Flag Ball Tree – how hard is that?

Posted on November 8, 2012 by borysSNORC

I had a bit of a rude shock on Tuesday, in the form of a rather short, bespectacled, well dressed, over paid psychiatrist. As many of you know, I’ve been in four nasty car accidents which (in a nut shell) have left me with some 10-15% residual spinal incapacity, chronic neuropathic back pain, many physical limitations and (fun! fun! fun!) prescription drug dependency.

“And what else have we got for Borys, Harry?”. “Well, June, we have six free steak knives!” But seriously, what it comes with is chronic depression, insomnia, memory and concentration issues, general irritability, mood swings, an anxiety thing when it comes to driving and getting in cars, and a generally less than ‘happy, happy, joy, joy’ demeanour all round. But that’s okay… I resigned myself many years ago to embracing my inner bitch and having to make her my outer bitch and people who have found that hard to deal with have often decided I’m not worth the effort and have fallen by the wayside. Either, by over trying what little patience I possess or by virtue of simply requiring too much of my precious energy to give a shit about their problems. Yeah, sorry about that… but I quite literally don’t have energy for the delicate and fragile egos of people who can’t cope when they think their world is ending cos their dead shit boyfriend stands them up, they flunked their studies because they were partying too hard or some other banal and completely controllable crap happens to them… Come talk to me when you’ve had 20+ years of constant pain, 12 years of infertility, 4 car accidents, 5 miscarriages, have lost count of how many surgeries you’ve had, years of forced unemployment, and you have a favourite anaesthetist! Then we can discuss how much life sucks arse.

What was I talking about again (oh dear, point in case!)… another unwanted side effect of all this nonsense is diminished concentration and problems with memory. I can honestly say that most of 2008 and 2009 have been totally lost to me in a drug fucked haze… I know I was there. I get reminded of particulars all the time… but stuffed if I can tell you anything specific from those few years, in particular when the psychs were trying to drown me in everything from Endep to Doxepine to Cypramil to Cymbalta to so much shit I’ve forgotten the names of them all by now. So many different medications all with the same effect – no change to pain levels but left me severely compromised in the mental faculties department. And I kinda thought I had left most of that behind me now I’m not taking 300MG OF DOXEPINE EVERY NIGHT (NB: as little as 500mg can be a fatal dose in sensitive adults).

But it turns out I was wrong. The little bespectacled shrink that I mentioned at the beginning of this pathetic story is one of those medico-legal guys… You turn up. They spend a couple of hours dissecting your entire life. They ask you about family history, traumas, medication, previous diagnoses… They run a few shrinky tests on you. They then write a very long winded and expensive report to a bunch of lawyers who are determining just how fucked up your life is, and how much that is worth on their fancy scales of personal indemnity fucked-uped-ness.

If you’ve never been embroiled in a third party personal injury claim it is important to point out that these doctors who poke and prod at you do NOT give a shit about your well being, and are not there to offer you TREATMENT or ADVICE of any kind. They are just there to poke around under the hood and report back to the plethora of vultures… err, sorry lawyers involved in the litigation. And I say ‘lawyers’ because there are always several… mine and theirs. And each have their own orthopaedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, occupational therapists, psychiatrists etc designed to refute the findings of the other sides’ medical experts. Yeah barrel of laughs.

This guy gives me three words and says repeat them back to me and then I’m going to get you to do a few concentration tests. Sure “Flag. Ball. Tree.” No problem she thinks, feeling like she’s suddenly in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy as one of Meredith Grey’s Alzheimer’s trial patients… He then puts me through a few word exercises and an alphanumeric connect the dots thing and then says “What were the three words I gave you earlier. I answer “Flag. Ball. And (oh fuck!) I err… I umm, can’t remember the third one… was it Floor?”. No shit. Never felt so exposed, compromised, stupid and incompetent in my life. After a few abortive attempts to recall the word, he says “That’s ok, it was ‘Tree'”. Nope. Tree didn’t ring any bells and we were talking a passage of time here of less than about ten minutes.

So moral of the story is that I have the demeanour of a Rottweiler and the memory of a Goldfish, such that my ability to concentrate and rely on my memory is even worse than I thought it was. I left that appointment feeling more than a little bit shell shocked and certainly wondering if I was going crazy or something. I mean REALLY, losing my mind kinda crazy. Talk about a swift, reality check, kick to the head. 🙁

Sigh… on the upside, I’m no longer wondering why I’m finding it so hard to memorize all this fucking Latin! I now KNOW why I can’t remember that shit! :S

Twenty-One.

