Friday 10 July 2009

Terrified

I'm scared.

The Tramadol's not working anymore. The pain doctor said the only option was morphine, so I went to my GP today. I was in so much pain I could hardly walk or talk -I don't think he was expecting that. We talked about it and he gave me the prescription. For some reason, though, my brain just kept shutting down, and the minute he stopped speaking, I couldn't remember a word he'd said. Usually I'm very good at memorizing instructions etc - dose to start on, how much to increase it by and when, that sort of thing - but today I had to ask him three times, and in the end get him to write it down. I couldn't even remember the name of the stuff and kept wondering why he was talking about some medication I've never taken!

I thought I was just having a brainless moment because of the pain, though I was a bit surprised, because it wasn't as bad as it can be, and I can usually still think better than that. Now I think it was more than that though - now I think my brain was shutting down out of fear.

I'd planned to go and get my prescriptions filled tomorrow; with the Tramadol failing, the pain is unbearable, so I wanted to start any new meds as soon as possible. But then a few minutes ago it hit me - tomorrow I'm going to be taking morphine again. And I freaked out.

I was put on morphine last year, but within a couple of weeks I went into a terrible terrible depression and was seriously suicidal. I can still remember the unbearable blackness that seemed to come down around me. Sitting there, late at night, desperately trying to get someone - anyone - to answer the phone . It wasn't just that I wanted to kill myself, it was that I knew that the next step would be realising I'd already gone too far to turn back. Like the way you keep telling yourself you're not going to complain to the people upstairs about the noise - right up until the point that you put a hole in the ceiling with the broom handle you don't even remember picking up.

It's the thought of facing that horrible blackness again that has me so freaked out now. The blackness that weighs more than the sun and pins you down and obliterates you. The blackness that drives out all the oxygen, snuffs out the light and dampens down all sound, so there's suddenly nothing there but you. So all you can see, hear or feel is It, pressing down on you. It's the way you try to make yourself so small that it can't find you, but somehow it always does. The way talking to someone can make you think it's gone, but really it's just hiding. Waiting.

That's what scares me about going back on morphine. Because even though I'll be watching out for warning signs , even though my friends are going to be looking out for me, even though I'm already taking antidepressants and that might help stave it off, I know how fast it can strike. Last time, 12 hours before I found myself drowning in blackness and contemplating the knives in the kitchen, I was feeling fine. Better than fine; I'd gone into work, had lots of compliments on how I was dressed, my hair, my nails. The pain had been bearable; things had seemed pretty OK, all things considered.


Then out of nowhere this thing swept in and took over. It tooks weeks to get the morphine out of my system and months to get over those feelings (or not, apparently). And here I am, about to start down the same road again. I'm only doing it because I truly believe there's no other way; I can't live with the pain at this level any more, and I think there's just as good a chance that if I try, it'll push me over the edge anyway. So trying a different morphine, one that's meant to have fewer side effects, makes sense I guess. I just don't want to go back to that place again, that's all.

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