Getting off of Fentanyl...

[Guest guest]

This may not be the perfect forum for this, but I need some advice so bear with

me. My 85 year old mother has been going through hell since August. Yes, she

has some RA, but the main issue has been what I believe is post herpetic

neuralgia -- aka, pain after shingles (which was undiagnosed at the time of the

quickly passing rash)

In short, the pain seems to be appeased by elavil, but before we started that,

in the meantime she had eventually been on fentanyl 100mcgs for 3 months. Pain

has gone from pure hell (for more than 2 months straight) to fine now, at least

after the elavil started. So now we are trying to get her off the fentanyl bit

by bit and see how it goes.

We went from 100mcg to 75mcgs about a week ago. She has been feeling sick again

since then, to my/our great despair. The pain itself has NOT come back, but she

is experiencing great loss of appetite, chills, nausea, weakness.

It seems that this is what withdrawal is like??...do you out there agree? At the

onset of original problem in august, she was in a top hospital for a week, had

every test in creation done including some 2x, nothing wrong found, no

definitive diagnosis. I am the one who suggested PHN a month later, I am the one

who recommended Elavil and Valtrex (thanks to help in other forums) (doctors

went along with it as they had no better ideas...)..again, pain problem is okay

right now. But these other symptoms are causing great anxiety.

Any better advice for lowering fentanyl? Is there more we can be doing? Is this

the normal course for getting off this drug???

Thank you,

Vicky