Monday Check In

Oh Chartreux, I sure hope you can shake the bug.

Happy news, I booked a flight to Florida for later this month. I will spend 11 days visiting my family. Its been almost ten years so its time to remind myself of why I moved so far away.

I hope everyone has a great week and is able to find something to laugh about.

Hoping Tuesday is better than Monday and so far so good. Bad stomach reaction to the doxycycline I've been taking for the chronic sinus infection. Stomach was heaving, trying to throw up, which I can't after Nissen fundoplication. I got a Zofran down, thank goodness, and eventually it started working. Nothing can come up. Doc said to stop the doxy. So now what happens to the sinus infection? I didn't tolerate Augmentin or Ceftin either.

I wouldn't get out of bed, which only makes pain worse, if I didn't have to let the cat out and feed the 4 dozen turkeys who depend on me since we're covered with a couple of inches of ice. One of them jumps out of the tree and comes right up to me when I come out. They'll have to find wild food when it becomes available because I won't feed raccoons.

I stopped at the mail boxes to spread some salt and the car, in park, nearly slid into the highway after I got out. Then on the way back up I didn't get a good run at the hill, in 4-wheel drive, and I slid back down backwards and then sideways, clear to the bottom. I had to drive across the field to another driveway and get another run, this time with wheels in the snow pack. I got a neighbor to come with sand so no one else will have that fun ride!

I see my neurosurgeon and Medtronics rep this week for a routine check on my neurostimulator. Need some minor adjustments made to my programming to help reduce the eye/facial spasms that I've been getting, but otherwise everything seems to be fine. However, this will be the first routine diagnostics/maintenance that I've had done on my stimulator in a year and a half, because of a combination of lack of time and money. Can't believe that I've had this thing for almost 5 yrs now. How time flies!

Also have a follow-up appointment with my new PM tomorrow to reassess things after a week and a half on lyrica. Still not quite sure what I think of it overall. Sometimes I think it is helping some, and other times not. And I'm still having some difficulty with dizziness. So my guess is that he will increase me to 450 mg, and then we'll reassess again after a week or two at that dosage.

Hope everyone has a good week! Saying some prayers for you, Char and Alcie. Hope you both feel better soon!

Skeye

Ugh, what a week. That's why I haven't checked in till today.

Last fall, my nerve block kicked in after a two-month delay, and I suddenly went into overdose on the same morphine dose I'd been taking before. It required instantly going into withdrawal to go from 200mg to 30 mg a day, though the doctor argued that pain reduction didn't cause overdose.

Well, guess what. The chemo drug I'm taking has reduced my pain even more, and toward the end of last week, I started feeling slightly overdosed, each day wanting more and more to do nothing but sleep and feeling depressed, which is NOT me. My doctor said it was natural for cancer patients to have very low energy and be depressed about it, and it wasn't the morphine. I had my doubts, so I stopped the two 15mg ER tablets a day, thinking the withdrawals wouldn't be anything like the previous reduction. HA!

So I've spent the last three days in full-blown withdrawals, everything from watery diarrhea to panic attacks. But as I'm starting to feel like I might survive, my energy levels are returning (didn't have the hyperness during withdrawals, so I can feel a gradual increase), and my depression is lifting, except when I have spells of withdrawal depression. And no pain from going without the morphine.

I'm hoping by next week I can prove my doctor wrong again and show him that apparently when my pain decreases, I need to reduce my morphine immediately, because it's either going to be overdose or withdrawals.

But now I'm worried about when I might need to go on morphine in the future, like if the nerve block wears off and the new one doesn't kick in for two months like before, or when the chemo drug stops working. I thought I'd be on morphine the rest of my life, but I'm going to make darn sure I really will be before taking it again, because I do NOT want to go through withdrawals again.