aGrandma

I'm not a nurse, but my husband has used Fentanyl for about 3 years now. He can only use the generic brand because the name brand falls off. He's thin but muscular. Also he changes his every 48 hours, it has never lasted 3 days on him. Anyway my question is, he has always placed it on his shoulder, alternating sides each new patch. The past few weeks he gets chills the day he is supposed to change the patch. He feels like it's withdrawals. So we tried something we've never tried before and placed the patch on his upper chest area near his arm, and we cannot believe the chills stopped. He hasn't had chills since he moved the placement of the patch about 2 weeks ago, and he was getting them consistently every 2 days. Have any of you heard of this happening with fentanyl? Can a place on your body get to where it doesn't absorb the drug any longer? I can't find that on the Internet anywhere. Also - just f.y.i. for you nurses - my husband used to use a much stronger patch but he ended up in the emergency room about 5 times for withdrawals - it was horrible for him every time. Probably 3 of those times he had not done anything wrong - he'd changed his patch as directed. This is such a seriously strong drug. He's been on the weakest patch (12.0 mcg/hr) for probably 18 months now and has never been to the ER since he's been at this dose. He has arthritis in both shoulders and this really helps with the pain.