From Oxycodone to Morphine

Oxy didn't last long. Wednesday at noon Mary ate some lunch prepared by Ingrid. The rest of the day was a total wipe out including several rounds of vomiting--that were basically dry heaves after the first episode. Mary had a miserable night and at 6AM I told her she was not taking the next Oxy pill. Rather, if she had pain I would put her back on the liquid morphine. She has had four doses of Morphine today, has eaten some food and held it down and is feeling pretty weak overall but better than yesterday.

Talking to Stanford, we are switching the fentanyl patch to MS Contin. It takes three days for the conversion, slowly increasing the MS Contin will the fentanyl falls away. By Sunday evening, she will be totally on MS Contin instead of fentanyl and she can use the liquid morphine for breakthrough pain. We shall see how this works.

Tomorrow Mary sees her surgeon for a general follow up visit. As Ingrid said tonight, "Make sure you tell him how the oncology folks appear to be screwing up his fine work of the surgery." I will also explore the nerve damage theory from the pain doctor versus the compressed vertebrae theory from the oncology folks. And, the use of narcotics versus neurontin. I am amazed reading web info on the various narcotics and people report virtually no functional impact from taking the same drugs Mary is on. She is, as I have written before, living in a narcotics cloud while other folks can go to work, do regular stuff (shopping, movies, dinners, etc.) and I consider it a victory if I can get Mary to have dinner at the dining room table instead of on a bed tray.

Time for bed. I have a 6AM meeting in the office. Its one of those Asia-Europe-USA video meetings and trying to make it work around the globe can be a challenge. Pajama meetings they tend to be called because someone on the call is in their pj's at home--you can always tell, their video connection 'never' works for some reason.

Ingrid will come over early and help Mary through her morning routine. At that point, either Ingrid or MaryR will deliver Mary to Stanford. My 6AM will finish at 10:30AM and I will connect with Mary at Stanford shortly after that.