My ribs are sore this morning, well to be fair they were sore before I went to bed last night, I had spent much of the evening with them throwing sharp spasms. To be honest they didn’t worry me at all, yes there was a bit more pain than other evenings, but I am used to that. I could feel the pain and pressure, but I could still breath without any real issues so I just accepted them and spent my evening as we always do, sat beside each other watching and discussing TV. I don’t understand why, as the pain didn’t get worse straight away, but once I was lain down, I could feel them far more than when I was sitting up. That is always the case, I can only guess that it is like some animals, our mechanism for breathing is built for us being upright, not horizontal. There was one thing different that showed it up more clearly when I lay down and that was the pain was more to my sides, rather than right around me, but I could still feel the pressure where the pain wasn’t as always, a bit like a strap being tightened again and again. I remember lying there trying to work it out and also trying to use my hands to locate it’s exact position, I have been doing that a lot more lately as I discovered once again a few days ago that some of the pain wasn’t where I thought it was, but displaced by a couple of inches. My nerves lying to me about locations is something I have definitely noticed happening more and more recently.
I woke this morning at 5:45 and I didn’t have the slightest doubt as to what woke me, it was the pain in my chest. It was so bad especially on the right side, that I had to get up as just lying there wasn’t really possible, but before I left the bedroom I took a booster pill. Just to give it a chance to settle, after I had been to the loo I went into the kitchen for a cigarette. It was when I was sat there quietly enjoying my smoke that I had a thought which I’m not sure if there is any possibility of it being right or not, but it could be. I realised on Monday that I hadn’t been to the loo for over two weeks, once again I had totally forgotten, but I didn’t want to take any laxatives at that point as I was sure that knowing my luck, I would then be in the loo when they called to deliver the new TV so I made a plan to take them the next night. I forgot, anyway the result was that I eventually went to the loo yesterday morning, painfully, what I passed was far too little, so I had to take them again last night. Don’t forget that I have now been taking dulcoease three times a day for a couple of months now, so painful shouldn’t have happened and the dulcolax should have been a one off dose. Part of the way dulcolax and all laxatives work is they make you gut go into spasm, forcing the contents to shift through you, I just can’t help wondering though if they are somehow causing some of the spasms I was and still am having in my chest. When I returned to bed, I decided to see if I could feel what was happening inside me by pressing my fingers into my abdomen, from the first touch I knew that I am almost solid through out my entire gut, not only full but tender, acutely in places.
This morning within seconds of getting up, I could feel the pain in both sides, of my chest, low down behind my lower ribs and a second band behind my breasts, but worse towards my sides. Unlike yesterday, this time it is causing problems with me taking a full breath, I have to keep them controlled if I don’t want the pain to increase above the comfortable range and each breath causing a sharp spasm right behind my breast bone. If someone had said to me years ago that I could be having this sort of issue when breathing without feeling even the slightest bit of fear, I wouldn’t have believed them, but that is exactly how it is. I hate to say this, but it is now just part of my life, I no longer worry about pain, I may not like it, but the whole reason pain is there, is to tell us something is wrong, that has been over written with a new story line, pain again, OK. In itself I suppose that is a danger that goes hand in hand with any condition that causes wide spread pain. The more pain you live with, regardless of reason or location, is just pain and telling a doctor about it, or even going to accident and emergency is a total waste of everyone’s time. All I can do is pop another pill and wait for it to do it’s job, it’s failure to do so well enough, is the time that a quick call for a prescription change is required, otherwise, well it’s just another pain on yet another day.
The side effect of all these spasm in my chest and gut is of course I am once more feeling rather sick, I managed to eat about half of my breakfast and the rest found itself in the bin again. I can’t be sure if the laxatives are playing any part in my pains stepping up as they have, but I do know they still haven’t worked at all this morning, it feels as though I will be taking them again tonight. My sickness has been coming and going for as long as I can remember, but I am now totally convinced that part of it is linked to my spasms. Clearly if your insides, be it diaphragm or intestine is all tightened up, getting food to your stomach in the first place is an issue, but if everything around and below your stomach is also in spasm, sickness isn’t really much of a surprise, add in the MS factor and it is a totally clear picture for anyone. Lying down and relaxing doesn’t work, where lying down does work is when the nausea is being caused by vertigo, I have to say I am reasonably lucky in that it one symptom that isn’t a to often visitor, when it is there though there is nowhere else to be other than bed. It doesn’t matter what the cause or really the symptom, if it manages to drive me into bed, then I want total silence, I can’t even stand the traffic outside. On a normal afternoon where nothing is bothering me badly, just going for a nap is easy, but if I have increased pain or feel sick, well I a car will receive a slit eyed, tight mouthed curse, I have never heard any crash, so I guess they only make me feel better and don’t work on the car.
When I am up and about, I am totally the opposite, I hate silence and I have to have the TV on all the time as I totally hate music, odd you might think for an ex DJ, but I reckon that is why I was so good at it, as I couldn’t care less what the style required for the venue, it was all annoying rubbish that I didn’t listen to, beyond the queueing, setting and mixing, after that it was just the beat I bothered about as I was dancing and working out what next would work for the crowd. It was dancing that kept me sane as honestly it is really boring other wise, just standing there spinning records for others, a good DJ doesn’t play the music they like, they play what the people want. I did even listen to music at home much, but if I had to pick a style well it had to be progressive rock and the heavier the better, only one venue I worked in regularly did I get to play it. You have to remember this was my full time job and to make it pay as such I had to go where the money was, the best at the time was always rave and I was happy to earn the money. The very last venue I took on as the resident DJ 7 days a week, with a group of trainees under me, was all rock and metal, I may have preferred the music, but I didn’t allow for the fact that the owner was a lunatic and nearly got us all killed and working with armed police there to protect us, so I left. When I gave up all my DJ work, I stopped listening to music at all, other than when I was with friends. Part of the problem was I had become so used to being able to know if a record was worth playing or not, by the first 15 to 20 seconds, after that I could work out what the rest would be like and had no desire to hear it. What people don’t realise is all of us actually only really hear the bass line, it is that that will hook us or not, the rest well it’s not that important. My entire life I have hated anything I couldn’t dance to alone and dance I always did, ballads and romantic music, well I don’t understand why anyone likes them.
Without the TV, being housebound really would get to me, as other than documentaries mainly historical, it is the news I watch the most. I have always had this need to know about what is happening out there, with one exception, I don’t want to hear local rubbish, I like my news to be the bigger issues, the events that make the world what it is, not Mrs Browns cat. Some might say that 3 to 4 hours of news a day is a lot, but it keeps me entertained and more importantly makes me feel as though I at least haven’t lost track of what is important to the present and future of our world.
Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 45/12/12 – Dreaming of cleaning
Two Rooms Plus Utilities 