Wednesday 18 May 2011

New nightmare

What a bloody awful day yesterday!

The neck pressure was bad from the get-go but the burns on my back from the TENS machine the day before, meant I couldn't put it on again. I decided to try a hot bath instead, as that seemed to help the other day.

I was feeling too weak to manage sitting in the shower, so lying down in the bath seem a safer idea. Unfortunately, although it did help the neck pressure, the heat seemed to sap every last vestige of strength I had.

It was a terrible struggle just to get out of the bath, get dried and dressed, and then I collapsed into bed. That was at 12.30, and I was stuck there until 7pm. I just had no strength at all - I couldn't even raise my head. I ached all over too. It didn't help that the shoulder pain started to flare again shortly after the bath, so I had to take the second double morphine dose of the day. That also knocked me flat. Luckily, a friend is staying for a couple of days, because it would have been a bloody miserable day on my own.

I finally managed to get up in the evening, but then I must have twisted funny opening the Lofepramine bottle at 10.30. Within minutes I was in absolute agony, doubled up with my back in spasm. It started with the muscles where the TENS pads sit going into spasm, then it spread into horizontal bars across my back, then the bars quickly joined together. I couldn't talk or move, it was agony just breathing.

I took a double dose of morphine, but it just wasn't working fast enough and I was panicking it would eventually get too hard to draw any breath at all. I felt like heat might help, but it needed to be hot water, not the heatpad, and I didn't dare try the bath, because even with my friend there, I wasn't sure I'd be able to get out again.

The only option seemed to be the shower: my friend got it going, then helped me in there, fully clothed (getting undressed was completely impossible). I sat on the floor of the shower for ages with her firing the hottest shower possible at my back.

Gradually, the heat and the pills kicked in and the spasm released enough that I could get up and make it to bed.

Unfortunately, that wasn't it though - my back was still very tight all night, my shoulder kept kicking off, I felt very out of it with all the meds, but to take more and more of them because if my shoulder. I got no sleep whatsoever, and god do I feel rough this morning!


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