Pain-Medication Free

Woody wrote the following for the blog tonight:

Upon leaving Vanderbilt, I was in quite a bit of pain. The peach-size tumor on my left shoulder blade was causing considerable discomfort. Dr. Sosman had me taking Percoset and Oxycodone, but they didn't help much. I was still working and couldn't take the medicine half the time because I needed to drive.

When they needed to remove a second tumor (because they were unsuccessful in growing cells from the first one), I begged them to take the one on my shoulder blade instead of one under my arm. They finally agreed, However, after the surgery the pain was still there. When I returned about six weeks later to undergo the protocol, a nurse noticed that I was in pain. She called in the Pain Team. The Pain Team switched me to Neurontin--and the pain went away.

Early on I switched from taking two Neurontins a day to one. At my last appointment at NIH, my doctor said that it's been a year now--see if you can't cut back and maybe get off the Neurontin altogether. It's going on three months now and I can not only say that I'm pain free but also that I'm pain-medication free.