Well, I’ve not been able to pee for about three days now. That’s not EXACTLY the truth. I can dribble a little bit, but there’s nothing quite as unsatisfying and deeply depressing as walking away from the bathroom with a full bladder because all you could do was “leak a few drops,” and that was a 15 minute endeavor that took all your strength and left you exhausted!
I do not know if anyone actually reads my blog other than my wife. It’s for friends and family to peak into my life and get an update on my health if they want, but people are busy these days and I am probably the most verbose person that I have ever met, and besides I really write because writing is my form of therapy anyway! LOL!!! See, it took all of that for me to just get to the point! If you have ever had a catheter, you know that it is rather painful going in and coming out, and for me, rather painful the entire time it is in, tugging on your ‘innards’ every time you move. I am so desperate right now, that I am seriously considering having Sheri drive me down to the ER to have them put a catheter in to drain my bladder! …almost ready for a catheter, but not quite yet…I will give it another day or so and see if this little problem clears itself up, which happens a lot with me. Yep, MS is a C R A Z Y disease alright! One day you can’t stop your eyes from crossing and the next day, the problem has cleared itself up…one day you have cerebral palsy symptoms and every 2 seconds you see a flash of white light and this lasts for 3 or 4 days and then you wake up one morning and you are back to normal. If I went to the ER every time I had a problem, I would LIVE at the ER!!!
On Wednesday, the 29th, I had to go see this Orthopedic Doctor that I’ve never seen before. I told him that we should really get an MRI of my spine before he did the exam. He did not listen to me and it was an IME exam and I had to do it, so I just “Mustered Up,” “Manned Up,” and went through his torture exam and told him each time where it freakin hurt as he bent and twisted me around. God Almighty! It hurt so bad, but I “Nutted Up” and did it and was very cooperative with the doctor and at the VERY END of the exam, while he was examining the pointless X-Rays, which I had told him that it would be pointless to waste time and money taking X-Rays in the first place – but he didn’t listen to me either, he said, “we really need to get an MRI to see what’s wrong with your back before we can make a firm diagnosis.” Well duh shit you moron! I’ve spent 6 years studying medicine, medical science, specifically, all the medical science that is specific to me and my issues. I can read MRI films accurately on my own, better than the radiologist often, and occasionally I’ve caught stuff that the neurologist has missed. I KNOW what my OWN brain looks like in an MRI…
I’ve spent hundreds of hours looking at ONLY my brain, not countless patients’ brains. I’ve seen my own MRI’s, CT’s, CT Angiograms, MRA’s, X-Rays, EEG’s, ECG’s, for 6 years over and over and over again, examined them, read the reports, watched the progression of my disease and the symptoms and medications, and I even know how to read blood workups. I’ve seen 74 doctors in 6 years. Not a single one of them has seen ALL of my records together to see the full picture and the full history. The ONLY doctor who was actually getting close and using “differential diagnostics,” plus he had Sheri and I doing research on our own since he knew that we had more time to research my specific condition than he did and he would examine what we brought him and determine if it was nothing or if it was something to explore, freakin DIED! He was our “Dr. House!” LOL!!! All the other neurologists are like most doctors. If you point out something they did wrong, or something that they missed, they get pissed off and end the appointment quickly. They don’t want to explore all avenues. They want to stick to the book, whether you fit the book or not, whether or not the treatment the book suggests is working for you. I now know more about headaches, seizures, MS, and reading MRI films than my Neurologist does! And she’s really, really pissed off at me now and doesn’t want to see me anymore. If only I was a freakin doctor!! I could give myself all the tests that I REALLY need to have done and be put on the correct combination of medications that I need. However, my HMO Medical Group won’t pay for the tests I need to have done unless a Neurologist writes a letter stating it is a “medical necessity” and my Neurologist WON’T give me a test that I request because I came up with it and have a theory that she did not think of first!
OK, that’s enough whining and bitching. Wah, wah, wah… Any-who, so ever since this quack Ortho Doctor had his way with my back, twisting and bending me in all sorts of unnatural ways, I’ve not been able to move or lift or bend hardly at all. I bent over yesterday to pick up a screwdriver and I almost screamed out loud because it hurt so bad when I tried to stand up, and then when I tried to walk, my back had other ideas, like ripping my entire lower back into shreds, shattering my right hip, dipping my right leg in hot boiling oil and then paralyzing my right leg so that I could no longer move it at all! I had to take ALL of my pain medication, even the ones that I NEVER take (the narcotics), and I had to take the FULL DOSES of all my other pain medications (I NEVER take the full doses, I always take half doses).
Today, I am All Prepared. I am sitting on a beach towel in case my bladder just randomly unloads while I’m sitting here or during a black-out/pass. I have my empty gallon jug of Crystal Geyser water with the large opening for me to have a larger target to aim at in case I have an uncontrollable bout of the “wee wee’s” and can’t make it to the bathroom in time! I raided my Super Special Emergency Use Only Pain Medication store. I snagged my bottle of Vicoden. I hate that crap. It takes the edge off of pain, but it really doesn’t do all that much more for pain for me than taking 5 or 6 Advil (but with less liver damage). The evil of Vicoden, other than the fact that it doesn’t have much effect on me at all, is that it MAKES ME NOT BE ABLE TO PEE! LOL!!! I do not see how anyone could get addicted to Vicoden. On my body, it has the same effect as taking a handful of aspirin, and I have never developed any desire or addiction to aspirin, or heard of anyone ever getting addicted to aspirin. It has to be a psychological thing. You can probably develop a severe addiction to LIFESAVERS candy!
