Chronic Pain House of Cards
Crash bang wallop.
I had an example of a very nicely stacked House of Cards come a-crashing down this week.
I have been in a very positive state, and a good spirit for the past week and a bit, and had two separate comments show it was outwardly apparent too.
My Manager commented in a one-on-one that lately I seemed to be in one of the best states she’d ever seen. That was unexpected and bloody inspiring to be honest. Then on the Monday after that, at my fortnightly GP visit, my Doctor said I looked really good as well. It’s not often I get comments like that, and receiving two within a couple of days was a first as far as I can remember.
Why I looked and felt so good I can’t fully explain. It was a fairly normal period of intermittent pain and exhaustion for me. I was still busy at work, but probably some nice family bonding at home over a three-day weekend were what set the scene. I was re-reading the excellent book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People‘ during transit to work/home. I was feeling pretty switched-on and in tune with that, and some thinking about future business strategy.
Life was very good at home. Our son Olly is developing well, catching up with his slightly-lagging speech development, and my Wife Sharina doing a remarkable job at keeping-house. We also enjoyed some gardening over the weekend, pulling some ugly plants out along our back fence and replanting gardenias and some mulching to tidy things up nicely.
Onto the Cards…
I renewed my script for a drug called Endep on Monday, but forgot to restock it in my Day/Night pill container. Endep helps me with phantom pain, and sleep. I didn’t realise what had happened, and suffered very poor broken sleep on Monday and Tuesday. Had no idea what was causing this and was doing everything right with early-nights and normal sleep routines.
On Wednesday, the exhaustion started taking hold and I was reasonably ‘done-for’ by the end of the day. But, not enough for me to think to give Sharina a heads-up I was coming home in a Zombie state.
I had a typically annoying bus ride home, with school kids up to their usual peace-shattering hijinks. Not enough to ruin my still-good mood.
I arrived home to see and hear Sharina on her phone, talking with her mate Kelly who is often rather loud and excited. Sharina doesn’t notice but she starts talking loudly back. I drop off my bag and join Olly on the floor. He’s excited to see me and soon beckons me to chase him around the floor with both of us crawling like babies. It’s funny, but I get tired really quickly, and just lay down to see if he was happy to chill with me and play with Lego.
This doesn’t go to plan and I end up using the last of my energy chasing him around the kitchen. This lasts for about five minutes, with me becoming more and more frustrated with the noise from the girls on the phone, and me having no energy to play and no opportunity to just chill.
Our son Olly will be two in a few months. Sometimes he’s good at reacting to my low energy and joining me to sit on the floor and watch the idiot-box. When he’s not it’s obviously impossible to just instruct him what to do, and it’s also very disappointing for me to feel I’m letting him down or not returning the enthusiasm.
When Sharina finished the call we quickly greeted each other, then she began dishing up dinner and we all sat down to eat. My mood worsened and I couldn’t control it, which angered me. A nice little vicious-circle was soon going on. Sharina asked if I liked the meal, as it was a new homemade pasta recipe, I rudely replied “It’s food”. I quickly finished my meal and headed to the shower to relax and unwind.
I couldn’t settle myself so decided to grab my headphones and try a meditation session in our bedroom. As soon as I opened the door, I saw Olly was waiting for me and he excitedly shouted DADDA! It just broke my heart, and I closed the door and switched off the light. I thought I would go to bed even though it was 7pm, as I thought catching up on that lost sleep would at least sort me out for work the next day.
I still hadn’t noticed my Endep wasn’t there so I ended up with another night of broken sleep with some unpleasant dreams tossed in for good measure. I get up at 4AM the next morning and finally figure out the Endep situation when I took my morning pills. Kicking myself, I decide to take one then to at least help with pain, but probably cause me to be 50% zombie at work. It ended up worse than that, and I struggled badly until 11AM when I declared game-over and decided to go home.
Lessons.
Obviously disappointing to go from unexpected compliments about my good-health, to a complete opposite within a few days. I have been taking Endep for 10 years I think, and this is the first time I’ve ever forgotten like this. It goes to show how well the medication does help, but I’ve also learnt the hard way that just because you know a lot of techniques for dealing with chronic pain, disability and poor health, it doesn’t mean you’ll always successfully action them when required.
Sorry Sharina & Sorry Olly.
Love to all.
Robbie
This post originally appeared on my blog, on August 19th
