More Meds

Satomi had more headaches last night.  It could have been due to her pulling off the patch so I waited to see how this morning went. 

It was obvious fairly early that her back was very painful.  The idea of backaches when there’s a morphine patch on her back is just inconceivable.  She also had combination neck and headaches.  Before I left for work I gave her an extra partial dose of Oxycodone and Ativan.

While I was at work today, I was told that she squirmed around all over the bed to find a comfortable position.  It’s been weeks since she’s been in that kind of pain.  It’s obviously worse than last week.

Her existing patch was suppose to last until tomorrow night.  To have this level of pain and still have good Fentanyl potency tells me to add another 25mcg/hr patch.  It’s really disturbing.  I added the new patch and changed the old patch at noon today.

The new patches would take over 12 hours to be absorbed so I gave her an extra partial dose of Oxycodone and Ativan afterward.  She slept most of the afternoon.

I looked back at her pain killer information and was surprised to see that this increase follows the growth schedule from the past few weeks.  Her total equivalent morphine at this moment is approximately 300mg/day up from about 200mg/day.

It’s dinner time now and I’m watching her closely.  She ate most of her dinner but she’s still very drowsy and slow.  I transferred her to the wheelchair to eat and she was a bit more unstable than normal.  She’s afraid that she may barf so she’s sitting upright there for a few extra minutes.

These next couple of days will take close monitoring.