Revised
When I met with the surgeon we talked about pain management. I explained to him that I did not want any opium based pain medicine because they can be highly addictive and I don't want to use them and I don't want them in my house. He agreed and said that wouldn't be a problem. Fast forward to my leaving the hospital. The hospital pharmacy gave me a bag of pills filled with vitamins and opium based pain medicine to take home. I told the nurse I didn't want them. She said that so many people leave the hospital and then call the surgeon begging for pain medicine that now they just send people home with it. That got me thinking.... I don't want to be in pain... what if I need the pain medicine and I refused it and was in trouble at home? I agreed to take the pain pills home. I have a college student and two teens, so, I am concerned about having these pills in the house. I hid them in the back of a cupboard so that if I needed them during recovery, I could get to them. Fast forward one month later and I had completely forgotten about those pills sitting in the cupboard.
If you had a Thyroidectomy, there is a good chance you left the hospital with pain medicine too. Pain management is a personal choice. What someone uses to manage that pain is a discussion that should happen between the patient and the doctor. If you need to use the pain medicine? Then you should. I recommend discussing in advance with your doctor what the various options and risks are: Opiod and non-opiod based. I am in no way suggesting anyone should go without pain medicine. The point of this posting is make sure everyone is thinking responsibly about it.
The Opiod based pain killers include Morphine, Tramadol, Oxycodone, Fentanyl, hydrocodone, oxymorphone, and the list goes on and on.
While it is unlikely anyone will develop an addiction by taking Opiod based pain killers after a Thyroidectomy, extended use can lead to a dependency. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, there are 1.5 million chronic users of heroin, 75% of which started their addiction with prescription Opiods. If that concerns you? You should discuss it with your doctor.
Suppose you are sent home with pain killers. You either do not need them, or, you took what you needed. And now you have a bottle filled with left over pills. What should you do with those pills?
Part of the heroin epidemic in the United States is due to prescription opiods that find their way to the streets. Perhaps it is a sweet loving child who finds some in a medicine cabinet and sells them for some quick money, or a child that trades them for something else, or a visiting relative pockets them. Here are some ideas on what to do:
1. Lock them away in such a way that children and visitors won't be able to access them. In my case, I have teenagers yet I don't have any lockable cabinets in my house.
2. Properly dispose of them. Check here and/or check with your pharmacist. In my region, we are told to take them to a police department. Your region may have different instructions.
3. Never flush an Opiod medication down the toilet unless the medicine comes with specific instructions allowing it.
4. Discuss the dangers of prescription medicines with your children.
What am I going to do? I'm taking the pain killers out of my cupboard this afternoon and driving them down to the police department for disposal. Then I am going to stop by the hardware store and purchase a lock for my medicine cabinet.
I hope this as an opportunity to make sure any pills left over from a Thyroidectomy surgery have been properly taken care of.
Want to read more about the problems with Opiod pain killers? Read Bob Lonsberry's experience.
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