I’m kidding about the “Whiner Series”. Kinda sorta.
When pain prevails, there’s no way to focus on anything as your mind is overwhelmed, or maybe I should say it’s more like being run over. Road kill. “Dead skunk in the middle of the road.” Will have to Google that lyric one day to give the proper credit. Not today, which means never.
There’s nothing else you can think about when pain takes over. Simple neurons that course through your body, constantly fire a single message to the brain saying “hey dummy, something’s badly damaged here that needs immediate attention.”
Like I need the reminder.
That’s been my life the last three days. Pain was my only companion. It took control, climbing the old 1-10 pain scale trying to prove there’s more than 10 levels of torture.
Torture’s a great word for it. Your own body betrays you, in my case building bone where it shouldn’t. My spinal column is severely narrowed, discs are pressing against the spine. The small canals that allow for lateral nerves to exit the spine are getting smaller and smaller. Pinch the nerves and what happens? Nerve pain.
It’s too wide spread for surgery, or so I’m told. But if my options are wheel chairs and partial paralysis I’d risk the potential negatives. I’ve always told my wife if I lose my legs, or have to have someone wipe butt, I’m pulling the plug. Sames hold true if there’s signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s.
But back to the story of the week.
Besides the now ever-present neck and back pain, it seems as if most of my left side is involved. It’s a combination of increased spinal pain and an added terrible burning that starts at my rib cage down to my left hip.
My pee is far from clear, but more of a milky color. Cloudy is the best way to put it. Cloudly, white. You can’t see the bottom of the porcelain bowl.
Far from “normal”. I put that in quotation marks because who knows what normal is anymore, especially with this body of mine.
A urinalysis tract infection?
Aaah…maybe I’m passing the stone that showed up in the last CT scan. A small one in the left kidney, with another in my right. .
I’ve been fighting kidney stones for the past 10 years, having one so large it had to be blasted by sonic waves. Like being kicked by a mule, and you pee blood and sand for 3 days. Isn’t that a movie or song? Blood and sand.
To date I think I’ve passed another 12-15 stones. CT scans, done every 8 months, will show 1 stone in each kidney, then 2 stones in the left only, then 1 in the left and 2 in the right. It’s a guessing game. I should start my own lottery based on guessing the size, number and location. The winner gets 50%, I keep the rest.
No matter the cause, my whole side was killing me.
I’m thinking they need to add another number to the pain scale, an 11 or 10 plus, which would denote your pain is so bad you’re having suicidal thoughts. It’s the fastest way to make this stop. Eff the doctors.
Suicide isn’t mentioned on any pain scale I’ve seen, but that’s ignoring the fact.
Suicidal? Damn straight, this pain has to stop as I wasn’t sure how long I could last. Is there a difference between suicidal and suicide ideations? Maybe for a shrink, right now it didn’t matter much.
My normal dose of hydromorphone helps, but now it’s only taking the pain from a 10 to a 8. We just reduced the dose at my request from 4 mg’s taken 4 times a day down to 3 times a day. Why? Just to prove I’m not addicted to opioids, that I could tough it out.
Not to mention the 3 mg sustained (controlled) release every morning and night.
That’s a total of 18 mgs a day, or an equivalent of 150-180 mgs of morphine. And that’s not working.
Throw in pregabalin, clonidone, rotigotine and baclofen for more nerve and muscle spasms and you’d think I should be covered.
Not this time.
All I can manage is lying in bed on a heating pad, Mister Blu snoring as he cuddles up against me. The dogs know when things are hurting, that I’m having trouble. People should give dogs more credit than they get. I think they’re a heck of a lot smarter than we know.
If you remember from earlier posts, 10 is the highest level on the scale and means “I’m curled up in extreme pain and need medical intervention.”
Yeah right. If that was the case I’d be running to urgent care or the ER every other day. They look at my medical records and medications and think “here’s another junkie, drug seeking”.
So instead of calling my family doctor (who is quite responsive BTW) or my pain specialist, or going to ER I lie in bed all day on the heating pad. I’m in the middle of binge watching The Wire, but have to keep replaying parts as I can’t focus. So to hell with that, CNN and the horrors going on in the States would have to suffice. More just background noise,
I’ve been taught, like everyone, that you have to be strong and live with it.
But then I remember I have an old prescription of ketoralac, sold as a generic or under the brand name Toradol. Sure enough, after rummaging through my dead pill bottle collection I find I have 2 pills left from a year ago.
“Should I? Shouldn’t I?” Hell yes I’m going to take it. Don’t have anything to lose at this point. So I popped open the bottle and added that to the mix of other meds flowing through my veins.
Forty-five minutes later and the pain has gone from a 9 down to a 6 or so. Not quite a cure-all, but the drug was enough I could stop thinking about the fire burning in my side.
Ketoralac is used for acute pain, (which is what I was experiencing), but normally for post-surgery recovery. It can only be used for 5 consecutive days because it’s really a bad actor, causing damage to the stomach lining that can result in ulcers and bleeding.
Plus it does damage, potentially permanent, to the kidneys. The CT scan, besides showing the kidney stones, showed significant scarring of the right kidney. The diagnosis concluded it was caused by constant infections, like the one I’m fighting now. So taking anything that’s hard on the kidneys is risky for me.
But when pain prevails…you do anything you can.
Postscript:
Five days later and I’m back to my normal 80%. I still have my limitations on how long I can be “semi-normal” but I can at least be at my level of productivity to satisfy that internal need to be productive.
I only had the 2 remaining pills left, taking one on Thursday night, the other Friday morning. The pharmacist was sending in a re-fill request to the doctor, but also gave me 10 more pills. Apparently pharmacists in Canada can do that if a patient has already been taking a single medication but there’s a lag time between the request being filled.
I ended up taking a dose, a single pill, Friday nightstand one more Saturday morning. Well within the recommended time of five days maximum.
But it did the trick, and by Sunday my pee had cleared up, so the stone must have passed.
Anyone else in pain can easily play Dr. Google and look up Toradol/ketoralac on their own, but below is a great write-up on the drug. An interesting read really, and reinforcing how bad this medication can be.
At least I know not to mess around with it, 3 days was enough.