Can someone turn down the volume.

Posted on November 29, 2007 by borysSNORC

When I wake up … in the morning light… I pull on my jeans and I feel alright… or at least I would if my back weren’t screaming blue murder at me. This morning when I got up, every sound was shrill and painful to my ears. My neck was so jammed tight, I could swear I had worn some sort of straight jacket to bed, and I had the worst headache in memory.

So I did my normal morning stumble out of bed, rooted around for my heat pack, made a cup of tea while I stood and stared at it blankly going around and around in the microwave and then glued myself to the couch until the heat seeped back into my body enough to make me feel remotely human again. Off to the physio this morning for another round of Name that Fucking Painful Muscle Group, and then back to the GP to get a referral to a muscular-skeletal specialist who they want me to visit asap…. so he can stick dirty big needles into my upper thoracic and cervical spine trigger points in a vague hope that it might cut the muscle spasm a bit.

One of frivolity yesterday… and today I am back to being preoccupied with the back pain. Not fun… just not having fun. I wanna go home!
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It wasn’t always all pilates and swiss fit balls…

Posted on November 27, 2007 by borysSNORC

I went to the physio again today, and unexpectedly found myself undergoing a process called ‘dry needling‘. Usually when I go to the physio there’s the application of the heat packs, and some pretty painful hands on manipulation stuff… then sometimes some sort of ultrasonic thingy that was supposed to stimulate the mitochondria in your cells or some such shit…. occasionally there’d be hydrotherapy or pilates, or strapping or rubber band exercises or whatever seemed to be the trend at the time. Well now, seems the flavour this year is this ‘dry needling’ which it was stressed to me is not acupuncture, but stuffed if I could tell the difference.

Anyway, I found myself laying face down with my back full of needles, and feeling like I couldn’t move and after a few minutes I realised I didn’t have any method of getting their attention from the back room if I needed assistance. And it reminded me of an awful physio ordeal from about 16 years ago – not long after I hurt my neck originally in the first car accident back in 1991. I was getting physio at the PA Hospital … there weren’t many physiotherapists about at the time, and the hospital was where they sent me. I think it was maybe only my second or third visit to the physio, and they had put me into traction to stretch out my neck. This involved basically putting me in a chair that was anchored to the floor, strapping my wrists down to the chair to pull my shoulders down, and then placing my head in a harness that went under my chin and behind the back of my neck and attaching that harness to the ceiling and tensioning it tight. It was extremely uncomfortable and from memory I was supposed to be in this thing for about 15 minutes…. and there was a little timer in the room to say when time was up. Only the little timer went off and no one came to let me out of the God awful contraption… I tried to call out for help and kicked about to get someone’s attention, but I couldn’t talk as my jaw was clenched shut from the upward tension on the harness. It must have been another 10 or 15 minutes before anyone came to check on me, and by that time I was absolutely distraught with tears running down my face and in a lot of pain from being strung up to the ceiling for so long.

I haven’t thought about that incident in years, but it came back to me today as I lay there feeling not a little depressed, rather helpless and in plenty of pain. The more I think about it, the more I feel that this incident could have something to do with my absolute abhorrence for not being in control of my person, and my intense dislike for being physically overpowered by anyone…. even in jest.

I just can’t believe I am back on this road again, and feel like I am back to square one. It’s taken me over ten years to get my shit together to live with the pain levels that I have every day and to do my best to just manage with what I had and now I’m all stirred up again and I have no idea if it’s going to settle back down to ‘normal’. 🙁
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*I’m sorry to anyone who’s actually reading this… hell… I am sick of thinking about all this pain nonsense, so I am sure anyone who’s reading this must be sick of me complaining about it too. 🙁 I promise to try and write something positively frivolous tomorrow.
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My face aches… and not from smiling.

