August 9 - Part II

Have I mentioned that I have two doctors in my life that I have a total girl crush on? One is my primary doctor, Dr. K because she's on-time for her appointments, talks to me like I'm a real person, pays attention to the details, sincerely seems to care about me as a person, and is simply a sweetheart of a human being. The other doctor is the wife of a guy I went to school with back in the day. She and I ended up becoming Facebook friends a few years ago and through FB messaging, we have made a connection and built a friendship that I truly treasure. You have seen me reference her as Dr. Karen in previous blogs.

I mention this because she has once again given me some peace of mind. I hadn't realized how much the Vicodin dosage thing was bugging me until I received the following e-mail from her this morning. She passed along some great info that I thought other peeps would likely be interested in too so here it is.

First... acetaminophen: the MDD (maximal daily dose) per the PDR and FDA is 4000 mg. This is the hard line/do not cross daily max. BUT... that's like once in a while. When peeps are on the meds chronically we PREFER to limit to around 3000 mg a day so as not to tax the liver continuously. My best advice is to shoot for 3000 but if you go to 4000 that is nbd.

Second.... narcotics. This is all kind of new and different. Effective 8/27/13 NYS is putting into effect something called ISTOP legislation. In order to prescribe ANY controlled substance (which includes narcotics, anxiety meds, sleeping pills, meds for ADD) the PRESCRIBER (aka doctor) has to log onto a state web site, verify if there are other controlled scripts being written for that patient elsewhere and DOCUMENT in the chart that s/he looked this up. If that is done then a 30 day supply can be written. (earlier this year they already changed that there can be NO refills on Vicoden, we used to be able to write for 1 refill and they added other meds to the "controlled" list.) If this is NOT done then the max amount of meds you can write is for 5 days. There are a couple of exceptions but you get the general idea. So... Dr. C is going the easy way and doing the 5 days and making you pick it up. I suspect a lot of people will do this because they don't want to be bothered with the verification.