Withdrawal Symptoms

For about 2 months now I have been slowly reducing my Oxycodone dosage. I was on 30mg slow release twice a day for pain relief but with my ongoing fatigue I wanted to do anything I could to try and reduce this.

I’ve been increasing general activity with walking, cycling and just keeping myself busy rather than allowing myself to constantly sleep. If I’m physically active I seem to be able to keep going a little longer but as soon as I stop and sit down then its like my body takes it as a sign to rest and wants to shutdown.

The main cause of fatigue is my Nivolumab monthly immunotherapy treatment but a lot is also coming from the opiates. I’ve not had any pain that I believe is associated to my Kidney cancer for a while now so it seemed logical to reduce the Oxycodone dosage and find out if I still needed it.

I hadn’t realised quite how dependent on it I had become. I’m not addicted to it and am not showing any signs of addiction but I have had some unpleasant withdrawal symptoms as I’ve slowly reduced the dosage.

I initially dropped from 30mg to 25mg twice a day for 2 weeks. That went fine so I then dropped from 25 to 20mg twice a day. It’s fair to say that was not so good. I guess because the actual percentage drop was bigger or perhaps my body actually noticed the drop.

I had a raging headache, felt spaced out and disconnected, I felt even more tired and also nauseous. After a couple of days I went back to 25mg to re-think the plan.

After another week I felt brave so I dropped my evening dose to 20mg but kept the morning dose at 25mg. This seemed to be more successful.

I did a bit of research and found a chart that said I should be able to drop 5mg per week from morning then evening doses. So about 12 weeks to come off it completely.

Long story short I’m now at 10mg in the evening and 15mg in the morning. This is about 8 weeks in to my tapering down process.

I knew it would be slow but I didn’t release how crappy it would make me feel. The worst bit is more joint and muscle aches that could be a withdrawal symptom or a side effect of the nivolumab. Also, reducing the opiate intake means another immunotherapy side effect is now unfortunately present, an upset stomach. Luckily I already have meds for this and was warned it was the most likely one to get right at the start of treatment but the large dose of opiates had countered that the opposite way.

I’ve now giving it at least a week in between dosage drops to allow myself to get used to each stage so expect this will take another 5-6 weeks+

I’m hoping to try again to get back to some work in a few weeks and this transition is a key part of that. The fatigue isn’t going anywhere all the time I’m on the Nivolumab but I should be able to reduce the impact and deal with it a little better.

The cancer journey is littered with things sent to challenge you and this is just another one of those things.