Walking a tightrope

Wierd day today - I woke up feeling OK, but noticed when I actually got up that I was feeling really stiff all over, just like when I was on the Tramadol. As soon as I started moving around, though, I realised it was a lot worse than that. The pain was totally off the chart - I've never had that kind of pain getting up before, it's only reached that level during the course of the day. It was all through my shoulder, my neck, back and all across the top of my chest. It was excruciating, I felt like I hadn't taken any meds for days, and I have no idea why. I started to wonder if I'd accidentally taken two of the anti-nausea pills first thing, instead of one of those and one morphine (the only difference between them is the tiny writing on the side), because I've already confused them a couple of times. But it can't have been that, because I started to feel zonked a couple of hours later. So I thought maybe the morphine was just taking a really long time to kick in, but three hours after taking it, the pain was still unbearable.

I ended up having to do the 'topping up' thing, with the immediate-release pills, for the first time.

I was worried about this, given how the stuff was making me feel last week, but the pain was so bad, I had no choice. It took about an hour-and-a-half, but eventually it did start to ease. It didn't last long though - another couple of hours and it was already wearing off. I know I could easily have taken another one, but I didn't want to, so gritted my teeth to get through to the time for taking the evening dose. I made it - and this is the larger of the two doses, so it's helped -but even so I'm getting a lot of pain heading off to bed, so god knows what tomorrow's going to be like.

This is all such a balancing act - I don't want to increase my basic dose yet, because the side effects still haven't settled (though they seem to be improving), but if the pain's so bad that I'm having to take the other pills as well, then I'm going to get those side effects too. So which is worse - more side effects because of a high dose of slow-release, or more side effects because of a lower dose of slow-release plus occasional immediate-release? If I could be sure that the higher dose of the slow-release would work, I'd say that would be better, so I didn't have to go through what I did today, but I can't even guarantee that.

It's like trying to build a wardrobe with no instructions and wearing a blindfold!