Sleepless night

 I cannot sleep tonight because it feels like my foot (nerve damaged) is in a trash compactor being crushed from the toes to the heel, sides to ankle. It is driving me nutty!!! I took some vicoden but OMG this pain is insane!!

Oh and my neuro's covering doc finally called me after like 3 days. Said to go to ER. F You, tell me something I don't fricken know!! Why not save me 10-20 hrs  while sitting in the waiting room and order the damn MRI I need to find out what is wrong!!  Soon as I find some courage, I will call my surgeon. I'm kind of psychotic at the moment as i'm hearing voices and paranoid that someone is watching my every move. I'm kind of hoping that between taking perphanazine, ativan, and vicoden I don't wake up to this misery anymore. I kind of got bad news today at the eye doc. I'm so stressed about losing my eye sight in one eye, my father possibly having liver cancer, going psycho, and pain being intolerable, I guess I just lost whatever sanity I had.  I emailed my pdoc all this (minus the me not waking up as that wouldn't be good). Oh and did I mention I still have to work this weekend??? I kind of wish I was in the Abbott and Costello stint where they say who's on first cause I really could use a belly laugh...

G

Sent from my Palm Pre on the Now Network from Sprint

New scare (Mar 9, 2011)

Had a very hectic day and was on the road a very long time. I was really tired by the time I had come back to Boston and when my shift ended, I took a good friend home. Well I hit a couple of good potholes on the way to his house, which jerked my back.  I think it finally knocked a disc out as my bladder has leaked some, more than I am used to. Now I have no choice but to call my neuro tomorrow to get an MRI done. I would go to the ER but I am just so damn tired I really don't want to wait for hours to be seen then wait some more for consults and hours more for testing.

I do know that should this be CES x 3, I will kill myself. I know I will have to have a fusion and most likely will be permanently out of work for a while & the thought of no longer being independent just freaks me out. I rather be dead than to deal with this a 3rd time in 10 yrs.

Meds are kicking in now so I will stop here for now

Sent from my Palm Pre on the Now Network from Sprint

Phone…maybe time for an upgrade now!!

3/1/2011

Rather than listening to the radio, I have played my phone in the auxiliary mode of my car. I don’t know what happened, but now I have no sound. The only way I do, is by using headphones!! It’s a little past 3 am but seeing as I haven’t posted a blog in a few weeks, I wanted to write something.

This past week has been a blur, literally.  My pain started 2/19 at 6:30 am and has not lifted much, unless I take either vicoden or gabapentin (neurontin).  Sunday, I was in so much pain that I bought a new cane to walk around the lab.  Co-workers were asking why I am using a cane and I just said my foot hurts real bad. I cannot stand to stand on it.  So by 22:30, I had enough as things were very busy and I was running back and forth so many times it wasn’t funny.  Soon as I came home, I took 1800 mg of neurontin.  Miraculously, I woke up because my cousin Billy came up the stairs like an elephant and was screaming (aka talking) to my mother who is nearly deaf. This was about 11 am. I was supposed to have this day off because it was a holiday (President’s Day) but we had a pt consented and wanted baseline. Fucking great. So after I had a phone session with my Bozo therapist, I called the dialysis unit and was told that the pt was d/c. YAY for me. I didn’t have to go to work today! I can finally rest, so I took another 1800 mg of neurontin. By 2 pm I was goofy and partially sedated. I played my games on Facebook, much as what I am doing now.  I am tired but cannot sleep.  I was going to read some of John Grisham’s book, The appeal but that book had a way of stimulating my brain because I want to know what is going to happen next.

So in my week of pain, I find that my neurologist is on vacation . It was school vacation week. Lovely.  So alligators are nipping at my toes every night and there is nothing I can do to stop it.  So later that day (Monday) I took 2700 mg of neurontin to shut down this pain. I awoke Tuesday in a groggy state. Not surprising and boy did I need Starbucks!!  I had to work on a database  that I have been neglecting and I had a late appt with Bates so I hung out for 3 hours updating the inventory of this database.  Working with excel always makes me tired.  I had 37 pages to change the database so it took all that time to work on it while I drank my mocha and tried to clear my foggy brain.  The next day I saw my psych doc, and I didn’t  tell her I took nearly 7 gms of neurontin.  So I told her about the pain and my father and all that has gone in since I last saw her and she said see you in a month. Fine I said. Course I email her most of the time anyways giving her updates at least once a week if I feel up to it.

The last 3 days of the week were horrible. Pain returned once I stopped taking the large dose of neurontin. And my bones ached so much I thought I should see my foot doc.

