Chronic Pain Lifestyle

No Good Meds

     Its hard to stop taking a prescribes pain medication, even harder if it is effective.  I won't say that my narcotic cocktail of methadone and fenanyl failed me.  Those drugs flat out worked.  The problem was that my system adapted to their presence quickly; my body was so efficient that within a month or two, the dosage lost effectiveness.  This became a cycle: drugs to tolerance to more drugs to tolerance...and on and on.  The cycle accelerated.  After a couple of years of intractable pain I was taking 60 mg. of Methadone, and 1000 mcg. of Fentanyl ( 5 x 200 mcg. sub lingual lollipops ). 

      This worked.  The obvious drawback: at some point a maximum dose is reached and the body, as it had always done, would adapt to that highest dosage.  This is a description of a point of no return.  What would you do at that point?  What's left when you max-out, reach a spot from which your meds can no longer be raised without killing you, and pain is fighting through doses that would kill a horse?  What follows that?

      It is clear to me, that I had to break the downward spiral of ever increase doses and "reset, reboot" my body.  I also experienced a comfortable numbness.  I felt pain, but didn't mind it; I also felt pleasure and didn't mind that either.  That's bad.  I had become unmoored, drifting by everything, seeing it all but not experiencing anything.  I became a spectator at the biggest event of all, my life.

     So I went to the most respected pain clinic in the country at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore where I've stayed for two months.  I'm home now, but just for Thanksgiving on a therapeutic leave of absence.  It kills me but I have to return to Maryland, to finish-up the program, for perhaps 3 more weeks.  I entered the hospital on October first.  It was 89 degrees in Baltimore.  Fifty-two days later, I'm still a patient.  The temperature outside is 27 degrees.

    Whats the forecast?  Easy.  Home for good within three weeks in time for a white Christmas.  God bless us all with sight to see his bountiful world.  Colin

Observarions from the Pain Clinic

         Where to begin? 

        My pain med's are nearly gone from my body.  Crumbs remain as if plankton within a current of blood.  These crumbs are now antagonistic within my body, cracking into smaller crumbs releasing trace amounts of insufficient respite from hellish pain.  The nerves in my spine are wrecked.  I often think of the comfort I'd found in much larger crumbs of this stuff.  The respite from pain, flawed as it was, is gone; comfort is gone, pain resides.  Yet my mind is clear.  I won't fall asleep in conversations any more.  Next week, the last remaining crumbs of methadone will have completely dissipated.  What then? Good bye...I'll miss you and don't forget to write.

       You already know pain; there is no reason for me to find words to describe it.  Words are limiting and pain is limitless.  I'm amidst the relative ease from narcotic pills, sub lingual lollipops and a foul greasy demon who will not be exorcised.  How many steps will I take if every step lands on hissing skillet?  Can you concieve of a life with permanently damaged nerves?

       How about this?  "My films" are now so numerous that they are rendered digitally on to DVD's.  There are so many pictures of my guts that they cannot be carried.  The bundle of films became too big, too heavy. These precise images of my body show the medicos that damage is so complete that my hissing nerves will never quiet.  The nerves, from L-4 to S-1, are guilty, shot, dead, buried.  No Easter for them.

       I'm home for Thanksgiving.  I'm on a "theraputic leave" but must return to the Hospital of Sharpest Medical Minds on Monday...back into the hospital until early December. I've been away for 52(!!!) days.  Fifty-two days is fifty too many and I'm still not finished.  What more will be done to me over the coming weeks?

        I am done typing.  I will not allow despair to disable me.  I still have hope that over time I will adapt to this radical change in my life. I cannot sit at my keyboard any longer.  It's early in the morning and my wife and children will roll from bed soon.  I won't miss a minute with them.  I hate the thought of leaving them again. 

        God bless us all this Thanksgiving day.  I hope that your holiday is what you need now.  Mine will be.  Colin

      

Time Travel

Once upon a time, a nice married couple, drove their blue station wagon through the southern Wisconsin countryside to a little cafe in a neighboring town.  It was Halloween, and the couple was going out for dinner to a place they had been many, many times before.

The night was windy and crisp but not cold.  As they drove, the hillsides and farmland wrapped around the car like a movie from another time.  Farmers were still in the field, hurrying to finish their chores before the last of the sunlight went behind the hills to the west.  The warm glow of the kitchen lights burned brightly while dinner was prepared and homework was attended to.

When the couple reached the town, they saw parents and children and dogs, all in costume.  These Halloween revelers were walking up and down the sidewalk through the main street.  The parents held their little one’s hands and navigated through the busy walkways, stopping to say hello and admire each costume.

As the couple drove through the town, they watched the good people of the town and were transported to another time, another place.  Perhaps in their own childhood, long before they had met, in other towns far away. 

The townspeople and children, walking in the crisp air, collecting their bounty of candy from the merchants who were waiting in their storefronts with baskets of sugar-coated happiness for the little boys and girls who stopped along their way.

As they passed the fire department, the couple saw the firemen welcoming the children and parents and passing out glow in the dark items, to help make the children more visible.  A mounted policeman nearby, let the children pet his beautiful horse as he helped stop traffic so the revelers could cross the busy street safely.

When the couple finally arrived at their destination, they were happy to see a busy cafe, with children in costumes eating pancakes with lakes of syrup and older folks having pie with their coffee.  The couple smiled and looked at each other, the same way they did 24 years ago at a different cafe when she waited on him the night they met.

After dinner, they ordered their pie, and sat in happy silence drinking in the feeling that they had done this all before.  They thanked the waitress, paid their bill and drove back to their home.

Happy is too small a word to explain this picture of our couple.  They are blessed and they thank God and their families.

Happy Halloween and thank you everyone.

Thanks for listening.

Anne