Once more back sat at my PC and with little surprise Adam is snoring his way thorough the 3rd of his holiday days. Just wanting a day to be normal isn’t enough, even when all the elements of normality are there, my body has started the day reminding me every few minutes of the fact I couldn’t curl up on the settee and snore if I tried. It is one of those mornings where I don’t actually really know where to put myself, lean forward and the pain moves to my side, twist to relieve my side and it reappears in my back, there is no position that will give me the peace I keep trying to find. It’s not as though I am in excruciating pain, it is just constant discomfort and an aching that is designed to drive you made. True pain, the pain that I require to take morphine to deal with is, something I don’t ever want to live with again, although I have done for longer spells of time as I ever wanted to. Pain is one of those things that keeps edging up, just a little here and a step there, with so many other medications keeping it at bay for years, I thought that my future would just have been increasing them slowly and constantly, but it doesn’t work that way.

I clearly remember the weeks before the decision that it was time to go to another level, I had for months slowly been trying to deal with pain that I didn’t believe was possibly normal for MS. It was also the only time I really remember not being able to sleep, there simply wasn’t a single position that brought comfort of any sort. Many years ago I had pneumonia and the pain in my right lung, low in my back on the right side, was the worst pain I had felt to that point in my life, including labour. To my horror MS could produce pain worse than that and almost anywhere it chose to. My GP would do little, everything had to come from my specialist so I had to wait, trust me waiting with that level of pain is of no fun at all. Morphine doesn’t talk that pain totally away, I thought that was the point, I thought that once I took my first tablet I would be pain free, able to move around as I had done in the recent past, but it didn’t happen. The pain has never vanished, the best any and every medication I have taken is that it has reduced it, brought it down to an ache or shorter spells of intense pain. I know without doubt that if I could reverse the meds I took this morning that I would be able to tell you right now, where the pain would be. Pain control seems to be a really strange subject to those who are fit and healthy, I have had it said to me over and over again that surly the doctor could deal with the pain, if only it was that simple.

I have run out of ways to describe pain, there are so many different forms, forms I never imagined and with it’s own outcome as well. Pain doesn’t always just stop and go away, it all to often hangs around, waiting until it is ready to go. The same area will have changed from pain, to tension, or an ache, may be discomfort, one of just as many residual feelings as the pain appeared in to start with. Between all my conditions, all working on the upper half of my body, I am left not knowing half the time what the pain is actually about. On of the many reasons I know it is time to try and teach Adam about all of this, how can he describe to a doctor, what I have just made a total hash of describing to you. I have said many times that pain control is a problem especially when you want to remain part of the world, yes I could ask for a higher dose of morphine and I know it would be given to me, but is it really what I need and want. I know in time I will take it and I will take it without the slightest thought, as I will reach that point that being part of the world is no longer important, being without pain will out weigh everything. I have thought many times when will that time appear, what will be the final straw that changes everything. I believe right now what I need isn’t something that gives the same effect all day long, I want to be in control, to decide that I need something more and I can just take it as it is there, not several days away, thanks to the system.

To date my GP has been great, except on this one subject. When I have asked about this type of medication, that I can take when things are bad, he has always just increased the levels of what I am on now, what I want is something that boosts it all, if and when I need it. I really don’t get the thinking behind how he works, as surely it is better to boost occasionally than to be doped up all the time. I will once again be speaking to him next week so I will try again, but I don’t hold out much hope.