Even more pills

I came away from the doctor's today with yet another handful of prescriptions.

It wasn't my intention, but because the drive had so aggravated the pain, he said I could call rather than drive for the next appointment, meaning I needed a month worth of meds, not two weeks.

On top of that, he gently told me off for being so insistent on reducing the long release morphine, when the pain is so bad it's keeping me awake every night. He's right, of course, but I just, as a matter of policy, want to minimize how much I take. It sounded pretty lame when I said it to him and he was kind enough not to point out how stupid it was under the circumstances. It's probably an indicator of how tired and befuddled I am from no sleep and loads of meds, that it hadn't occurred to me to revisit my decision.

So, I'm supposed to go back to 20mg of slow release morphine - on top of whatever quick release I need - and even increase it to 30 if necessary. I guess I just have to get out of this mindset of worrying about how much I'm taking, and always trying to reduce it. The purpose of the morphine is to make life more bearable. It can't do that if I refuse to take it.

On top of all this, he's now prescribed me sleeping pills. It's something we've discussed in the past, but he and the pain consultant have always gone on about 'quality' of sleep rather than 'quantity'. As a result, they've both been very loathe to give me them in the past (and I've never been hugely keen on the idea myself).

I think the sleeplessness, and it's effects, have reached a critical point, though. Getting one good night's sleep used to be enough to refresh me and wipe out the tiredness from multiple nights without rest. Now though, I've had so many sleeplessness nights that when I do finally get a good night, it simply isn't enough. In fact, it makes me feel even worse; I feel even more exhausted than on the days when I haven't slept at all. I guess the doc could see the exhaustion on my face - as well as the fact that I was sobbing from the pain, which he said he hadn't seen before.

So now I've got something called Zopiclone. Apparently they're addictive, so I have to be careful about how much I take, but they're OK with both the long and quick release morphine. I just hope they work, and I can finally get some rest.

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