Don’t leave the doctor’s surgery without prescriptions for enough tablets to take the required dose, every six hours in this case, until your next appointment. In our example, this means you would need 112 tablets. You may not, in fact, take all of those tablets, but at least you are free to decide what’s best for you. If you don’t have the tablets, you don’t have the choice.
Your doctor may say that twenty tablets per prescription is the maximum he or she can prescribe. This is not true. In Australia, your doctor can apply to the Department of Health for permission to give you enough painkillers per prescription to last one month. Permission is always given for people with cancer. Find out from a doctor or pharmacist what regulations apply in your country.
If you are in hospital, you have to rely on nurses as well as doctors to get the painkiller you need. First, ask your doctor to write up your painkiller to be taken regularly, (every three to six hours as is appropriate for the particular painkiller), not ‘as required’. If it is written up ‘as required’ you will have to ask for every dose. Even once you persuade the nurse you do need it, you will have to wait while senior nurses and keys are found, so cupboards can be unlocked to get your painkiller out. You shouldn’t have to go through this and you won’t have to if you can persuade your doctor to say you must have the painkiller regularly.
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