Posted on August 28, 2012 by borysSNORC

Twenty-one years. Twenty-one years. Twenty-one ‘kin years!

Twenty-one years ago a stupid cabbie didn’t see the brand new burgundy Mitsubishi Magna I was driving and failed to stop at a stop sign… and so began my nightmare with back pain.

Twenty-one… one of my favourite numbers thanks to a misspent youth playing Blackjack with my cousins. Twenty-one… my locker number in Senior at high school. Twenty-one… the number of diamonds in my little starfish pendant. Twenty-one… Twenty-one.

twenty-one years gone
every day and every night
neuropathic pain

FUCK. 🙁

reBUILDing

Posted on July 1, 2012 by borysSNORC

“You’ve pulled my whole life apart and thrown it all over the table, then told me to put it back together… but I don’t even know what that looks like anymore.”

Sleep Deprivation Sucks

Posted on June 26, 2012 by borysSNORC

It’s been at least four and a half years since I’ve had an unmedicated nights sleep. And even with the copious Valium prescription repeats, I only manage somewhere between 5-6 hours… on a good night. Which means I’m racking up somewhere between a 2-3 hr sleep debt every night. :S

Without the Valium, it’s a complete waste of time. I go to bed, I toss and turn for hours trying to get into a position of relative comfort, read: one whereby my back shuts the fuck up long enough to allow me to fall asleep. Should this elusive position actually be found and I do manage to fall asleep unassisted, I will inevitably wake up within 2-3 hours with my jaw clamped shut so tight I feel like I can’t talk, my fists in little ineffectual balls of fury and even my little feet feel like they’ve been tensing up against the pain. Not good.

Needless to say, the famed Roche Mother’s Little Helper and I, have become good friends… I would have bought shares in the company five years ago if I’d known how much of their product I was going to end up consuming. In the beginning (hehehe) there was a mere 2.5mg of diazepam a night to help me get to sleep which seemed to assist with the tense jaw thing and for a while did help with the getting to sleep thing. But as I’ve scaled back the traditional analgesics which seem to do fuck all to make a dent in neuropathic pain, and have cut back the so called neuropathic pain blockers which are completely ineffective and leave me hideously dopey (hey, don’t laugh)… the daily Valium quotient has slowly crept up and up to the point where I routinely take 10mg a night as a minimum and work up from there depending on how crap I feel. :S

The end result of which is that I haven’t had a decent night sleep for nigh on five years and have no doubt accumulated a considerable sleep debt which is probably irrecoverable at this stage! And according to the Scientific American, studies into short term sleep deprivation can cause foggy brain, impaired vision, driving deficiency and drum roll please… memory lapses! Oh, I could have told them that last one. Long term sleep deprivation can cause/exacerbate insulin resistance, heart disease, diabetes and obesity! Yay!! All that good stuff to look forward to! :S

So how do you try and crib back a five year sleep debt… I imagine it’s damn near impossible at this point, though it has been suggested that perhaps a month of medically induced coma could bring me back into balance!

Pain is a good thing apparently.

Posted on May 2, 2012 by borysSNORC

I just saw a friend’s Facebook status which stated she was suffering pain of one description or another. And a friend of hers left a very helpful comment which stated:

Friend: pain is a good thing.. lets u kno u r still alive (and)

Friend: if u feel nothing where r u

Now, putting aside the fact that this person has limited command of English as evidenced by their lack of spelling and punctuation, this person is obviously a CHICKEN FUCKING MORON who has never experienced serious pain in their life, nor are they likely to be acquainted with anyone who has serious pain issues. ‘Pain is a good thing’…? Seriously?!? When I read things like this it make me want to punch someone somewhere soft and squishy. It makes me want to rage at the person who said it until they wonder if we speak the same language. It makes me want to explode with righteous indignation until the author cowers in a corner wishing I was heaping physical abuse on them instead of verbal abuse! A monstrous leviathan of bilious acrimony builds up in my guts until I want to spew vitriol over anyone within proximity!

Breathe… Pain makes it hard to remember to breathe…

Statements like these also makes me feel like most people have absolutely no understanding of what pain is and how it effects, not just your body, but your entire life. It makes me feel like no one truly understands me, and my painful existence. Pain is not simply painful. It is debilitating, frustrating, exhausting, confusing, exasperating, nauseating, arduous, restrictive, repulsive, offensive, contemptible, objectionable, detestable, odious, arduous, distressing, vexatious… and it goes on and on and on in my head. 🙁

Pain is loathsome, and it is wretched… and it turns people into creatures other than those they wish they could be.