Epic fail.

Posted on January 22, 2008 by borysSNORC

I made an ill advised decision last night to not take any valium before bed. I hate the way it makes me feel so stoned in the morning and it makes it really hard to get out of bed as I still feel so sleepy and dopey when I wake up. It turns out that this was ~~perhaps not my smartest move~~ downright fucking stupid. I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck in my sleep. I have no idea how I manage to stay asleep up until the moment of waking when my back screaming blue murder is the first thing I am cognizant of.

I rolled out of bed, tears streaming down my face, immediately took some pain killers and went searching for my heat packs …. which I had stupidly left on the floor. It’s amazing how overwhelmingly deflated one can feel over the prospect of having to try and lean down to pick up something off the floor. 😐

I need help.

Pray, be as trivial as you can.

Posted on January 19, 2008 by borysSNORC

When I first started this journal, it was predominantly a purgative vehicle for me. I had endured years of shit IVF nonsense that finally culminated in an assisted conception pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage and felt unable to formulate my feelings on the subject, let alone communicate them to anyone. Initially I found it hard to put my thoughts into coherent sentences but it wasn’t overly important to me to make sense as I was fairly confident that no one, beside myself, was reading it anyway.

As time has gone by the therapeutic imperative has diminished and I’ve generally used this journal to poke fun at my neighbours and allow them to laugh at me in my turn – which means there’s been decidedly more nonsense and ranting about life’s little injustices, and decidedly less cathartic unburdening of whatever pile of shit was raining on my parade at the time..

But now… I seem to have come full circle.

Since my most recent car accident, I’m finding it difficult to be ‘blithe and bonny’ and whenever I sit down to write… I find I am more inclined to complain about the God awful state of my back and the subsequent bullshit that comes with it… and less likely to have found anything in my day worth jotting down. The back pain thing …. it’s pervasive, all encompassing and absolutely inescapable for me. Morning, noon and night – back pain – back pain – back pain… day after fucking tiring day.

It has become a struggle to ignore it for ten minutes together in order to pay heed to what’s going on around me. I’m finding it increasingly exhausting to interact with my friends and family at the moment… let alone finding the motivation and effort required to extend general courtesies to people for whom I have little of no affection. As anyone who knows me would be aware, my tolerance for the stupidity of others was often negligible at the best of times and now? Well, now it is positively non-existent.

I have no desire to see other people or to be with other people or to be surrounded by the noise of other people. More and more I just want to crawl into a corner… somewhere cool and dark and safe … so I can stop pretending for everyone that all is well. I just want to stay home and have everyone leave me the fuck alone. *sigh…blank stare* I am intellectually aware that all this adds up to something tantamount to clinical depression and while I have acknowledged this and am trying to do something proactive about it – I think the drugs are doing more harm than good and honestly don’t hold out much hope for the counseling either.

So… yeah… anyway…. should anyone have the misfortune to be reading the absolute drivel that I’ve been spewing forth lately, I do sincerely apologize for the repeated references to my sorry arse mental state and chronically painful back… and while I shall endeavour in future to be as trivial as may be, I fear success may continue to elude me.
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Duly noted for future reference.

Posted on January 14, 2008 by borysSNORC

Urgh! What a day. I’ve been moping around the house all day feeling rather sore and more than a little bit seedy. I’m fairly confident that the ‘seedy’ bit was precipitated by an ill advised evening cocktail that started with a couple of Tramadol and half a bottle of red wine and finished with three… maybe four cups of port and a Valium chaser. I think it’s also fairly safe to say that the aforementioned soreness results from sleeping the deep motionless and REM-less sleep of the well and truly trashed. :S

Alas, even with more than the daily recommended dose of perception altering substances under my belt, I manage barely 5 or so hours of sleep and awoke to dry mouthedness (from the Endep), headachy (no doubt from the alcohol), so stiff I couldn’t stand up straight (from being too still all night) and slightly dopey (from the Valium). After forcing myself into an upright position, I hobbled to the kitchen to get a heat pack and a cup of tea only to find the floor disgustingly sticky from an incident involving a less than steady Borys, a bottle of V and the tiled kitchen floor. 🙁

And that kinda set the tone for the day really….

So with none to blame but myself for my Big Day O’ Blah which even a Big Yellow Dim Sim couldn’t cure, I’ve made a resolution to lay off the meds should I decide in future to use the time honored method of drowning one’s pain with alcohol. But I guess it’s worth noting that I’ve never made a resolution yet that I’ve managed to keep for any length of time.

Unless you count my long standing resolution to draw the line at goats… that one I’ve never had trouble sticking to.
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I’m a lady! I are!

Posted on January 9, 2008 by borysSNORC

Maybe …. hey, it’s my blog and I can pretend that it’s not definite… ahem…. Maybe I’m just a cranky old bitch or maybe it’s cos I’ve been trying to lay off the analgesics or maybe its cos I gave my car back to the smash repair dudes along with a ‘I’m not fucking happy Jan’ which has left me stuck in the house all day .., but everything seems to be annoying me today.

