Tuesday 4 August 2009

M-Day 23

New side effect, or rather, existing side effect gone mad...

I've been getting breathing problems since I started taking the morphine - nothing major, just feels like I'm at altitude and the air's too thin. It tends to be worse at night when I've taken the larger dose.

Last night, though, I also had panic attacks. Over and over, it got really hard to breathe and I started to feel panicky - though not about the breathing; I've lived at altitude, so I recognise that feeling and I know it's not a problem. No, this was like being perpetually in the moments just after you've woken up from a really bad nightmare - your heart's pounding, you can't breathe, you're on hyper-alert in case the monsters weren't just in your head . . .

I had this once before, that night after I increased the dose to 30 on the immediate-release stuff, but it didn't last nearly as long. This just went on and on, all night. I tried putting the light on, reading, doing puzzles, watching TV, nothing worked. And as soon as I stopped concentrating on something else, it happened again.

I'd already not been able to go to bed till 1am because the damn stuff was making hyper, and then this.


Oh, and I nearly broke my toe at the weekend tripping over a footstool - it's now all swollen and blood-blistery (my toe, not the footstool!). And yesterday I burnt my hand on the oven . . .

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