[Maria]

Judy,
I think when I first started the Neurontin because I was on that alone with no other pain medication even tho it was a large dose and it snowed me when it was adjusted to the 1800mg/day I was still working for several years and it took the edge of the Neuropathies much better than the Elavil so it helped but the back pain and episodes where my back would "go out" (severe spasms) that kept me off my feet for weeks at a time got more frequent and longer lasting.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is my pain levels were high enough for the Neurontin to cover the neuropathies fairly well and wasn't really creating "brain fog" at the time(except of course that intial start up period).

I had not yet started lumbar ESIs or the Methadone until after I had already stopped working.

It wasn't until the last few years I was on Neurontin that I really started to feel super snowed by it mentally or like I had "superior" levels of brain fog going on. I think I went a good 7 years on it feeling like my memory was actually OK.

Maybe you've just got a good case of post surgical aggravation of your body parts going on after staying in a hospital bed for a while as well as compensating or transfering a lot of stress to one side of your body. I often have some terrible pain strike my body if I have to sleep on a surface that isn't supportive enough. Usually that affects my back but also my neck and even my hips have been affected by this (tho I've no replacement recall to be consider). Good luck with it all just "going away" on it's own while utlizing some temporary measures to "quiet" things down! I know that sounds like oversimplification of things however I would hope it's something like that vs. anything more serious going on.

Give it some time to get adjusted to your level of the Neurontin. Everyone starts out on a low dose and for some people this is all that is needed though for me I think I was in the mid to low end of a higher range in terms of controlling my neuropathies well. I did feel that after adding the 10mg of Methadone/day that really gave excellent coverage (that was 4 years later).

Not sure I could have actually worked on the combination of the two however although I know there are people that do.