(no subject)

[the_rck]

Well, duh. It just occurred to me that I’ve been taking anaprox at prescription dosage for several weeks now (five or six weeks). I’ve never had this problem with it before, but it’s been at least fifteen years since I last took it for this long.

According to Medline, reflux while taking this medication is a stop medication and call your doctor sort of thing. It being almost 1:00, I decided to email the radiology nurses instead. It’s been about six hours since my last dose, so it’s probably pretty thoroughly absorbed by now. I simply won’t take any in the morning or until my various doctors say that I should.

I’m by no means certain that the medication is the culprit. Reflux is something that happens to me. I’m not feeling terrible, apart from the reflux, and have no other symptoms, so I don’t feel that I should, for example, wake Scott and insist he take me to the ER. My suspicion is that the radiology nurses will need to consult with both my radiologist (who wants me taking some sort of NSAID, mostly for inflammation) and my gastroenterologist. I mean, I could call and talk to the on call radiology resident, but what is he or she going to say? At this time of night, it’s a choice between the ER and waiting for morning.

Comments

[lunabee34]

I'm sorry you are trouble with medication. :( I hope you get it figured out soon.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think most likely they will tell you to switch to some other med instead of Anaprox -- not something that needs the ER, I agree.

*hug*

[the_rck]

I just can't think of what they could suggest. Another NSAID is out for a while at least, until we're sure that my stomach is okay, and I can't take ibuprofen even if another NSAID is okay. That's generally what's recommended, and people look at me like I've grown a second head when I explain why I can't take it. (I'm fine as long as I keep taking it with no breaks. The moment I stop or miss a dose, I crash for at least twenty hours, really and truly crash.)

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

*Why* are doctors so weird when people report unusual reactions??? (Just a rhetorical question -- I am not asking you to answer that!)

Me personally, I react to most pain medication with a reaction that is worse than just toughing it out through the pain, so I usually choose to go medication-free and just live with it, unless it is really really bad. Not a fun choice to have to make though.

**hugs**

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

All the NSAIDS you can take orally irritate the stomach. Aspirin is worse than the others, naproxen is less bad (on average), but they all cause similar problems. There's a less common NSAID called indocin (I think it's rarely used because there are heart risks) that's available as suppository as well as pills. It had horrific psychoactive effects for me, but my [obscenity] of a former neurologist said the long-acting suppository would be safer than the regular pills. In practice, that just made the side effects last longer.

You could also try just using ice to reduce inflammation. Or you could ask the radiologist if they're willing to prescribe a topical cream with an NSAID. You might need to wash it off before each treatment (the one I tried smelled awful), but at least it would be easier on your stomach.

[the_rck]

They don't want me to use ice because of the risk of damage to my skin. That's a huge issue for anything I do during the next couple of months because the radiation is like a prolonged and repeated very bad sunburn. There are a very limited set of products that are considered okay, and that's almost entirely because of how delicate the skin gets in the treated area. They want to prevent tears and peeling and scarring and sores.

As far as interfering with the radiation goes, I'm just not to use anything with aluminum in it and not to use anything at all for at least five hours before treatment, whether I wash it off or not. I think showering within that time frame would be fine, but I don't plan to do it unless I ask my doctor in advance, and she might say not to because of the likelihood of getting shampoo or conditioner on my breast.