Hello all, I posted a while back about my Dads ongoing battle with Advanced Prostate Cancer.
I have a quick question relating to pain relief dosage. We are getting rather confused with it all at the moment. Dads care is being dealt with between the oncologist (other than HT, all other active treatment has been put on hold as he is so weak at the moment) the GP and the local hospice team, He also saw a neurologist recently for sciatic type pain. They have all been playing around with his medication to try and get the balance between satisfactory pain relief and minimizing his 'dozziness'
To cut a long story short after a recent stay in hospital. as a result of an infection, some of his medication cocktail was stopped (Diazepam and Amytripiline to name two) and his current daily medication is 80 mg Oxycodone (he also has the liquid form for breakthrough pain but he does rely on this 10 ml four hourly) dexamethasone 5 mg daily (steroid prescribed by the oncologist), Gabapentin 500 mg daily (as recommended by the neurologist for nerve pain), also something to protect the stomach, that I cannot remember the name of and paracetamol in between.
Our confusion is this: We see one person, perhaps the Oncologist who looks at the medication and says, 'Hmm. that's rather a high daily dose, we will have to monitor this' Then we see, for example the hospice nurse, who will increase the dosage to combat an increase in pain and when we query it, as a result of the previous comments made, they say, ' Not high at all, everyone is different when it comes to pain relief'
It doesn't help that it would seem, reading between the lines, that the hospice team do not seem to have a very high opinion of the hospital team and vice versa.
Obviously we put our faith and trust in 'The Experts' but at the end of the day Dad still has pain and we are totally confused by it all and what to do for the best.
What experience do others have with this? Are these daily doses high or not?