Hi,

Due to chronic pain and past opiate/painkiller abuse I am on Suboxone sublingual. The doctors have prescribed liquid hydrocodone post surgery and they know my history. Wondering when you did your pre op taper from Suboxone? For those unfamiliar Suboxone is used in treatment for opiate addiction or withdrawal also a pain reliever. Look it up for more information.

Sort of scared of taking hydrocodone again. Hopefully, I will not need much. Figured, I cannot be the only one with prior non food addiction issues out there. Not certain of how many are on opiate pain RX's anyway prior to surgery. Not that I am asking to know. Just mainly the taper from Suboxone. Thanks

I know this is old but I have been on Suboxone for 10 years now, my pain management dr told me and the surgeon he wants me to continue taking my 4mg of suboxone through surgery and that if the surgeon had any questions about medicating me for pain after my sleeve surgery he would be happy to discuss it with him. I'm not sure if they have spoken yet but have a meeting with the surgeon in about a week and surgery in less than 5 weeks so we shall find out if they have me follow his instructions of continuing to take it or not and if I do how pain control goes. I've heard of other pain patients actually taking percocet for breakthrough pain while on subs so i don't see it having a negative effect but with all the horror stories about precipitated withdrawals when I started taking subs I can't lie im definitely nervous.

I’m a nurse, I was working on an addiction medicine team until late last year. We typically did keep our patients on their suboxone dose post op and treated for pain with short acting full agonist opiates like dilaudid in the immediate post op period.

You may be surprised, some people have little pain post op and probably could make due without pain meds. I woke up on them but asked the nurses to wean me from them and ended up on just Tylenol. The biggest complaint seems to be gas pain and pain meds don’t do anything to help with that anyways. Not everyone has gas pains either (I did not). Hopefully your experience will be similar and you won’t have to worry about it but if not I’m glad your doctors will be making a plan ahead of time and that you are on top of it.

I had my pre op appointment with the surgeon, surgery is Oct 4th so less than 2 weeks away he said he wants me off of them and to take 1 mg less a week... im on 4mg... there is 1 week and 4 days... at most I'll be down to 2mg according to his plan I tried to tell him that about 10 times but he didn't listen. My pain management dr who prescribes them to me said to stay on them, his exacts words were... I would recommend that you continue taking the Suboxone "through" surgery (not stopping it) and then if additional pain control is needed after (which it will be) the team can add some short-acting medications on top. If the surgery team would like to discuss that with me, no problem.

I've messaged him a few times to ask him to talk to him but hes not responding, called asked for his nurse she wasnt there so the receptionist took a very detailed message about my siruation and how urgent it is and they said to expect a call today and no call. I don't want to stop taking it if I'm not supposed to but the surgeon was really against the use of it to treat pain but when my oxys and percs constantly needed to be increased to work I said no more and went on a search for a pain management dr willing to prescribe suboxone off label as pain meds. This dr actually does confrences promoting it being a safer alternative for those people like myself who seldom feel like I need something stronger. Recently I've felt like I've needed more after a car accident hopefully that heals because I'd like to keep taking the subs even tho they have ruined my teeth in the 10 years I've been on them.

I pray my dr comes through on this and speaks with the surgeon because stopping it and feeling sick for a few days before and then again a few days after just sounds miserable to me, that's one less thing to add to my anxiety that hopefully won't have to be. He's only in the office Mondays you bet you butt I'm calling when they open and again every few hours if he doesn't call or message me back.

Edited September 24, 20223 yr by Julia82
Forgot something