I’ve also had to pull down the dreaded Indomethacin. It will numb your pain, but it will eat away the lining of your stomach, burn a hole in your intestines, give you liver damage, and decrease the lifetime of your kidneys, but it will ease your pain and that’s a fact! I think Indomethacin is a medication that is given to people whose bones are breaking down, but in people with Multiple Sclerosis, it is given for Emergency Use ONLY for painful migraines. I have discovered that not only does Indomethacin work very good at relieve the sharp slicing, stabbing, throbbing, screaming agony of my migraines, but it also works well for overall body pain, kinda makes you entire body “float.” I usually take a dozen Indomethacin in an entire year!! So far in 2011, I have already taken FOUR Indomethacin.
I started writing this at 11:38 this morning, but it’s taking me over 5 hours to write this. I have had these irritating dozing episodes where I can’t fall asleep, but I’m not awake either. I’m in a waking dream-state. I have hallucinations and dreams when I am in this state and when I come closer to the “awake” part, I suddenly become aware that I have been hallucinating or dreaming. And yes, there is a distinct difference between a hallucination and a dream. When I’m dreaming, it’s just like a dream when you are asleep, exactly like the dreams I have when I am asleep. I have narcolepsy and part of that is my freakish ability to enter REM sleep in an inhumanly fast pace. A hallucination is when I still see my surroundings and am still aware of everything around me, but there are EXTRA components/’things’ AND people dispersed throughout the house. For example, a few minutes ago, I had a hallucination where Sheri was here and I was talking to her about the placement of one of Virge’s toys on his cage and about moving it. Sheri is at work. She did not get up off the couch and go move the toy. THAT was a hallucination and when I came back to my wake state, I realized that. It used to freak me out, but I’m used to it now.
Ah, let the pain medication flow freely…bring on the Morphine Baby! Yeah Baby! Let’s get this party started! Vicoden is for wimps. I have the good shit. I gots me some Morphine homie’s! Yeah Baby, let’s pop some Morphine and ride that smooth wave of pain-free bliss! Oh Wait! I forgot, there’s something freakish in my body that makes it so that Morphine has ZERO effect on my body. You can pump me full of Morphine from now until the cows come home and all it does it make me throw up. It doesn’t do jack shit for my pain. Hell, Morphine won’t even ease a headache. I just keep it in case we have a really bad emergency.
Naw, I’m doin the junkie shuffle Man. I got my eyes set on my stash of Fentanyl Patches. Now THAT’S the Good Shit. It’s 100 times more powerful than Morphine. Yep, it is 100 times more powerful, but it comes with a hefty price in side effects! 😉
I think I will just sit here in pain until Sheri gets home. She will love on me and pet me and make me feel better and help make the pain go away and she will help me see if I am just being a “Drama Queen” or if it would be smart or not to take such drastic measures instead of just holding on a little bit longer to see if it gets better or not. I get confused sometimes these days, well a lot actually, and Sheri helps me to snap my brain back onto track so I can think straight again! Fentanyl is a VERY hardcore narcotic pain reliever so I should wait and talk to her before I just go off and start taking it. That would be smart thing to do. So I’m gonna wait until she gets home. I love Sheri. She helps me get All Prepared most of the time when I am confused and can’t remember or can’t think clearly. And it is very, VERY difficult to think clearly when you are in agonizing pain.
That has become the theme of my life: Pain. I think a lot about getting a cab ride down to the beach and swimming out into the ocean as far as I can and diving down as far as I can, so far that I run out of air and physically can’t swim back to the surface, no matter how hard I try. At first panic and fear will strike, then the realization that my pain is finally going to end and I peacefully give in, and then the agonizing torturous pain of drowning (drowning is not a calm act like you see on TV), then my pain is finally over. I have a couple minutes of agony (so what) to end years and years of pain, and agony. That seems like a pretty good trade to me and I am pretty confident that the amount of pain that I have and will continue to have for the rest of my life will accumulatively outweigh that of those few moments of drowning.
There’s just one little problem…well, a few little problems. Sheri will be devastated if I were to kill myself, even if it were to end a lifetime of pain and suffering. My Mom and Dad would be crushed. I’m their only child. My family would be hurt. They are all strict Southern Baptists and even though I would be ending decades of agonizing pain and suffering and mental degradation, they could never understand. My Friends would all be deeply hurt and saddened. However, Sheri and my Friends, after a short while, after their initial grief and shock had worn off, would come to understand and to a sort of peace with it because they would understand and would rather remember me as “me” and not watch me writhe in agonizing pain for decades and degrade mentally. They would know that I had made peace with God and that my mind was fading away into nothingness and I was no longer going to be “Tedd.” I would mentally cease to even be “Tedd.” I would just be a blank, empty, drooling, semi-conscious lump of flesh who could not speak, only grunt and scream, or move or see or hear, but could only feel agonizing pain and did nothing but scream constantly, even screaming in their brain because no medication could stop the pain and that the thing that used to be “Tedd” was long gone and this lump of flesh was just something that spent day and night screaming in agonizing pain for no reason.
Nope. No cab rides for me today. I am still “Tedd” and I can still remember most of my relatives and long term memories, and I can think fairly well most of the time. Sheri is a Saint among Women! I Love Her So Much and I don’t know what I would do without her. I guess I would be licking a Fentanyl Patch right now instead of putting it on my arm so that I would get the full 72 hour dose all at once in hopes that I would overdose and end this pain right now. Nope, I’m gonna wait until Sheri gets home.
>ð|~@-@~|ð<
today is a rather high pain day. I’m having a rather clear thinking day so far. I hate dementia. It sucks being 38 and having dementia, you know? Anyway, I’ve come up with some good descriptions for 4 areas of pain that I have. I have a lot more pain than this, but I’m tired of all this typing and can’t type anymore, so this is all I can describe for today.
teddwebb 