I learned the ibuprofen + acetaminophen trick from my mom who used be hospital lab tech. And honestly ibuprofen did a better job my kidney stone pain than the vicodin a few months ago.
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Yeah, I hadn’t heard of this combo before. What I learned is, it’s generally safe, because the two drugs act on such radically different systems (ibuprofen body, acetaminophen brain, I guess?) I mean don’t be drinking booze while on this, but that’s basically true for acetaminophen in general.
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That is because it does a number on your liver being processed by the body. It can kill you if you take enough.
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And ibuprofen + alcohol, even without acetaminophen, is a bad idea. It accelerates ibuprofen’s ability to wear away the stomach lining, which though it can regenerate, can lead to ulcers. As can just using ibuprofen too much.
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I’ve heard in a lot of other countries it’s not over-the-counter because of this.
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Arthur Sackler was an interesting guy, who made many serious and valuable contributions to medicine, and whose philanthropy was heartfelt and not simply self-serving. He also pioneered new paradigms of promotion and advertising in the pharmaceutical industry, leading to many of the worst excesses of the modern industry.
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So… a patient shows up and states they are in 9/10 pain, and can’t possibly continue to function without relief. The physician prescribes a pain medication that leaves the patient mostly asleep, but when awoken, the patient insists they have received no relief at all.
-Should the physician prescribe the person a potentially harmful narcotic?
-Should the physician refuse to give the person more pain medicine?
-Does the patient having filled 3 narcotic prescriptions that week change the calculus?
-Does the patient’s history of a current medical problem known to cause pain change the calculus?
-Shoud the physician be accused of malpractice for failing to make their pain 0/10? -Should the physician be accused of malpractice for giving the patient access to addictive and dangerous pain medicines?
If the opiod problem in American were as clear cut as we want it to be, these questions would have simple answers. There are a variety of causes to the epidemic. Pharma, Medicine, nursing, hospital systems, hcap scores, dishonesty, greed… The list is long, and many of the factors double back on each other to worsen the problem.
Another legal drug cartel bites the dust…maybe.
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Being wealthy means being above the law, so I’ll believe the Sacklers getting punished when it happens. (Spoiler: If it does, it’ll be all wrist slaps.)
And if what they did was so bad, well, there’s the FDA that approved the drugs and, more, doctors who mis- and overly prescribed them.
Ibuprofen is like magic for kidney stones. I had a stone in the USA that had me puking and writhing on the emergency room floor. A couple minutes after getting an IV of the stuff, the pain was gone. Pills worked just as well until it passed.
On a second bout in China, I knew what to hunt for. My colleagues thought I was bonkers to just want a particular OTC med and not go to the hospital. Except for the brother of one of the top nephrologists in the country who gave him the exact same advice for his stones.
You may already know this, but once you get stones, you are probably going to get them again and again. Lesson learned for me is to carry ibuprofen when I travel.
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Oh, it absolutely is. You are playing with language here and presupposing that every doctor in every situation is engaging in malpractice if she leaves a patient in pain. You cannot fix all of the pain and sometimes the body just needs to heal itself. It is that kind of thinking, where the pain has to be fixed now - no matter the cost - that has brought us into this situation in the first place. Let’s just let the doctors be doctors, OK?
I’m quoting and disagreeing with the blanket assertion by the author - it’s not wrong to assert that treating pain is more than worthwhile.
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Well after the first one not really but I had similar pains/symptoms after but never as bad. Then a few months ago oh it was bad (at least no nausea not that I had much breakfast to toss up at the time) and bad for the whole bus ride to work bad enough I was mostly thinking fuck this hurts rather than just oh that. I dropped off my stuff and walked over to the urgent care that was just a block away.
And guess what I was passing a 4mm stone according to them and hey you got another still hanging out in the kidney. Follow up with the nephrologist she said lithtotripsy vs. letting it pass is a toss up for the pain and suffering so we set a follow up for 6 months or after it passes if sooner.
While the flank pain is bad, knowing what the hell it is and that walking along with the ibuprofen keeps it down on the pain scale. I just wish it would help with the goddamn secondary pain that lets me know when it is time to pee (which you do often as you are drinking 2+ liters of tea/coffee/water/whatever to move things along) for the week or so it takes to pass.
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