3/7/11

I have seen my neuro last week. She wants me try Lyrica (pregabalin) to see if it works better than the neurontin and won’t make me as sedated.  I took the first dose today while at work and didn’t make me sleepy.  I took my meds a little while ago so am kind of sleepy now but wanted to finish this off before going to sleep.

I’m still in pain and right now the bones in my foot are aching so I will need to take vicoden again to quiet it down. Lately that seems to be the only thing that takes the edge off.  I have been taking the ketoprofen but other than keeping my hands limber, it’s not doing much else.  My left thigh has been giving me grief as well as my saddle area.  So I am confused as to which disc is causing me problems.  I need to call my neuro tomorrow as she said there has been problems with email lately.  I sincerely hope that spending $50 on this new med is worth it. I just don’t want to waste all this money like I did with the lamictal just to find out it ain’t going to do squat!

I got a meeting with Bozo tomorrow so I need to get some shut eye.  

Blog 1st of Marzo (Mar 6, 2011)

Been feeling good the past few weeks, all with the exception of physical pain for the past two weeks. My leg/ankle/foot have made my life pretty difficult. The burning pain is driving me nuts so my neuro has decided to put me on a new med called Lyrica. Some people in the group have had good results with it. Others have not. So this will be another trial and error for me. I just hope that the 50 bucks will be well spent.

The group will be making T-shirts. I really love the idea and hope it pans out. The group is planning a get together in mid april.

Well i'm pretty much falling asleep while writing this as it's 0235 and my meds are so kicking in.  Until next time

Sent from my Palm Pre on the Now Network from Sprint

Pain again

Just want to write a bit as my leg is keeping me up again. I was tempted to go to the ER tonight as I could barely walk to the garage. Once the cold air hit my leg, the pain got worse so pretty much had to take baby steps. I know it's because snow is going to fall tomorrow. I wish it would start now and be done with it so the pain switch would be "off".  I really don't think the ER would have done much and I would have been there for hours as the ED was busy. There were already 6 ambulances in the lot so I would have been seen hours later as I was not "critical".

I know part of this is my "fault" because I haven't been taking neurontin all week. I just take it when I need to but I think I need to start taking it every day. It's ghard though because I need to get up early some days and it gives me a hangover if I don't "sleep it off".  I am getting so frustrated with this pain because it just is driving me nuts, even with taking vicoden. But even vicoden doesn't seem to work for me anymore. It helps when I have back pain but does shit for nerve pain. I told one doc who wanted to remove my toe nail on my bad foot that he could give me morphine, oxy, or whatever strong pain med there is and it ain't going to do shit for my nerve pain. He looked at me like I was a druggie and tore up the script for percocet. Never got my toenail removed either. 

What really pissed me off is I was hobbling around work and one of the older ladies I work with wanted me to stay. By 1030, I couldn't stand the pain anymore. It felt like my sneaker was trying to eat my foot off and the side of my leg is so bad I couldn't bear weight on it any more. I had taken 300 of neurontin but it didn't help at all.  I really need to take a day and just pop 3-4 pills every couple of hours. It will get me "stoned" but it will take away the pain for a few days at least.  I've been working so many days in a row
Now i've lost track. Bad I know but my job is important as the samples need to get prcessed or at least separated until they get processed.

Busy week.

This week has just flown by. I really don’t remember most of it. I just know I was supposed to have Tuesday off but we had a new consentee that had me going into work. Then one thing lead to another and before you know it, I put in a full shift. I did have to leave early because in my running around, I didn’t get to do one thing for the next day which was to drop off tubes for a 6 am draw. So I had to wake up at 5 the next day to make sure we didn’t miss it.  Sucked because I never get up at that hour.

Mood has been pretty stable so far. I think the black dog has finally gone to sleep, for now. I still am feeling overwhelmed with everything.  Projects I haven’t started yet keep coming to mind and I just let them sit there until I can find the time to do it.  Sucks when you are the only person to do this stuff.  If I am sick, samples just wait another day.  Only problem is when they are the new samples.  These need to get processed the day they are drawn because they will not be good after a day or more.

I put in my time to try and take a vacation in May. I’m not sure if I can afford it yet. But I know that I can at least not worry about hotels as I will be staying with friends.  My cousin wants me to go see him in Virginia so I am planning on going there for a few days. I want to see my friend in Texas but I’m not sure. I just know that if I am out of state, I can actually take some time off work. It’s driving me nuts to work all the time and I know that if I don’t, I’m going to end up in the hospital again.

Pain as a midnight demon.

It’s 3:30 and I can't sleep. I have been trying to go to sleep for the past 2 hours to no avail. The nerve pain in my left leg has started up and it feels like some one is pinching me.  Since my Godfather’s death last week, I have been in a weird state of mind where suicidal thoughts have been blunted.  Now that my physical pain has started up again, I am thinking of ending it.

