Absolute said:
Can't really say, honestly. Exihibited and answered truthfully about the pain I was in and that is what they did. Personally, these are the only times I have had morphine and I don't like it much at all. Feels really icky. But it does work. Don't mind but don't particularly like typical Norco or such that I have had from surgeries and stuff, but will use it when it is appropriate.
Sarcastic thought for medicine today would be that the er want to do stuff to charge your insurance, shut you up and send you home ASAP to have room. Which isn't entirely their fault, I suppose. Neither of my experiences in this past week were particular inspiring about the system. But I am admittedly still in a really ****ty mode from not feeling great.
When it happened a decade ago, they did not prescribe any narcotics and did just recommend otc nsaids. This time they did prescribe a small amount of narcotics and recommend nsaids for inflammation.
Not sure what the best most appropriate answer is. These stones are such a random and unpredictable thing. They have no clue how fast they are going to move. The ones I had last time sent me in one time and then never really hurt again even when passing. This one sent me in when it left the kidney and again as it neared the bladder. I had narcotics from them, but wasn't taking them until it was too late.
Morphine has less addiction potential than oxycodone/hydrocodone (Percocet/Norco) because it relieve pain but doesn't give as much euphoria. So that is becoming a bit more of the standard medication for ER docs to give. Lots of surgeons and inpatient doctors are still giving the oxy/hydrocodone.
I can tell you for a fact, that every ER I have ever been in, the ER doc doesn't work for the hospital. He/she doesn't care at all about charging your insurance as much as possible by doing unnecessary tests/imaging. He/she doesn't want to miss a potentially life altering diagnosis and get sued later. So they do sometimes order tests that are unlikely to show the diagnosis, but are useful in ruling out potentially lethal causes of pain otherwise.
I know one old school doc that never scans for kidney stones if the urine is bloody, and the patient looks like they have a stone. I know one younger one that always scans, even if the patient had a prior stone but it's been over a year since the last scan. Because there are diagnoses that can mimic a kidney stone that are seriously life threatening.
What meds you get is determined by how much pain the ER doc thinks you're in, the state you're in, how nice/concierge of a hospital you're at, and what they think will be necessary to keep you from coming back to the ER. Believe it or not, ER docs don't like patients coming back for the same thing. One if the indications for admission to the hospital for a kidney stone is uncontrolled pain. As such, if they can't get your pain under control with NSAIDs, and tylenol, they'll give opioids. Another indication is uncontrolled vomiting. So they'll often prescribe anti-emetics even if you don't have nausea/vomiting yet.
