Newbie

Hi! I'm new here. I had a motorcycle accident back in 2004 that nearly killed me, have steel rods in my leg, cracked vertebrae in my neck, chronic low back issues because they "believe" one leg may be shorter than the other now after the compound fracture and rods, etc. For several years, I tried to go it "alone" because after being hospitalized and rehabbed, and all of the other BS I never wanted to see another doctor again! I would be in constant pain but would self-medicate through alcohol, etc., if you get my drift. I tried the old health route as well, kicking all substances, dropping down to barely anything through exercise, healthy living, and then I would get these attacks in my back and neck that would literally cripple me for upwards of a month.

Long story short, I had one of these attacks in April of 2013, and it never went away. After nearly two weeks of crippling agony, I went to my doctor, who started me on Vicodin. That worked awhile, but after hounding him for another script after a month, he said this was out of his "realm," and discharged me due to insurance. I was assigned another Dr, and she was more sympathetic, and she suggested pain management. They put me on Oxy 15 4x daily, Gabapentin, and Trazadone. My script ran out and my PM doc went to India on an emergency, and as the fates would have it, my primary was also on vacation (It was Thanksgiving) so the PA wrote me a script for Vicodin rather than Oxy, and I wound up in the hospital for heart arrythmia due to the large amounts of acetomeniphen (I was taking nearly 10 vicodins a day to stave off the withdraw). The DR came back and straightened out the script, and put me back on the Oxy, Here I am thinking "what the hell?" I don't want to be on all these medicines, there has to be a better way, but when I try to wean off, the pain was waiting there, just as bad as before.

So, last week, I accidently dropped my pill bottle in the toilet, losing my last week's worth of oxy. I had only 4 pills to get me through the week until my refill, and I have been in living hell. I had to break the four 15's into quarters, just to take a 3.75 would take the edge off the hellish pain, sweats, sneezing attacks, body jerking, etc. The Gabapentin helped me to sleep at night, TG, but this has been a most miserable experience.

I became deeply depressed through this, thinking this is my life. The Drs are not very helpful, mostly dismissive, the ER is completely hostile, and I feel I am a prisoner of medications. I tried to avoid this for years, and it has come to this.

Guess I just don't know where I'm at, or where I am going...

Vickie:

Over the years, these flare-ups would happen, I would have to go on meds and PT, and try a wean, and then stay off and just suffer day-to-day with mild-to-moderate pain. I would basically drink myself to sleep at night, not a good alternative.

Then, I find an Eastern healer, and managed on biofeedback, tens machine, inversion, daily weight training, drastic weight loss (and I was a normal weight to begin with), meditation, clean living, and Percocet for flares that couldn't be controlled naturally, so it was occasional, but I still lived with the pain, just learned to "accept and embrace it" as my healer advised.

The flares started to break through, becoming more and more frequent, but I still continued to manage them this way. My doctor told me my neck was degenerating, and this was a serious issue, probably that would require surgery. I told him the only way someone was coming at my neck with a scalpel is if we were in a knife fight. Needless to say, he didn't like that.

Then in April of 2013, we were moving, and I guess something must've happened then. I didn't feel any particular "mechanism," just two days later, I went to get out of bed, and I was literally crippled. My legs were numb and weak, and I couldn't turn my head, I felt like I had molten lava going down my spine. And it stayed that way for two weeks before I finally relented and crawled my sorry rear into the doctor's office begging for relief. And so, the medication journey began.

I just feel tired. Sometimes I wish I had actually died in that accident, I get so frustrated. This is a new year, and I hoping for some insight, and for happier days, and a way to manage this pain without the grief of narcotics, but I don't even know if that is a possibility right now, and that makes me sad.

Glad to talk about it. No one else seems to get it. I'm just the grouch who is always in pain if not on meds, and that makes me sad too. I am hoping to find some happy medium between naturopathy and PM to keep things happy and manageable. God bless~

Thanks Ashley. Sometimes it feels very lonely, and I feel trapped and frustrated. I rehabbed back from some hellish injuries, and had "episodes" that were really bad over the years, always temporary, done within a few miserable weeks, but then "arthritic changes" and "degenerative changes" started setting in, which the doctors told me early on would be eventually inevitable. I was still very young when the accident happened, just 30 years old, and here it is nearly 10 years later, and the roosters came home to roost, as the old saying goes. I am certainly on board with the one day at a time, for sure. I hope this New Year is good to you as well!