[Cerek]

Pain medication is a wonderful thing. I had an Rx for Percocet this past summer for my health problems and received Dilaudid a couple of times when the pain was bad enough for an E.R. visit. It's hard to describe just how good it feels to have that warm, soothing feeling spread through your body and simply erase the pain you've been feeling constantly for so long.

Of course, that is the danger of pain meds as well. I can see how easy it would be to become addicted to them. I would look forward to the Dilaudid because it not only took the pain away, it made me feel flushed and warm all over - a very blissful feeling after several hours of constant pain.

Having lived with chronic pain myself, I've learned the best course is to aim for pain management, rather than pain elimination. It's great if you can eliminate the pain completely, but if it is too persistent and pervasive, then getting it down to a dull ache is often relief enough.

Also, the narcotics simply won't have that same blissful effect if you are NOT at that higher level of pain. Yeah, it might still give that warm, flushed feeling a little bit, but the effect is minimized when the pain isn't at that higher level, because the BEST part is having that level of pain eliminated. The warm, fuzzy glow is just a bonus.

Because of my Crohn's, I simply cannot take ordinary pain killers like Ibuprofen, because they actually aggravate my symptoms, so I ended up taking Percocet for relatively minor pains. Not because I was addicted, but because I didn't have anything else I could take. It was definitely overkill and, since my pain was much lower to begin with, I didn't get the same feeling of relief. Fortunately, my doc prescribed Tramadol, which is a lower-level pain medication and it worked great.

Dan - I hope you also find an effective treatment for the pain that doesn't run the risk of addiction.