For the past two weeks, my neck has been hurting. I finally made an appointment with my PCP and of course he is away until Wednesday. Never ceases to amaze me that whenever I need him the most he is away. I'm not sure if this neck pain is due to the car accident I had a few weeks ago or if it's just because of stress.

I finally called the loan people. I have to pay more than I was expecting which means I'll have to work more in the chem lab than I would like. I am so tired right now to working in that place and the thought of having to work extra days to afford the loans is just killing me. But I have no choice. It's either I pay them the same amount or they garnish my wages that 15%. The nice thing about doing it this way is that after nine months I will be out of default and hopefully my credit will be better. I won't be totally fucked.

I again had a phone session with Bozo because I was just too lazy to get out of bed. I don't even remember what we talked about but she again reiterated what I was saying which totally annoyed me. We talked about my nephew for a little bit and his grandiose schemes, which I have to laugh because nobody seems to know what grandiose means. It's funny how psych babble seems to enter my vocabulary without me even being aware of it. Hard to believe that 10 years ago I was lying in a hospital bed wondering if I'll ever walk again. Around this time the staph infection, was making me very sick. And today I am able to walk but all I have left is this fricken pain that haunts me every night, causing me to lose sleep more than my depression ever could.

I am supposed to be off tomorrow. I hope that I sleep all day. I have not taken any Ativan tonight. But I just took 1200 mg of gabapentin to try and see if that controls this pain. I guess that is all I have to say for now.

(Please note: another Dragon document)

Difficult week

I got word on Sunday my godfather passed away. I was in shock didn't know what to do. I didn't want to believe that it was true. I finally called his wife to see if it was true, and when she started crying so did I. This man was very important to me and I just couldn't believe that he was gone. I also felt guilty about not seeing him around Christmas and wanted to go down the week after Christmas but because of work I just didn't have the time. Before going to bed Sunday night, I e-mailed work to tell them that I was not going to available most of the week. Ravi's group was pretty much okay with it. Chem lab I didn't hear a peep. I didn't even want to wake up on Monday to have the appointment with my PSYCHO therapist. So when she called me at noon, I told her I didn't want to talk. But unfortunately, she didn't hang up and we talked about my godfather. We talked about him for a little bit but I really didn't want to talk at all about anything. Tuesday night I was supposed to go out with a friend for dinner but because I didn't know when services were going to be held, I have to cancel. Turns out Tuesday was the day from hell as I was rushing to take care of all the samples that I would have Thursday with the exception of the sample from Mashpee. Tuesday was also busy in the lab and one of the CLA’s told my supervisor that I would be working. He was not happy when I told him that I was not going to be working. This just made me feel more stressed out than I already was. I also felt bad as I knew that it was busy and without my help they would not finish until midnight. But I was feeling so numb and horrible after another night of not sleeping that all I wanted to do was go home and crash. Around 10 o'clock Tuesday night I found out services would be held on Thursday and Friday in Westwood. I had a feeling it would be but seeing as my car was still being repaired, I was panicking as to how I was going to get there.

My car was to be finished on Wednesday, but because they had ordered the wrong part it was not going to be ready until Friday. Which turned out not to be so bad as my sister ended up driving us down to Westwood. The funeral was difficult and luckily my father didn't attend his own funeral. He was very annoying the entire day. I had only had around five hours of sleep that day as we had to by 7 AM to get to the funeral home. I only cried a few times during the funeral home and mostly it was because I was seeing someone else cry. I really didn't want to work today. But because I thought I would have a research sample, I made it in. And I went well until the tube station broke down and the cleaners decided to wax the floor. We all couldn't wait until night shift showed up and we bolted out of there.

Since finding about Leo, I have been in a numb state. The despair that I have been feeling has been displaced. Thoughts of SI's have been minimal. I don't know if these feelings are temporary like they usually are or are just a part of grief. I still have the picture of Leo and I on my Facebook page. And I still remember the day it was taken. I do hope that I continue keep in contact with his wife because I don't want her to feel left out or forgotten by her one true love and his family. I wish there was something I could do to ease her pain but only time can heal that wound.

(note this is my first document using Dragon. if grammar isn't correct or things don't make sense, it is because it's still new)

Death of a good man

Found out today that my godfather passed away due to a blood clot. It happened so sudden and his wife was real freaked out as he died right in front of her. She was in shock when I talked with her, not that I blame her. She is a good woman. She was more concerned with us than with herself.

