Trazodon

Most medical examiner's are not gonna take the risk if you have an accident, then it comes back on the one that certified you.

 

It isn't the DOT or the examiners, it is now the insurance companies.

I got a note from my underwriters that there may be a change in the near future it will be on the list of drugs which they say they won't cover the drivers who take them.

 

In a way, it is about all 3. As I stated in post #6. I read an article in a trucker type magazine 2 or 3 years ago where the writer was going into the detail of speaking to attorneys about legal liability when it came to fitness to operate all the things regulated by title 49 CFR. Times are changing. The DOT has had its fingers burned several times by Congress as well as losing legal cases in court. One of the reasons the DOT brought this Medical Examiner database into existence was to partly lessen their liability by exposing the MEs to more sharing of it. These MEs then started demanding either further testing ie Sleep Apnea, EKGs etc OR making the driver go back to their private physician and get them to certify you fit in whatever area the ME needs. Of course, Ridgeline is right overall. It is about how insurance carriers/underwriters set rates for liability purposes. I would also add you have not seen the end of this yet.

 

Ive already stood millions of dollars in EKG, nuclear scanning etc something like a 20 wire system when chemically pushed to the redline this month. No worries there. If the blessed DOT or insurance wants to see my whistle clean pipes and iron heart, they are more than welcome.

I was expecting the valves to fail any of the three. Frankly they simply refused to fail. SO there is nothing that needs doing. And the data is very recent and accumulating as I write this. So that's not going to be the problem for the CDL. So thats two problems that don't exist on my end. There is one more we will look into and if that one is not a problem either then there isnt anything that will prevent a long form DOT physical this time next year. Fixed the medicine issue, fixed the heart issue and whats left is hearing and vision. Once that is cleared out there isnt anything that they (Company or Insurance) will find a problem.

 

Good luck in your pursuit of a driving career.
Please do your best to learn how to operate a CMV.
Study and practice are essential. Get as much time behind the wheel as you can. The other thing is to try and not kill people out on the highways.

 

Wow, they really are taking the fun away! No morphine.. hydrcondone no problem, didnt work for me, i could eat them like m&ms and didnt effect me, but that oxycodone.. that’ll give you that seasick feeling.. that was all due to surgery.
Now you gotta describe that too!
Even a dentist is considered surgery. And they wonder why noone wants this job, gotta be 23+ usually already employed and got a wife and kids and dont wanna leave them.. time for the.. nope its on the list.. guess i’ll go drink a.. nope cant do that, even in your own truck..guess I’ll watch television.. but its not digital..OkAy!
Guess i will go to sleep.. but you didnt pay for parking!
Ah forget it..
(Who says you cant have fun talking to yourself, its when you go to arguing with yourself you know you got problems)
Or do you?

 

Oxycodone begins to bring on nausea for Oxycodone Toxicity. In certain persons if they continued to take it it will kill them. Right there while they are quietly puking on the toilet.

If you were puking and continued to gooble oxy, it will kill you. And that mixed with vomit inside your mouth and around you at the Medical Examiner before taking your body away is the criteria to suspect Oxy abuse over dose death pending confirmatiory blood tests for drug levels. To be puking when on that stuff is your body's LAST WARNING to YOU as it desperately tries to clear the oxy out as a poison from your stomach.

After my surgery my hospital records show that within 2 hours I was issued 100mg demerol IV 25 mg at a time every 20 minutes until the pain was stopped. Since I was on versed I was not in a position to remember that episode. However for me personally Demerol is perfect no pain no problem 14 years old again. So the hospital did good.

Then they switched to 20 mg Oxy 5 times a day with additional pills. 4 days later stopped it. I was in withdrawal within 12 hours. They stopped that also as it progressed towards body wide seizure.

The doctor then shook out a bottle of norcos (Hydrocodones) for two weeks a few pills a day. After I fired the physical therapy and got moving without pain in a few months stopped that medicine. Then I started thinking that was not too bad. Maybe I stop this whole pain thing. Managed to do that with Morphine which takes care of the body pain but no reward for addiction in the mind. Eventually the morphine has to stop as well.

I am in a interesting position today. Heart failure ruled out and anything else heart ruled out essentially. Thats not the problem. The spine they can do nothing for which is not a problem as long I dont lump anything like in trucking. And everything else has fell into place with the exception of eyes and ears. (Hearing) Ive new hearing aids on order which solves that problem and the pending eye surgeon exam will decide whats what if anything.

If they come up with nothing and nothing and I meet DOT vision etc and everything else in a few months I would be back on the road. However.. the current ELD situation with the specific work I will be doing with it here in Arkansas and Tennessee is causing me to carefully consider it. Where I am now versus where I was a few months ago with medicines etc is two different worlds. Im still me, but those medicines they have quite the influence.

Do I have any medicine I like too much? Certainly. It's called Hydro Morphine. They gave that to me at 21 after my appy surgery back then. whoo doggie. That medicine is restricted to those with Hospice and ternimal cancer pain today. Demerol is a personal favorite because pain is gone and none of the BS mental or other screw ups to go with it. CDC and most doctors dont use it because it makes some people feel way too good or actually get them stoned. *Shrugs.

My dental surgeon does hand out demerol in pill form once in a while after he chops a tooth or two out of me. So hes a good one.

There is one medicine that is called Oxycontin. This one I was introduced to back in the late 90's after a surgery outpatient. Doc handed me like 30 mg 4 times a day, MME was well in excess of 180 or so daily. I was unconsious for a week with that stuff. Wife used to slap me awake with a glass of water and more of those yellow pills. Three at a time.

Ive thought about suing that family for producing that one. But I have no case. Because in those days thats what they gave out. Turns out it's very close to Heroin.

Fast forward to 2016. My pain doc in those days handed me Xtampa ER which is the anti abuse version of Oxycontin reformulated to satisfy CDC, DEA etc. My experience on that medicine was not good. Take a waxy blob. Wait 4 hours. *Thump sleep unconsious for a hour. poof no more medicine until next dose in about 7 to 8 more hours with pain coming back and rising.

That led to detox in the hospital for one week. Never again. The hospital repaired the damage and that started me on a path to where I am today.

 

All of those pain medications you mentioned in that first paragraph are opioids. The basic biology behind how they work is much like how snakes with neurotoxic venom kill. People sometimes do not understand just how dangerous this class of medication is.

At the microscopic level, the human nervous system is made up of billions if not trillions of nerve cells. If I burn my right hand a pain impulse is sent from that hand to my brain via a nerve. These nerve cells, however, to not actually touch each other. These impulses must "jump" from one cell to the other through a very small space called a synapse. Opioids work by blocking these cells from passing those impulses from reaching my brain. Snake neurotoxin venom kill by blocking these nerve passageways through the autonomic system to the victim's respiratory system causing the victim to smother to death. Opioids can also block the nerve passageways that handle human digestion. This is the primary reason these medications can cause serious stomach upset.

On a personal note, I am almost wheelchair-bound now. In a lot of pain (one reason I am up at this horrible hour). I use alternate therapy for pain because my physicians and I have decided that using these kinds of medications is not good for long term use. I counsel all drivers to do your best to avoid taking them. I have surgery scheduled in Feb and I imagine I will have some for post-op pain though.