At 86 why wouldn’t you take painkillers?

Good luck with your op and the gym, @justasking111you sound great!

Had my first hip done in October. The medical advice was take the painkillers at the right time. Stay ahead of the pain because you must keep moving if you want to walk again, don't want blood clots in your legs, lungs, heart. So I did, kept moving every hour, did the exercises to rebuild muscle.

Once second hip is well behind me am going to join sons gym to do strength training.

Use it or lose it

Sounds like my MIL, we had lots of sympathy for her pain until we discovered she’d been prescribed basic paracetamol by the GP and hadn’t taken a single one. Kind of hard to take it seriously after that.

OH brownies definitely.

My MIL is the same, I've seen her in terrible pain but she insists that any more than half a paracetamol 'knocks her out' and refuses to touch anti inflammatories.

She's quite happy to take a bunch of weird snake oil supplements she's bought in Holland And Barrett though.

Weirdly out of the blue GP surgery contact me for blood tests re kidneys, liver because I'm on painkillers , the gabapentin and cocodamol supplied by them. I said look I take 200 mg of gabapentin a day. Two cocodamol pills. They still tested.

I haven't seen a GP face to face for two years bar a chest infection so someone had to listen to my chest. I haven't had an asthma review for five years. They totally missed two arthritic hips. It's your age (scream). Thanks god for keeping up private healthcare.

@genandtonic she won't change, don't answer every call. It does bloody hurt believe me. But she's left it too late for any surgery.

My friend uses cannabis, so make her some brownies.

It’s a bit like the women who think they are superior because they didn’t have pain relief in childbirth - err well done you! Op only you know her personality and whether she thinks she is superior or she’s a martyr but with regard to the moaning I’d step out of saying take painkillers and move into the “that sounds difficult, what are you going to do about that ?”.

My MiL is a bit like this (on a much milder scale thank Hod, but I am pretty aure she sees taking medication is a sign of weakness, and ahe does love having something (often self-inflicted) to moan about - in any sphere of life: used to be how hard it was to hand weed her field 😲 (she did not have to hand weed her field 😂)

Irony is her Mum was just the same, and MiL used to be so scornful about it!

With your MiL OP, as pps, when she phones put it right back to her. "Oh oh my hands hurt so much!'" "Oh dear, poor you. What do you think I can do about it?" (Phrased sincerely as a question, not a dismissal, I mean)

My mum is the same. She takes half a paracetamol if shes in pain, as she thinks she is ‘small’. (Shes average size for an adult female get age)

it’s definitely a generational thing.

I empathise with you, similar symptoms plus back fractures from Osteoporosis, two replacement hips within a year.
Every day I take four paracetamol to ease the pain. I understand the maximum dose is eight.
I hate taking painkillers too, don’t like the idea of unwanted side effects.
Those on here citing control issues are talking without experience. They just may feel the same themselves one day. The level of criticism & uncaring is astounding.

It sounds like the doctors arent doing their job properly. I feel really sorry for the poor woman. It's awful.

But are you 86? She’s already lived past the average life span and is in constant pain. She doesn’t need to worry about masking an injury, she’s not thinking of taking up a new sport or going back to work 😂

I also don’t like to take painkillers… do you mean anti inflams like ibuprofen?? I’d never take codeine or similar unless it was an absolute last resort. I will take ibuprofen but I’m very aware they aren’t good for your stomach or your kidneys. They also mask the source of pain so if it’s an injury for example I think it’s a risk to not know ‘where you are’ in terms of recovery for example if you can’t feel which movements are worse or preferable. I wouldn’t take them everyday. And I’d always rather take paracetamol first to see if that helps.

My MIL is like this with all medication and I've never understood why. Why would you stay in discomfort and pain when bog standard drugs would solve the problem.

She doesn't have to pay either so it's not money, more like it's an article of faith whereas I'm of the take a paracetamol/anti acid and be comfortable.

Don’t answer the phone. I honestly wouldn’t. What is she talking about side effects? Honestly at 86 and in agony wouldn’t you hope the side effect is that you drifted off peacefully and never woke up? Crazy, and telling you about it doesn’t actually help her does it? Or contact the GP with your concerns, she might be one if these that if the doctor told her to take them then she would but no way in hell would I be answering the phone to someone that was going to cry to me about something they can actually stop. She needs some fentanyl patches from the pan clinic and screw the side effects.

With stenosis spine and arthritis in both hips I do take painkillers. They do take the edge off the pain. But I've learnt that ibuprofen in the morning and cocodamol at night suffice. Keeping moving is the best thing once you've taken a med in the morning. OH and getting new hips. One down one to go.

I did take more at the start but it doesn't work any better and the side effects aren't great.

If you’ve tried kindness and explaining it, then I would just not answer the phone. People do have to at least try to help themselves.

My parents are like this. Sorry if this sounds harsh but it’s up to them, I think it’s madness, but as I say if they want to sit there in pain up to them, they get pretty much zero sympathy from me. It annoys me when people won’t help themselves and do something so easy and then continue to moan!

Not recommending this at all but back in the 90s we lived with dgm who was in poor health. Refused medications and was up screaming and crying at night. Dm was her carer and i remember she started making ‘strawberry porridge’ each evening for ‘supper’ for her. Turned out it was Calpol laced to make her sleep due to the refusal to take painkillers and DM being exhausted 😱

@Purplecatshopaholic I also wondered if attention is a factor here.

Christ, at 86 if I need painkillers, I’ll be gnawing on lumps of morphine washed down with champagne if I need to (joke people - I don’t even know if morphine comes in lumps!) Seriously though, if she has capacity and won’t take paracetamol or ibuprofen or whatever, then what is phoning you crying going to achieve? (Apart from attention, maybe another thread..) I would (relatively gently) be saying exactly that to her frankly..

That's the fault of her doctor there isn't it?

I don't understand this attitude with medication for an 83-year-old. It's ridiculous. She should be allowed to stay on them.

If she won’t take painkillers what are the chances she’ll take biologics?? Plus she’s the generation that probably got steroids & gold injections so the side effects were bad.

Leave it to the gp to sort. It’s not your job.

Ime gp access in homes is quick the staff are always on the phone to them and they visit once a week.

I have a relative the same- in terrible pain but only takes paracetamol because they don’t like taking pills.
And yet their pain is the main topic of conversation….

My mum is prescribed codeine which works for her back pain. The doctor is weaning her off them as they can be addictive. She is 83 years old! So now she is trying to make herself stop taking them and in a lot of pain in the process!
Ridiculous.