Primary doc increased gabapentin from 200 mg daily to 900 mg daily! But...

[ODAT]

luckily mom had her review with nephrologist yesterday. He told her that 300 mg daily is the maximum for dialysis patients. Apparently the primary doc didn't know this. We had just picked up the new script so mom only took 900 mg one day before we put it down to 300mg.

The reason the primary increased it is he cannot figure out why mom is getting a pain in her left chest, underarm area. Mom describes it as a sharp stinging. It is not a constant pain. Mom had xrays, a breast exam, and ultrasound all in relation to this pain. Nothing showed.

The increase now is only 100 mg - so total of 300 mg daily. I told mom to watch for sleepiness, diarhhea (which she has bouts of without warning now anyway (?)).

Don't know what would have happened if neph didn't meet with her on Monday.

 

[sullidog]

I can tell these PCP's don't know much about dialysis, but at least mine will check with my neph first before giving me anything.

[lmunchkin]

Yea and you know, it isnt just dialysis patients either.  You really have to be careful with any meds.  One doc will prescribe one thing, then another doc for another thing and so on on, but you better hope and pray, your pharmacist is up on all this!  Mine has caught problems with mine and hubby's prescriptions and it is nothing more than lack of communication and sometimes, ignorance!  We all should be careful of the drugs prescribed for us.

lmunchkin   

[ODAT]

You bring up a good point. The pharmacist could have intervened. Yet, how would he know that mom is on dialysis? I don't think by her med chart. I'm usually up on the meds mom takes, but let that one slip by unfortunately.

She says the med makes her tired. Going to take one close to bedtime to help with that.

[billybags]

Odat why is she taking Gabapentin? My husband had to come off this, he was taking it for restless leg but it made him very drowsy and  he felt nauseous and it did not always work for him. He now sticks to paracetamol. A lot safer bet. I don't know what you call paracetamol in America, is it Tyrol.

[ODAT]

She is taking it for nerve pain. She started on lyrica, then neurontin.  But I was told that gabapentin is neurontin.

I hate when doctors seem to play guessing games when they don't know what's wrong. Nothing was found on xray or ultrasound. They did try to say it was from her fall, but that was a while ago and she never complained about it then.

[billmoria]

ODAT 300 is still a large dose. i take 200   100x 2 times a day and it certainly makes me drosy. so i take one before bed and the other before dialysis!!! and the other in am which makes me sleep longer.

[lmunchkin]

Hey Bill.  Havent heard from you in awhile.  How is everything going with you?

lmunch

[billybags]

Has she been to see  a neurologist? My husband had terrible pains in his flank. He had neurology tests and they found that the nerves were not meeting up in his body, or shall we say the electrodes were not working good. This is also down to being on dialysis. He was offered two ways to go. One was steroids of some kind and another was tablets but the neurologist has not pushed either of these because he knows its the dialysis thing. It all combines, kidneys, heart, nerves. It is a shitty disease. Our GP thought it was a trapped nerve and gave him morphine tablets but they do not touch the pain because it is the electrodes.We have been going round and around with this for months, it has receded a little and now he is putting up with the pain sooner than the pills.