After I talked with her, I watched the superbowl game. I guess it was to get my mind of losing my Godfather who I loved very much. I just talked with him around Thanksgiving. I feel really bad now that I didn’t get to see him around Christmas like I had hoped to.  My godfather was a funny fellow. He would talk with such intelligence and seriousness and yet still get what you were saying. His mind wasn’t what it used to be. I would have to tell him who I was and what I was doing every time I called as he didn’t remember. Alzheimer’s is like that.  It runs in my family on both sides so I know the chances are great that I may have the gene for it. 

I called out for half this week. I am more depressed than I was and I just can’t function right now when I know I have a wake and funeral to go to.  I want to be there for my godfather’s wife but my car is in the shop so there is no way of me getting there.  She lives in Westwood, which isn’t close to Boston.  I guess I will just have to see what to do.  I’m just glad he didn’t suffer.

exhaustion

Today I was very tired, more than tired…fatigued to the point where every time I blinks I had to pry my eyes open.  Work was pretty busy until all the outpatients were done. Then things slowed down and boredom set in.  I couldn’t think straight and we got a bunch of add-ons so that kept me busy for a little bit.  I realized my phone needed to be charged and in the process, ending up “renaming” my MP3’s so they didn’t come up as #’s when I go into my song list. This MP3 player on the Palm Pre is weird. It gives you an option of having a playlist, but you need a third party to actually program it. iTunes used to be one of those parties but I don’t have a Mac and I HATE itunes because it always crashes and takes forever to load, even just to end the program.  Bottom line is you can't make playlists. Your only options are to play individual artists and ALL their songs or to play ALL the songs on your phone.

After doing this I was still bored so decided to do my online prep thing. This course is already telling me stuff I already know. BORING. I do the stupid thing and then the final part you are supposed to copy and paste everything you just did with a sentence or two of what you learned. WTF. I learned NOTHING except I am a procrastinator!!  The next module has to do with goals. How the hell am I supposed to do goals when all I want to do is kill myself????  But I can’t write that I want to be dead by the end of the month and actually submit the ways to do it. That might freak someone out and get my ass hauled to APS or some other psych emergency room.  Instead, I just do what I think the world wants me to and go about pretending this is what I want to do with my “life”. I put down that my goal is to finish my bachelor’s degree in 4 years. How the hell I am going to pay for this, no fucking clue. I can barely afford having a car, much less trying to actually spend thousands on my education.  But not only do I have to say what my goals are, I have to list how I am going to accomplish them. I just think about how I’d like to achieve that and write, even though I know all of it is just complete BULLSHIT. Ha..the first time in my life where I am writing that.  The next module is a little bit more intense. I need to work on it like every other day for the next week in order to get credit. That is going to be difficult as next week I not only not have a car to get to where I need to go for my job, but I also have samples to pull for a fellow and I STILL have to fricken aliquot samples for vitamin D testing.

But for NOW, I have tomorrow off and I don’t think I am going to do a DAMN thing except play my facebook games, eat KFC (once I figure out how I am going to get to and back as walking could be icy tomorrow), and then watch the superbowl and hope that both teams lose, which I don’t think will be possible as in the words of John Madden, “the team with the most points win”. I do hope it’s Green Bay only because I really don’t want a sex offender winning his 3^rd superbowl ring and tying Tom Brady.  I have no idea who the players are (course I can say the same for the Patriots) and how good each team’s offense and defense are. But I am sure the commentators will only tell me a hundred times during the first 2 hours of the game.  They are playing in Dallas, which is a nice stadium.  When the Pats sucked, I was a cowboy fan and loved how Aikman played and how Jimmy Johnson coached.  Now that was serious football.

Weather and nerve pain

This week in Boston we got hit with heavy snow. Actually, we have gotten more snow in January than I can remember in my lifetime. So Saturday night after my shift at work, my left leg was really aching and sore. I was the person that was moving samples to be spun, taken over to heme, aliquoting, and running the electronic version of myself, the MPA. I thought it was sore and achy because of all the running around during the 8 hours plus I did a few more hours before my shift as I had to pull some specimens for a study that was to be shipped out on Monday.  However the pain stayed with me the next few days and when the snow started which was Tuesday, I was in really bad pain as I could hardly bear weight on my left leg. Ten years ago this week I was first diagnosed with CES and had similar pain and problem so I was freaking out big time. Wednesday I paged my pdoc because I was in major PTSD mode and my therapist was unavailable due to being snowed in.  She said go to the ER but by the time she returned my call, my leg was feeling a little better and when the snow stopped Wednesday evening, so did my pain.  I was shocked because usually my back goes out. I have never had leg pain due to the weather. It was the weirdest thing.

