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Stage 4 bowel cancer

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SalShep

Bone Met Pain

Hi all

Does anyone with experience of bone mets have any recommendations for pain relief please? We found out, purely by chance from the hospice dr as his oncologist didn't bothet to tell us, that Mark has mets in his ribs now which are causing a burning/searing pain. We are a little stuck for options as he's allergic to morphine and on the 2 occasions he's taken oxycodone, he's ended up in hospital with horrendous bowel spasms and blockages so he's not taking that again! He does have fentanyl patches that he tolerates pretty well but they just don't seem to hit the spot. All treatment was stopped at the end of October so he's just on palliative care with our hospice now. They're struggling though, and a last resort option they've touched on briefly is methadone.

Thanks

sare

Dear @SalShep , along with oxycodone (which I know he can’t have) for my hip bone mets pain I use two Lidocaine 5% patches. The ones I am prescribed are called Ralvo 700mg medicated plasters.
I place them on the painful part of my hip at night and they may be left on for 12 hours. I wasn’t expecting them to work because I imagined they would only numb the skin but they do seem to help.
I hope they can get his pain under control very quickly, must be so difficult for you both, best wishes Sarah

SalShep
Quote from @sare:
Dear @SalShep , along with oxycodone (which I know he can’t have) for my hip bone mets pain I use two Lidocaine 5% patches. The ones I am prescribed are called Ralvo 700mg medicated plasters.
I place them on the painful part of my hip at night and they may be left on for 12 hours. I wasn’t expecting them to work because I imagined they would only numb the skin but they do seem to help.
I hope they can get his pain under control very quickly, must be so difficult for you both, best wishes Sarah

That's really interesting, I've never heard of Lidocaine. Certainly something I'll mention to the hospice dr when she calls. Thank you very much, take care.

clarey

@SalShep Have they considered increasing his patch ? Also paracetamol is under rated, when taken regular its great and naproxen. I have both of these and fentanyl patch two patches 37.5 and 25mg :x:

SalShep
Quote from @clarey:
@SalShep Have they considered increasing his patch ? Also paracetamol is under rated, when taken regular its great and naproxen. I have both of these and fentanyl patch two patches 37.5 and 25mg

He's currently on a 50mg patch plus a 12mg that we've just added in so we'll see how that goes. I agreed completely about paracetamol, he does take that and ibuprofen regularly alongside pregabalin (for nerve pain) and mebeverine (for bowel spasms). He's also currently taking lorazapam and amitriptyline. He's got a real concoction going on which doesn't make it easy to know what's doing what 🤷‍♀️