Wednesday 9 September 2009

Very quick post, as I feel too awful to sit at the computer for long.

Day 4 of the latest increase and, exactly as per the pattern, I'm horribly dizzy and having real trouble breathing. Managed to work through this stage last time, albeit at home rather than in the office, but just can't do it today. Need to lie down most of the time to ease the breathing, and even when it goes down a bit, the effort of sitting up is just exhausting.

God I feel pathetic.

Tuesday 8 September 2009

No brakes...

Haven't been on here for a while, mainly because I'm having enough trouble just getting out of bed in the morning, never mind then trying to write about it.

After my last post, I increased the morning morphine to 30mg, in the hope that it would offset the effects of the Fluoxetine. The jury is still out on whether it's worked. I've definitely been less zonked taking the Fluoxetine in the morning, but 'less' is a relative term - I'm still needing to rest / sleep an awful lot. I'm still having episodes where I'm so dizzy I can barely stand up, and ones where I can't breathe enough to stand up anyway. The muscle spasms are still there, though it seemed that the increase eased them, then gradually they broke through again. The same goes for the pain. The neck pressure has also been ramping up (to the point of a migraine on Saturday, that required migraine-meds and top-up morphine just to reduce [couldn't get rid of it]). I've also been experiencing episodes of extreme rage-coupled-with-depression.

The last two days it's been a major struggle just to find the energy to sit upright, never mind do anything else, but then again, I did do another increase (now on 60mg/day) on Saturday, so it's not surprising I'm getting another round of SEs. I've expanded the spreadsheet to try to track them, because there's a definite pattern, and if I can nail it down, I can at least know what I'm dealing with. I know that day 1-2 tends to be very bad on dizziness, breathing and general zonkage, but pain levels usually drop. Day 3 is the calm before the storm, because day 4-5 tends to be worse than day 1-2. The rage-depression comes along around day 6, and day 7 is often an uber-zonk, so I can't even lift my head off the pillow. Things usually start to settle down a bit then, but the pain, muscle spasms and neck pressure also all start top build up again. Come day 13-14, I'm suddenly freezing cold all the time and just can't get warm. Then I increase the dose and start the whole dance again.

To top it all though, I discovered late on Sunday that, in my drugged-out state, I'd actually managed to throw my morphine away, thinking it was an empty packet! I found myself with only enough left for Monday, and because of the dose increase, unable to drive to the doc's to get more. I was terrified about pain levels with no meds, about going into withdrawal, how to get to the doctor's, that he'd think I'd been abusing them and therefore refuse to give me more. (I've always been proud of the fact that, through all this, I've never given in to the temptation to go over the maximum dose. Once you lose trust over something like this, though, you're screwed.)

Irritatingly, my doc was on holiday, but the guy I saw was sympathetic and seemed to believe me; he gave me the prescription, anyway. But it doesn't take away the shock (and embarrassment) of doing something that stupid, or the fear that I'll do it again. Or that I'll do something even worse.

I feel like I can't trust myself to do even the simplest of things, cos god knows what kind of hash I might make of it! And it's not like there's anyone here to pick up my silly mistakes, or point out that I'm doing something stupid. My friends tell me I am thinking and reacting clearly, but I just feel in a complete fog; like I'm in a racing car going full tilt round the track, with no idea how to steer the thing, let alone where the brakes are.