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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Went to physio this morning, and as my normal physio Heather is now on holidays and the guy I was seeing to replace her, Johnno,  was also  now on holidays, I ended up seeing a third physio, Georgie, this time…. and I may as well not have bothered.  Now I’ve been poked and prodded quite a lot by physiotherapists over the years, and one of the drawbacks of this is that I’m used to being poked and prodded and have quite gotten out of the habit of squealing when they apply pressure that produces excessive or acute pain.  I find I mostly lay there and just… take it.  It’s awful to think that I’m so familiar with painful sensations that they no longer produce an audible reaction, but there  you have it. 

Anyway both Number 1 physio, Heather and Number 2 physio, Johnno have a tendancy to keep on prodding and ramping up the pressure because if I don’t squeal, then I must be coping okay with what they’re doing which suits me fine, because the more aggressive they can be while I am on table, the more benefit I seem to get out of it in remaining mobile afterwards.  But Georgie I think was just pussyfooting around for some reason, maybe because she couldn’t tell if she was hurting me or not.  I kept telling her it was okay to apply more pressure, but for whatever reason, she just didn’t.  So I walked out of there feeling no looser or more mobile than I did when I walked in, which is a bit of a waste of time really.  So I’m still all tense this afternoon and unfortunately, my next two appointments are with her because the others are still on holiday.

Another bit of back related fun… the Workcover people and my GP want me to go off for some pain management counseling and for the first time ever I am in agreement with them.  I feel I am totally not coping with my current levels of back pain, I’m not sleeping, I’m freaking out that it’s not going to settle back down to what I consider ‘normal’, I’m frequently tearful about the whole damn mess and have become ridiculously fearful on the road when driving…. oh and I may or may not have said something about just wanting to curl up and die… by way of trying to demonstrate how fed up I was with the entire situation, and well the quacks tend to take that sort of thing seriously.  My GP recommended someone to go talk to, but that person has refused to accept me as a patient because they don’t want to deal with the Workcover paperwork.  So I inform the Workcover people of the situation and I get back an email from them that goes something like this –

I am on leave over the break and will be back at work in the new year so please have a fantastic Christmas and a safe New Years Eve.

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Woke up this morning and I couldn’t sit up straight 🙁  I laid there for a while, working my jaw and trying to get some feeling back into my hands before attempting to roll out of bed.  When I did finally manage to get out I found myself hanging onto the bedpost totally unable to move, my hands numb and my back causing me to moan and shudder in pain…. which is fine if you’re a consenting adult and you’ve negotiated a suitable safe word…. but definitely NOT okay if this if it’s just cos your drugs have worn off!!!!  🙁

Getting up in the morning has become a trial of epic proportions.  I can’t believe how much gritting of teeth and monumental fucking effort is involved in just getting up out of bed.  After overcoming the  seemingly insurmountable task of rising from my nocturnal recumbent posture, I stumbled to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water (as is my regular habit), downed the nearest tablets and then went and laid back down for a few minutes, trying to remember to breathe as I did so. 

It has recently been pointed out to me that I seem to have developed a strange habit of holding my breath when I perform movements that are causing me undue pain… difficult manoeuvres like rolling over, brushing one’s hair, putting on a t-shirt or perhaps getting up off the couch  :S   So after laying there for a few moments and the back pain not abating, I went to reach for some pills, only I couldn’t remember what I’d just taken in the bathroom moments earlier!
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Chorus:
A little bit of Mogadon in my life
A little bit of Tramadol by my side
A little bit of Codeine is all I need
A little bit of Diazepam is what I see
A little bit of Prednisone in the sun
A little bit of Temaze all night long
A little bit of Digesic here I am
A little bit of fucked attention span….

Over the last couple of weeks, a I’ve been getting more and more of those conversations that have a… ‘we already talked about this’ type statement in them.  I’m hearing things, talking to people and it is going in one ear and out t’other.  One of the downsides of taking large doses of stuff what makes you really dopey.  I don’t like taking lots of medication, and I try to avoid it.  “Drug free is the way to be” and all that… but it’s damn near impossible when you’re in a lot of pain and you’re so desperate for some relief or some sleep that you’ll try anything.

So on my bedside table with my copy of Aesop’s fables, bedside lamp, my All the King’s Women, my lipbalm, my hairbrush, my mini iPod speakers and my ka-dounk is my drug stash.  Which includes, but is not limited to… Digesic, Panadeine Forte, Mersyndol Forte, Nurofen Plus, Voltaren Rapid, Solone, Antenex, Mogodon.  And then there’s the stuff they give you to counter act the stuff.  Durolax in case you get bound up from the Codeine and Endep because most of those others are depressives…. and who knows what else they’ll end up giving me as side effects become more apparent.

Worst side effect I ever had from medication was the Mouse Tails that I used to get from the IVF drugs … nothing quite like being unable to see the edges of surfaces or seeing things in quadruplicate as they pass through your field of vision.  Sure hope I don’t get anything like that again.
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