Need a Pharmacologist?

[siggy]

I live in the Chicagoland suburbs, but I am willing to travel to Chicago. Can anyone recommend a pharmacologist? I am on many narcotics and muscle relaxers, and have had way too many close calls with overdoses from drug reactions and overmedication. I need a Dr. to trim my list of meds to a few effective ones. I have a cyst (syrinx) C2-C7, have had two unsuccessful surgeries to drain it, and the neuropathic pain is a 10 all of the time. The pain doctors I've been to in the past have not been helpful in eliminating ineffective drugs and/or are in inexperienced with SCI.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

[firesmurf]

is a pharmacologist an actual doc,like you would just make an appt with like any other specialist?i would think just speaking with your actual pharmacist and your doc,or your doc just working with your pharmacist that you would be able to get some results.just what meds are you currently on?what were the nature of those "close calls"?

i am kind of suprised that your regular pain doc hasn't been very helpful with this,maybe you just need a more experienced,knowledgable pain doc?I mean it isn't exactly rocket science for a good pain doc to be able to just tell what is and isn't doing the job or could possibly be reacting together ya know?are all your meds Rxed by just one doc or are you seeing other specialists who are also Rxing?this can sometimes be a problem too.

if you are actually looking for a pharmacologist,perhaps if you called a local university teaching type of hospital you may at least get more info on one.or could actually speak with the head teaching professor of their phamacology program?just some thoughts.hopefully you can find another pain doc who just knows what in the heck they are doing.my pain doc seems to be just fine in recognizing signs and symptoms of useless or reacting meds for me.hope you can find some answers soon.Marcia

[siggy]

My rehab doctor is trying to manage my pain and is doing a very poor job. I am taking fentanyl patches, neurontin, baclofen, valium, reglan, trazadone, paxil, remeron, abilify, lunesta, and dilaudid for breakthrough pain. Yikes. When I asked if we could try something different, he added topomax, but did not tell me to reduce something else. Bad idea.

My experience with pain docs has been not very good, but I'm open to trying someone else.

The pharmacologist is a MD who specializes in pain but is also a doctor in pharmacology. I saw one once, but when I was hospitalized, he wouldn't take me back as a patient.

[razzle51]

just stick with a pain clinic , try another one .

I think they dont have pharmacologists anymore

[firesmurf]

are they treating you for just pain or something else too?i am just wondering about the:trazadone,paxil,remeron and abilify?also the baclofen and valium may be redundant.do you actually need both?also taking neurontin and topomax would be pretty much the same thing,one should most definitely go.you ARE on some pretty strong meds,no wonder you feel like crap.you are right,you DO need someone to really take a good look at all of these meds and remove whatever is not actually working or could be causing some sort of overload.i am wondering to about the trazadone and lunesta.were these both for sleep or was the traz for something else?i am just wondering since my son,who is bi polar III,was once given the trazadone just for sleep,he was suffering from horrid insomnia.marcia