I went to my GP yesterday to check in with him and he asked me to describe my pain which is not an easy proposition and can be a little difficult as the pain is different depending on what I’ve been doing, what medications I’ve been trying and importantly how tired I am. My ability to tolerate or ignore the pain decreases considerably with fatigue. I found myself staring at him momentarily while I tried to formulate a cohesive and concise answer because I’m fairly confident that I’m spending a lot of my time babbling of late. I eventually answered him – “I am in pain every day from the moment I wake up until I go to bed at night. It hurts constantly and I spend my waking hours working hard to ignore it and I am not succeeding. I am not coping with this at all … and it is exhausting and inescapable” or something to that effect.
And the worst thing about that statement is that it’s true. The first thing I’m aware of when I wake up is that my back hurts. Often the sensation of pain upon waking is so overwhelming I wonder how I managed to be asleep at all with my body screaming out in pain like that. Lately I’ve been trying to fathom how on earth I am able to stay asleep through it, but I have been getting some sleep which is no doubt only because of the medication. The second thing I’m aware of is usually numbness or tingling in my hands or feet. Either that or the tension in my jaw and face which makes it difficult to talk. The jaw tension seems to last a lot longer then it used to – I find I am skipping breakfast quite a lot lately because it has become uncomfortable to eat or chew in the morning. Not good.
It’s about 5pm or so at the moment, and I’ve had a quiet restful day only venturing out to go to the pharmacy to get some more drugs (the nips are getting bigger) and I’ve got a monster headache, the same nasty arse headache I woke up with this morning, my upper back is just overloaded with painful sensations, if I move my shoulders they go clunk, clunk, clunk and my hands are numb/aching which isn’t being helped by typing this.
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