The smell of the dreaded coffee machine seems as objectionable as a dirty ashtray. The mess in Angel’s room isn’t the sign of a creative young mind it’s a deliberate ploy from an unusually Machiavellian six year old to trigger my OCD tendencies. BigSal using the last of the milk and then putting the empty bottle back in the fridge wasn’t an absentminded habit, it was a conscious effort to sabotage my desire for an afternoon cuppa. Yale setting his PDA to mimic the TV remote and using it to fuck with the TV isn’t indicative of his gadgetry skills, it’s a predetermined attempt to make me twitch 🙁

The world is against me today – I’m sure of it. I’m in pain (whoop de do – what else is new) and I’m avoiding taking any medication because it’s been having detrimental effects on my system. Now, normally I don’t like to share stories about bodily functions because I just don’t think it’s particularly ladylike to share that sort of thing. Additionally, I don’t tend to find a great deal of amusement myself in toilet humour – call me a snob but there it is. Anyway the drugs aren’t good and its starting to get beyond a joke 🙁 Take Drug Number One to try to alleviate back pain. Discover that Drug Number One has unwanted effect on one’s… regularity. Take Drug Number Two to try and alleviate side effects of Drug Number One. Find Drug Number Two is too effective and instead of wondering when you’re going to go… you’re wondering if you’re going to make it in time, Stop taking Drug Number Two and realise you’re in trouble if you take Drug Number One.

Urgh… the panacea is worse than the… oh fuck it.
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I feel as though my entire adult life, if something can go fucking wrong… it will.

Posted on January 8, 2008 by borysSNORC

I went to an appointment today, arranged for me by the Workers Comp people, with a doctor whose sole function was to report to them on my condition…. and if felt just like the old days. All those old medico-legal appointments (some 42 odd specialists) I had to see when I found myself bogged down amidst the most horridly complicated and hideously drawn out third party injury case which pretty much eclipsed the better part of my 20s. It’s always same…a ridiculously impossible ask from the start – how am I supposed to describe a 16 year history of back pain in 25 words or less? Or in this case in 35 mins or less?

He asks ‘where does it hurt?’
I say ‘here… here… here… here and …here’
He asks ‘when did it start?’
I say ’16 years ago (snip) but 6 weeks ago it got worse… much worse…’
He asks ‘what are you taking ?’
I say ‘drug A in the AM, drug B in the PM, drug C for sleep and drug D if I’m desperate’
He asks ‘what else are you doing about it?’
I say ‘whatever the good doctors and physios tell me to’ *

Then he pokes and prods a bit, asks me to move this way, move that way, twist this, flex that… ‘Does that hurt? Yes? No? Where?’
But mostly he just scribbles furiously on his little note paper and says “Ahuh… I see..” a lot, while at the same time it is patently obvious that he does not.

And he’s of no use to me, because he doesn’t treat his subjects. And yes, I use the term ‘subjects’ because to call them ‘patients’ implies they are receiving medical care, medical treatment or medical attention of some sort. Whereas the medico-legal examining physician doesn’t treat at all. He doesn’t give a shit about making recommendations on how one might alleviate their symptoms and certainly doesn’t offer any useful suggestions towards rehabilitation. He’s just observing and reporting, observing and reporting. And most of his observations and definitely his reportings are tainted with his preconceived determination that everyone he sees is full of shit and trying to skive out of work!

So as the ‘consultation’ (and I use the term loosely) draws to a close… Borys(ever determined to get her penny’s worth and in her usual masochistic manner) has the temerity (for rash it is) to inquire if he has ‘seen any other persons with repeated whiplash injuries, and well…. how have they fared?’ Stupid, stupid… girl… for what good can come of such a question? 🙁

He says, yes, he’s seen a number of people with ‘benign chronic back pain conditions’, and he feels that it’s ‘often less to do with what’s going on with their back, and more to do with what’s going on in their heads’ as to whether or not they recover in a timely fashion. Nice… huh. So having spent the last decade learning to cope with my pre-19.11.2007 pain levels… I’m not qualified to decide whether my pain is worse or maybe just I’m emotional about it and therefore unable to cope psychologically. “You’re thinking of yourself as being back at square one, when you should be thinking – I’ve done this before and I can do it again!” (direct quote – the only one in the post for the record – and delivered with a cheery smile nonetheless).

It must be contagious for I said “Ahuh… I see.” and stared blankly at him for a moment. I wanted to scream at him… “I KNOW HOW TO COPE WITH CHRONIC PAIN YA FUCKIN’ PLONKER, I’VE BEEN DOING IT FOR A DECADE AND A HALF, BUT THIS IS WORSE THAN BEFORE – IT”S TEN FUCKING DIFFERENT COLOURS OF WORSE! YA MORON!” But strangely enough I restrained myself 😐

Sniff, sniff… I’ve been crying most of the day – and I hate that . As often as I’ve wished for just one day to wake up with out pain… I’ve equally often wished to magically transfer that pain to someone else so they could understand how it feels to live with a fucked back for a few days and then they would know what it’s like to be in pain from morning until night. Because these doctors don’t seem to get it. Pain management and one’s ability to cope with pain… is only partly psychological, but there is such an experience as being in more protracted… more powerful… more prolonged… more encompassing… more concentrated… more. pain. full.stop. Which is where I’m at.

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* Please note, Dear Reader that this representation does not in any way shape or form resemble the actual conversation or sequence of events that occurred at said appointment, but rather reflects a Readers Digest version where quotes etc have been truncated for my sanity and yours. 😐
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