That's a new one on me.  I've never heard anyone say that pain medicines only work for ten days.  I personally have been taking tramadol for fibromyalgia pain for over 10 years and it still works well for me.  Now it's true that anyone taking opioids will eventually build up a tolerance to them and need to be given a higher dosage or switched to a different opioid.  But that takes a lot longer than 10 days to happen. 

As far as pain medicine causing your pain, they say that long-term opioid use can increase your sensitivity to pain, but I wouldn't think it could be the sole cause of your pain.  It sounds like he just doesn't want to prescribe opioids for you, so you may want to consider finding a different pain specialist.