It is now two whole pain filled days without my booster pills, but the good news is that I haven’t had a single vivid dream, now I know for sure the reason for them, I can factor it in along with all the other choices that I have to make when I’m in pain. Last night I was so tempted to take one, but I really had to have those free hour and two nights sleep to be sure, it does leave me with a problem though. I have had the Morphin booster pills and have been using now for over 18 months, prior to my stepping up the number I took in each day due to the pain being caused by my stomach, I never had the slightest problem with dreams, so I am reasonably sure it has to do with the number of them I take in any 12 or 24 hour period. This, of course, means that I have more testing to do, but at least I have the reason for them. Life is always so easy with hindsight, but it was in January that I suddenly started having broken nights and dream, I never had a bad nights sleep prior to that so it couldn’t be more black and white if it tried. Hindsight, also has another thing that comes with it, feeling stupid that you didn’t make the connection sooner. I can’t believe that I was so stupid or that I spent so many broken nights sitting in the kitchen having a cigarette trying to work out what was wrong with me, or why I just couldn’t shut my brain up. All those nights and the cure was so simple, it was those damned tablets. I freely admit that I have been reaching for them more and more, not just because the pain has been worse than before, but I had discovered the one thing I feared that I would get fuzzy headed, didn’t happen. It seemed so simple when the pain levels got beyond what I could bear for just a few minutes, I had developed the attitude of why put up with it when one tablet changed everything. Now I am going to have to put up with more pain and just see if it will settle by itself before taking anything for it, but that way when it is really bad, I can take them without losing sleep.

There is something odd about sitting somewhere in pain and doing just what you know you have to, put up with it. I’ve been doing it for years, but just having those few weeks of freedom to remove it to a livable level, well they did have their up points, but I discovered yesterday that they were also covering up other things. Pain control works on your whole body, not just the area where you have pain and all those so-called targeted relief products, well they aren’t, that is just marketing, a fact that I saw confirmed on TV the other day. I never knew how to prove it until now, but if you look at the back of the pack, you will find a license number that they are produced under. Every drug that shares the same number has to identical, no matter what the marketing man calls it, be it the cheapest or the most expensive, the license number gives away the truth. So save yourself a fortune and buy the cheapest the result is identical anything else is just placebo. I have always wondered what my drugs might hide and what is really happening inside me, but the one thing I never expected was to find things on the outside. I have heard people say that they “were in so much pain that even their hair hurt”, something that I didn’t only think was an odd thing to say, but actually impossible, I have discovered that in some ways it’s not. All I did was run my fingers through my hair and over the scalp at the front to move it out of my eyes, to my total shock it hurt. OK, it wasn’t my hair but it wasn’t my entire scalp either, it felt like it was every few hair follicles, my disbelief was such that I had to do it again and sure enough my “hair” was hurting. I have been aware of heightened sensations over my entire head from time to time, but clearly the higher pain relief has also been dampening sensations caused by my nerves as well. Putting on my face cream has shown me that my forehead is losing sensation other than numbness which is now the reaction to touching it, to the extent that I can draw a finger across it produces a numb line, which slowly returning to normal over the next few minutes. The rest of my face keeps breaking out in patches of tingling and itching all that I knew were there, but not taking the booster in the last two days has shown me that it is far more active than I thought and it’s not just sensations over my head, but across the whole of my body. It is almost as thought the sudden removal of the extra Morphine has been greeted with a party of reactions from almost every nerve I have, from spasms to irritating itches, my skin and body has been going mad. Not that I am going to try it, but I can’t help wondering what I would feel, if I stopped taking all my meds, as in an odd way, I don’t think I know the half of it.

Bodies are strange things and I know mine is stranger than most, but I would never have believed that those odd sensation and pains I was living with in my 20’s, could ever get to the point they are now and I am only experiencing a muted version. I hate to think what the lives of those people with my condition collections were like in the past or are like in countries where either you buy your drugs or you put up with it. I suspect that suicide numbers were and are raised for that very reason as no matter how strong people think I am or how much I believe I can put up with, I don’t think I would be here either. Personally, I won’t have anything to do with illegal drugs but, in this case, well I can fully understand why some might turn to them. Like so much in life, it is down to personal choice, no one should have to run the risk of being criminalised for simply finding something that allows them to live a more normal life. There are right now countries in this world that if I arrived there with just the legal drugs I take daily because they are prescribed and I need them and even thought I had just what I need for my stay, I would be seen as a drug runner and be put in jail, yet without them, I would have no life. Every country has the right to its own laws, just as every person has to live within them, like it or not, for some of us we have the choice to go there or not, but what do those who are born there do when every door is closed to them, my heart goes out to them. As I said the other day on Twitter, “Even though we live with #chronicillness, just remember one thing – It could be a lot worse”, it really could be.

They say they are working on a cure, it will be a cure that will probably be given to those who can afford it first. In an odd way, it will be given to the people who actually need it the least, we have options, it is those without option who need it the most, but will probably be the last to even know that it exists.

Read my blog from 2 years ago today – 28/04/13 – Gaps prove the loss

I wish more than anything that I had a tool that would record my thoughts as I cross over into sleep. I know without any doubt that every night I write in my mind the most beautiful and most profound statements, so far above those I actually write here. Before someone suggests that I take a notepad with me and writing the best of them down, well that would mean……….