I told my neurologist about this and we increased my neurontin to help with the nerve pain. I love this drug more than any other drug out there. It’s not a narcotic and doesn’t have any “high” properties but it kind of just zones you out at high doses and leaves you feeling great the next day because you sleep so soundly. Least it does for me. Now I am NOT recommending anyone should take a high dose of this drug for this purpose. But my nerve pain seems to diminish for at least 24-48 hrs at a time, usually with one or two doses in a 24 hr period.  And that in and of itself is blissful.  No burning of the soles of the feet, no feeling like snapping turtle are nipping at your toes. No zapping feeling.

The only down side of this drug is that it makes you hungover. It’s so hard to wake up the next day and get moving. But even though I know this, I still feel something is wrong with me.  My fatigue level has increased in the last few weeks. I can only be up a few hours before I need a nap. I lose motivation for working and then need to come home and rest. I am just so exhausted.  Take yesterday for example. I got up around 11:30 am because I had an appt with my psychiatrist. She had cancelled because the weather was bad but I didn’t know this as she emailed me at 6:30 in the morning.  My car was buried in the snow and there was no way I was shoveling out so I hung out with my niece for a couple of hours watching her and her mother play on the Wii (video game) and had lunch with them. By 2 pm, I could have gone back to sleep I was completely exhausted. But I had to go to work because I thought there was a sample waiting for me.  I struggled past this exhaustion, get to work and find that the pt that was supposed to get drawn got discharged. I came to work for nothing. I was not happy! I might go to the doc next week to find out why I am so damn tired all the time.

The midnight Demons are at it again…

It’s 3:30 in the morning. I have already taken my meds x 2 because I’m in so much pain I really don’t know what else to do and seeing that I can’t sleep anyways, what the hell.  Past few days my left leg has been in really bad pain to the point that bearing any weight on it send me over the edge. Course this is messing with my PTSD big time because the same thing happened ten years ago exactly this time of the year, in exactly this way, that I ended up with a life changing event that I am still dealing with.  See I was at a bar, 12 hrs after a chiropractic session for back pain that my leg gave out on me while standing and over the course of the next 3-4 days, my leg got weaker and weaker because a disc in my back ruptured and was compressing my nerves in the area known as the Cauda Equina (horse’s tail). These nerves and roots are what makes your legs, bowels, bladder, and sexual organs functions as well as give you sensory sensations in the skin below the waist.  Compression to these nerve for any length of time causes damage, sometimes permanently to this delicate system. I had to re-learn to walk again when I was 25 years old and then again a few years ago, though it wasn’t as bad because only the upper leg was affected. Now because I can’t bear weight and I am not having back pain, I really don’t know what to make of it.  Since having CES (Cauda Equina Syndrome), it messes up your whole pain reception.  I don’t know if this flair up is because the weather is bad or because a disc is on its way out. And because I am in really bad pain, my thoughts are also keeping me awake with the worse case scenario. I always seem to find that if I think the worse that can happen, it usually doesn’t. Yet if I try and make something light, the worse DOES happen. Right now my nerve pain is so bad it feels like someone is taking a cheese grater to the bottom of my foot, turning it into hamburger. My calf muscle is clinging to my bones so tightly that I think the bone is ready to snap from the pressure. And if I put any weight on it to say take a step anywhere, it does feel like I have glass shards in my muscles.  I really don’t know why this is happening. It could have been from the slip I had at the T station last week.  It could have been that when that idiot driver hit my car, it also hit my back causing a disc to dislodge unbeknownst to me.  I didn’t have any real back pain. Sure my hip has been bothering me but I have been attributing it to sitting too long and walking around the lab, which usually aggravates it.

The demons are planning on ways to kill me. I rather be dead than think I may have to have another surgery and that this is the beginning of CES x3.  I told my therapist today I was going to end it after my shift tonight but I realized I couldn’t because yesterday was my niece’s birthday and I didn’t want to mess up her day.  And I had a bunch of work obligations to go through tomorrow/today that needs to be sorted out. I figure I can kill myself after all that gets done. But the fucking moron ptx called me while I was at work demanding to know what I was going to do after work and if it didn’t “please” her, I was to go to the ER. Jerk. So to avoid going into the hospital to wreck my life more than it already is, I agreed to see her tomorrow, as I need to be in her part of the country anyway.

Huge snow storm is on its way. This must be the most snow I have ever seen in my life. I know the blizzard of 1978 forced a lot of people in bound as they couldn’t move until the streets were plowed and shoveled their way out. But we are getting the snow in spurts. And the feet just pile up with no where to put the new snow. Oh joy. I’m just glad I don’t have to shovel it!!