Posted on November 27, 2007 by borysSNORC

Feeling decidedly tired and worn down this evening. I’ve been back to my doctor today and was trying to find out if he had some a drug solution for me that would well… actually reduce pain for one, and not leave me feeling so… special. 🙁 And I don’t mean special as in ‘unique and pretty snowflake’ special, but rather special as in ‘you should be wearing a helmet on the bus’ kinda special. 😐 But all he had to offer me that was going to be stronger than what I’m taking is morphine, so you can imagine that I resisted that particular suggestion. Last thing I need is a nice little morphine habit to add to the nonsense. Besides, I hate feeling dopey like I can’t concentrate on anything and my arms and legs feel all heavy and it’s somehow extremely tedious to contemplate doing anything…. and previous experience tells me that morphine is definitely not conducive to feeling alert and in control. 😐

I’ve been here before… pain levels through the roof, and drugs don’t feel like they make a dent in it. The only thing that seems to soothe it is the heat pack and that’s far too temporary for my liking. While I’ve got the heat on, it feels a bit better – at least on the surface – and for about an hour afterwards, not too bad, just the deep aching which is far more tolerable remains. But after an hour or so, the horrible stinging/burning sensation returns across my shoulders, neck and down towards my middle back 🙁 and I’m back where I started from.

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Barometer Toe

Posted on November 26, 2007 by borysSNORC

I’m soooo tired. I hardly slept at all last night. My back is still killing me – feels like I have a small angry colony of ants on my shoulder blades. Which feels as awful as it sounds. I can’t describe it very well actually…. it’s almost like my nerves are overloaded and can’t decide what sort of pain sensation it’s dealing with, and it feels like a burning, stinging sort of pain with a heavy ache from what must be a small elephant or a largish Mondrian-Yellow Pain Monkey (you pick) sitting on my shoulders.

And I’m still feeling uber dopey from the drugs. It’s pretty bad when you feel you have to lay off the drugs in order to go for a drive. But I’m worried if I keep taking the pain killers the doctor gave me that I’m going to end up having another damn accident because it’s making me feel so out of it. I’m not used to the codeine I think, and almost as soon as I take it, I feel drowsy and can feel my mental acuity (what little I have 🙂 slipping away almost immediately, which is making it rather difficult to focus or concentrate on anything. :S

I had a very quiet week, and a mostly pretty quiet, restful sort of weekend, but I’m just not feeling any better…. my wrists are still sore, which is exacerbated from typing this, and I’m having trouble sitting still long enough to get online and see what my friends are up to. I’ve had to harrass other people to brush my hair (Angel really, really sucks at it) cos holding my arms above my head makes me go ICK…. and my toes are still getting intermittently numb.

Yeeessss. This concerns me considerably to be honest. One shouldn’t have numb toes as a general rule and preferably not as a barometer of other intensity of back pain. The physio and the doctor have said this is from the back being in spasm and likely affecting the nerves to the lower extremeties, and that it should calm down… but it’s been a week, and my toes are still numb, so how long?? On the up side….doesn’t one love being able to use the word ‘spasmodic’ in every day conversation? Why…. there’s no felicicity in the world such as being able to say ‘spasmodic’ on a daily basis! 🙁

I think it’s back to the doctor for me this morning.
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My left foot…

Posted on November 22, 2007 by borysSNORC

OMG. My back hurts… I know I’ve been writing about my stupid back for years, and how it bothers me every single day… hell even I’m sick to death of my own bitching and moaning about my shitty back. But I can’t think about anything but fucking back pain pissing me off whenever I try to do any little thing. I couldn’t sleep last night…. I was doped up to the eyeballs on codeine based pain killers and other good stuff that was making me feel very dopey. But just couldn’t sleep. So it was like midnight before I dozen off… and I woke up just after 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Which means I’ve spent the day feeling like my eyeballs have been coated with sandpaper and people are talking to me underwater. And that’s kinda crap on top of the not insignificant pain that’s screaming at me everytime I try to lift my arms up or do something really adventurous like turn my head. Sniff, sniff… and my left foot still hurts too….

I need new shoes!!! (wait I already said that!)

So shit all round really… trying to rest but unable to sleep, feeling vague from the drugs, unable to concentrate and for reasons I can’t explain I chose to watch that Hairspray movie today. Shrug… I don’t know what possessed me – it were crap.

But worse than that stupid crap film was the bad news that the nasty arse insurance company is going to fix my car, which will no doubt never be the same again. 🙁 Maybe Surly was right…. I must have been one helluva bitch in a former life cos I seem to have so much constant crap raining down on me in this one! On the upside… this has given me something to complain about other than the shit at my work!

PS – Thanks everyone who called or pinged me on the MSN to see if I was still alive and kicking… it’s nice to know that people are thinking of you while you’re falling into a self indulgent downward spiral of self pity! 🙂
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