The pain clinic called and said no, they would not be able to make a verbal report to my pcp and that he would get the faxed report on Tuesday. So I took 600 mg ibuprofen and planned to take it every 6 hours. 5 minutes later the pcp calls (guess the nurse told him I was very upset) and tells me the reason he said no was because there are two drugs that sound exactly the same, Celebrex and Celesta (something like that) and he wanted to read the report to be sure which one it was. Celebrex is an antiinflammtory and Celesta (or whatever) is an antidepressant. I told him the doc said "one of the new antiinflammatories with less side effects" and the fact that I knew the Celesta was an antidepressent convinced him I guess because then he said "well, in that case if you're sure we can try Celebrex and see if it helps. Come into the office and pick up some samples". I can't start it until tomorrow because I didn't wait long enough before taking the ibuprofen! At least I won't have to fill a prescription (very expensive) if the samples don't work as well as I'm hoping for. Hey, was this an example of effective communication?
-- Chris S.