Blahhhhging

I need a break from the pressures of trying to blog regularly. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop but it means that I may not be posting regularly until I get some stuff straightened out. My brain is mushy and all squishy...wanna poke it and see? Ewwwww you know you don't REALLY wanna do that!

I am having problems with my pain levels. I can't think clearly or do much of anything to be honest, just getting up in the morning and feeding my dog is about it. I have gone to my doctor and we are switching my medicine for my chronic back pain from a past surgery to remove tumour (just in case you didn't know what I was rambling on about).

Anywho, I have chronic pain. It makes me bitchy. It makes me cry. It makes me want to scream and somedays I get sort of left alone to do my thing. Not the past few months. It has just gotten steadily worse and worse so this past monday I went to my Doc and laid it on the line to her. Increase my meds, change my meds PLEASE! I am in pain, I need more, I need something because sitting hurts, standing hurts, and lying down hurts...basically just being hurts.

I have to live with this, I know it, I've known it from the day I was told I needed surgery or I would die. I consider myself lucky that I didn't end up a para- or quadriplegic which was a serious possibility after the surgery. So now I deal with pain every single minute of every single hour of every single day of my life. I try so very hard to not let it define me but that can be difficult. I know many people won't understand because they have never experienced pain to this degree but those who do will hope I get better soon *fingers crossed*.

I don't often talk about this pain with anyone and the only ones that have ever known just how serious it is is my doctors, family, and my husband. Why don't I talk about it I'll bet you're wondering. Well it's because most people can understand the pain of having a bad cough or an aching back...for a few days or maybe even a few weeks, but pain that doesn't EVER go away, and not only that but it pretty much guaranteed to last for a lifetime and get worse if anything, but never ever get any better.

The only things that have gotten better is the method of pain control. I don't mean an aspirin or even anti-inflammatories (which I'm allergic to - so that takes out an entire class of drugs for me), I'm talking about morphine type pain. Not the 5 or 10 mg someone might get for a kidney stone but 40-80mg per day and sometimes codeine to help with breakthrough pain. It's difficult to explain what knowing that I will always be in pain has done to me.

I have learned to accept it but it took months in therapy to accept that I even needed surgery and once that was over to accept my physical limitations.

I wish that having chronic pain didn't stigmatize people then more sufferers would be open and up front about it. But most don't understand that CP is as much a disease as diabetes is...it cannot be cured only controlled and sometimes control is very difficult. It causes depression and anxiety, which cause stress, which only serve to increase the pain and so it is a never ending cycle unless one can get (for a while at least) adequate pain control to break that cycle, but then tolerance sets in and the pain increases and the cycle begins once again.

Thankfully I have a wonderful, loving husband that is supportive and helps me out tremendously...even though I still have to do all the dishes lol.

I belong to a great support group which also helps me when I'm down and has been an invaluable source of information.

One of the reasons I haven't spent much time blogging is because I have been dealing with increasing pain and obviously I'd developed a tolerance to the medicine I've been on for the past year and some months. I had to decisions to make about my course of treatment, future plans, and whatnot. I decided to talk to my doctor about not only increasing the medicine but also changing it to something different (an equivalent) but different formulation that helps the medicine last longer. I was taking a med. that was supposed to last 12 hours but only lasted 8 for me. Through some research I came across one that is a sustained release of morphine that lasts the full 12 hours (for most people) so this is what I wanted to try, as opposed to what I've been taking which is basically a long acting percocet type of medicine.

The principle is the same with the long acting and sustained release but in reality it can work much differently for different people because of body chemistry, tolerance levels, and many other reasons besides.

I have spent the last few days sleeping, eating (barely), feeling nauseated, and very very dizzy as my bodybecomes adjusted which will hopefully happen REALLY soon! So until that time I'll be dragging my bum around attempting to continue a daily routine.

Btw, if this posts sounds self-pitying it wasn't meant to at all just kind of laying it all out there in the most simplistic manner to get it off my chest and also to explain what's happening to me at this time - and has been in the recent past.

Namaste,
K-

Dog Tired

We awoke this morning to rain. Yippeeeeeee! Boy oh boy do we need rain and lots of it. But this made for a really tired puppers and moi. This is what Tigez looked like yesterday when we got home from the Ipswich Show. We went with several others to promote GAP to potential new adoptive parents and foster carers.



This is a REALLY tired boy and he doesn't mean to look so cute, but he can't help it.


Here we are just hanging out as the day sort of winds down, a few of the dogs were off for walks while it was slow. That's me petting Fred. You can't really see it well but Fred has the bushiest tail I've seen on a greyhound... it looked a bit like a possum tail, in fact, Fred was pretty fluffy ALL over. In the front of the pic as Taz (standing black female) and Amy (brindle lying down).

A good time was had by all, but it left those in our house kind of winded and down for the count. We got in, had supper and I started feeling a bit off, so I headed to bed and I think I was comatose for about an hour when I noticed that there was no hubby or pooch present. Hrmmm, a situation I needed to remedy fast. Tigez was passed out on the sofa, hubs in front of his computer. Tiger followed me back to the bed and curled up with me while I called out to hubby to come watch some tv whilst I was still sort of awake.

One out of two ain't bad in some cases. I fell asleep with Tiger on one side and hubby on the other only to wake a little while later with Tiger not having moved a muscle (unusual but not surprising since he was so tired) and hubby having rolled over and had my t-shirt pinned underneath him and I couldn't move. Aaaack!

Ok, shoved dog off bed, extricated myself from underneath C~ and drifted back to sleep. What a day, it was fun but I think I need a few days to recover.

Oh I'll bet you're wondering what happened to me. Well, last week a migraine had its way with me for 4 days and by the time I recovered it was time for weekly cleaning and back to work 3 days this week. I was pretty busy with all the stuff I had to do after being out of commission for so long. Not to mention I didn't want to read anything that might make that headache come back, so my online time was really limited.

Anywho, I'm back and feeling a bit better. I'm slowly catching up on reading blogs and housework (there's always more of that to do).