitute for it...I'll be able to just take the pills occasionally, when pain literally forms an obstacle to getting anything done! For now, I'm setting aside the few narcotic pills I have left. I have my precious Lyrica (pregabalin) back, and that's what counts, and wow, Lyrica is an incredibly powerful drug.

Unlike Lyrica, I am accustomed to going most of the month without Hydrocodone; technically, THAT drug is considered MORE addictive than even Lyrica, so my Doc wants to be absolutely certain he does not ever prescribe enough of it to foster any kind of a habit. The dose of Hydrocodone is way too low and the allotted supply way too small to support a habit. He's smart to do that.

Better off that way, I say. The Lyrica situation's bad enough to deal with; I truly do NOT need THAT on top of it, or even BECAUSE of it! So I comply. I mean, I comply with the narcotic rules he has; it makes sense; he's a doctor, not an enabler. But, ohhhhh, boy, things are so different with the Lyrica: it took me months and months to finally accept that I had acquired a Lyrica HABIT. Admitting it was devastating. But it was necessary. I had an Intervention staged by my friends. I had to admit to it last year, now my Doc is working with me to get my Lyrica addiction under control.

Lyrica Withdrawal: Drenched in sweat, shivering uncontrollably, vomiting, weeping, hallucinating, gasping for breath, staggering from one room to the next, barely sleeping, even suffering sudden and dangerously violent convulsive seizures! Pregabalin withdrawal is beyond HELL! I just lived through 8 days of it and then I scored and fixed (legally: I went to the pharmacy & got my Lyrica and took some) and I just woke up from about 4 hours of Lyrica-induced heavy sleep. But the RELIEF! While I was in Withdrawal I don't think I had any Delta-wave sleep at all, which is very wearing and exhausting. If I hadn't had the Hydrocodone to alleviate some of it, I wouldn't have slept at all. As it was it was an abominable ordeal I do NOT wish to repeat.

If you end up being switched from Methodone to Lyrica, be aware that Lyrica is very effective for nerve pain; BUT it is also very, very habit-forming.

Be certain that WHATEVER drug you are prescribed by your new doctor, you are going to a legitimate clinic that will not suddenly close its doors and leave you painfully & dangerously high & dry! Good Luck!

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Very interesting biography, it only leaves me wondering how you! typed so much with gnarled fingers as you so eloquently described. I love my lyrica also but had no idea it was so dangerous to go without it. Thank you sincerely!!

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Did you know that Dr.V is back in business.I don't use him but they did call trying to get me to come back,unless this is again that he's closes.

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were you seeing dr stevens in daphne? seems he has closed too

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Hey Verwon, your brilliant!! I've been on methadone for over 2o years from gunshot wound threw my neck. In 1992. I was on 80 mg per day and my Dr was limited to class 4 narcotics only by DEA two days before my monthly script was to be filled. I was instantly horrified! She prescribed me suboxane but I'm not a drug abuser. I need a Dr. in SEATTLE Everett or Marysville Wash. area. I'm going to do as you stated. Thanks guys, I'm in a very big bind.

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13

Try your hospital records, a consult with a doc who treated you there. That might help and I'm sure they have Anesthesiologists who are trained in Pain Management. It is illegal for a practice or practitioner to close and NOT give you as chance to get your records (or copies). Were your scripts filled in local pharmacies? They're YOUR records, too and most pharmacists will print them out for you. They're proof of a sort.

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14

Do you mean Dr. VandeCar from Tampa Pain Clinic??

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Well said, both of you. Find an EXPERIENCED social worker (MW) ay your local hospital and explain your dilemma. Yes, you're right this clown was SHUT DOWN by the state and federal CS folks. However, even though patient records ARE evidence, see (ask the Social Worker) if you can get A COPY of yours. Good bless all three of you and the best of luck!

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This is really beyond terrible!! Did you get help finally? I wish you the best!

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17

dr. Muhammad Ali in Alabama just west of Cullman Alabama I can't remember the city's name

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Just moved to Nashville, Tennessee from Anchrage, Ak...Need pain medication from Doctor or Pain Management clinic.

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Just go to where ur tests like MRI xray etc was done...any doc can look up any prescriptions u were on...I don't understand why this is a problem?

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Not to defend or justify how the message was done, but for someone to question or is as bad as the Doctors and Government that has interfered and ruined people's lives. I can make a message as long as that or longer, but I don't type I use my voice and to dictate my messages.....technology works if you know how to use it.

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Omg I'm so very sorry Google Methodone clinics in your area. Tell them you are withdrawing off of Methodone because they shut down. They will do walk ins that day. I can't believe this . This is horrible. I would get a lawyer as well.

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Re: renee (# 7) Expand Referenced Message

Hi I just seen your post about 2 Dr's that could help this lady with her pain. I know it's been a lot of years since your post. I also lost my Dr 2021 (appr.) Who gave me a script for Benzos. I found another Dr but he transfered back to Fla. It's been hard I have been taking them for over 6 years. Can you recommend anyone in Rome Ga Area

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Re: Tori (# 19) Expand Referenced Message

Most doctors don’t like to take over people who are already on these meds without getting records because they assume that y’all did something wrong and got kicked out of your clinic. But in the situation they can see in the prescription drug monitoring system who gave you the medication they can probably easily see that that place is closed down. I ran into the same problem when my psychiatrist office got Covid and they weren’t answering the phone, I couldn’t get my PCP to refill my medication even though he’s known me for years he knows I’m on it, it’s in my medical records, he wouldn’t do it unless I could get my records from them and I couldn’t get my records from them because they were closed because someone died of Covid. It’s absolute BS and they wonder why people resort to street drugs.

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Re: Pregabalin Goblin (# 8) Expand Referenced Message

Oh I thought you were recommending Lyrica and I was coming to the comments to say my god don’t do that the withdrawals are worse than opiate withdrawals, but then I see you covered that in your comment. Gabapentin, withdrawals worse than opiate withdrawals, they take like a month it’s terrible. Plus this medication’s never helped my pain they just made me feel drunk. I don’t want to feel drunk

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Re: david (# 3) Expand Referenced Message

No, chronic pain patients can’t go to a methadone clinic. If they do they’ll never get paint treatment again because it will look like they’re a drug addict. I don’t know if it’s all states, but the state I live in doctors are not allowed to prescribe addictive medication to drug addicts. It’s illegal.

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Re: Elle (# 18) Expand Referenced Message

I live very close to Nashville and go to a pain clinic there. I'm also an RN who works in a clinic. We don't dispense the medicines here; however, patients get scripts. Sometimes he only prescribes one day at a time until the patient shows they can properly handle more medication. And we have callbacks for the patients who do get more than just one day's worth.

Anyhow I know it's been a year or so since u typed this so if u need help still or need an understanding non-judgemental friend, please let me know. Anyone in this chat can write me back. I just want to help, or be a friend if that's what you are looking for. Chronic pain warriors need to stick together. As well as addicts. I'm not just a nurse who takes methadone, but a supporter. I'll help anyone who asks. Hope to hear from you. Take care.

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Re: mrnono68 (# 4) Expand Referenced Message

Where do you 2 live? Posting what town you're in may be able to help. That sucks!!!

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