Zeke
Est. Contributor
- Messages
- 2,082
- Role
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- Diaper Lover
- Incontinent
In September I took a random urine drug test as a normal part of my pain management’s SOP. It came back positive for hydrocodone when they’re not prescribing me hydrocodone, only 15 mg morphine sulfate ER, and 30 mg codeine. They advised me of the positive test and said that if it occurred again they would quit prescribing my meds. I explained that I hadn’t taken hydrocodone since I was last prescribed it over 6 years prior and that I don’t like and that codeine actually works better for me. So I knew that I had another test coming in December and that one showed positive for hydrocodone as well. They told me that they were going to start weaning me off the morphine and stopped the codeine altogether despite my protests of never having taken hydrocodone. I was PO’ed and was seriously considering litigation against them, especially after I read a published paper on how codeine can metabolize into hydrocodone in a percentage of the population, something that you would expect a pain management clinic to know. I had suspicions of this as I had some knowledge of how various substances change when the human body metabolizes and expels them from when I had tutored biochem students for my university’s chemistry department. So I paid $148 for a hair sample test in early January and the results showed positive for hydrocodone again. Their medical resource officer, an experienced pain management doctor, called me to discuss their results and I asked him about codeine metabolizing into hydrocodone. He said that he would research it and get back to me the next day. He called and said that I was right and that he was taking off the indication of hydrocodone from their results. After this I called the clinic that had suspended my prescriptions and told them of this and that this testing facility was certified for forensics for the legal system, but they refused to reconsider their actions. So I went to the pain management clinic that had performed my radio frequency ablation last summer and explained everything that I had just recounted above. They said that they recently had a female patient to whom they had prescribed codeine test positive for hydrocodone and were thankful that I showed them my results and research. They took a urine sample and the test just showed positive for morphine only which was fine as I had stretched out my last prescription to last for a week after this appointment and it was all I was taking. This was 2 supposedly highly qualified, highly specialized clinics dealing exclusively with pain management and they knew nothing of the possibility of codeine metabolizing into hydrocodone! The huge difference was that the later was willing to learn and adjust their policy while the former was so afraid of the government’s anti-opioid policies, and draconian enforcement measures, that they were frozen to their old beliefs and procedures. My pharmacy texted me this morning telling me that my prescriptions, morphine, codeine, and Narcan, were ready. I wanted the Narcan on hand just in case there’s ever a problem. This was timely for me, and I was quite thankful, as I had taken my last morphine tab Sunday evening. My dad was right again, persistence is called for when you know that you’re correct about something no matter how many times they tell you you’re wrong!
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