I found myself in so much pain the other night, that I quite honestly didn’t know how to stand up. I know that is one of those statements that sound almost flippant, “I couldn’t stand up”, but honestly, I couldn’t. There it was, a pain that when I tried to stand stopped me from pulling myself upright. I wasn’t even what I would call stooped, as the best I could do was to obtain a semi-sitting position, just without the chair behind me to account for the somewhat odd position. Luckily, I only had to take the few steps needed to sit in my wheelchair. It was a pain like no other I had felt in my lower stomach. I wasn’t in any doubt as to its cause, it was coming from my intestine and it was the pain of something moving incredibly slowly inside me. I had in fact first felt it 24 hours earlier, just not in that position, then it was just pain, now it was debilitating. It was far more a case of the position, rather than the level of pain that was stopping me from standing upright. I felt as though, not only my insides but my entire abdomen that would split if I tried to push myself any more upright than I was. Whatever my guts were trying to shift, it was struggling once more, thanks to the muscles that my PRMS had rendered useless long ago.
Luckily for me, Adam had stood up quickly and left the room ahead of me. It was bedtime and I really hate Adam seeing me in that amount of pain, my wheelchair made it easy to disguise, as soon as I was sat again, there was nothing on the outside to be seen. Even on the inside, the pain subdued dramatically, clearly it was all about position, so sitting it was. From that point on, he wouldn’t see me trying to stand, so it was purely my problem. I also knew from experience, that it is the sort of pain that only lasts at most a couple of hours, but will appear again, once the stool has shifted to the next point, where my muscles can’t shift it, and so on until I can dispose of it, which luckily, is usually painless. I also knew from experience, that the stress that was already building about going to the hospital the next day, wasn’t going to be helping me much either.
Just before we actually left the house the other morning, I took a morphine booster. I had woken that morning in pain and I knew what lay ahead, not the disaster with the stairclimbers, but the normal trip is stressful enough. One of the screw ups of the transport system is that you are not allowed to bring your own wheelchair with you. All the time you are actually in the hospital, you are stuck sat on the most uncomfortable contraption I have ever sat in. A hard chair that looks padded, but isn’t, on small wheels that mean you have to be pushed by someone else, clearly not designed for sitting on for endless hours. Having a painful stomach was only going to make matters worse. I lost count how many times Adam offered to help me out of it and onto a more comfortable, in his mind, chair, but it wasn’t really the chairs fault. I was twisting and changing position constantly, he thought that it was my bum that was sore, but he was way off the mark. It would have made not a scrap of a difference where I was sat, I still wasn’t going to be comfortable.
When last night, I once again couldn’t sit still on the settee, and actually had to ask him to fetch my morphine for me, I got around to explaining what was up with me at that moment. Whenever my guts are this bad, it has a habit of triggering pain from my gallstones. On the whole, they really don’t bother me that much, but last night there was an added pain, one that I wasn’t quite able to explain to myself. When I leaned back, my gallstones caused pain in the front of me, when I leaned forwards to relieve it, I had an equal pain in my kidney on the same side. I should have done then what I didn’t until this morning, read up on what they symptoms of gallstones are. I already knew most of them, and on most sites, they told me just what I knew, then I found one that said the pain can shift into your back, and they can cause heartburn as well. Something else that I have had a lot of recently and couldn’t understand why. Even though I had taken the 10mg of Morphine that Adam brought to me at 7pm, it took right through until about half an hour after I had taken my night time meds, which included 70mg of slow release Morphine and 1200mg of Gabapentin at 8pm, to start to feel anything near comfortable. I know that most people would have been calling an ambulance if they were in that much pain, but I’m not most people. I’m used to dealing with pain, so this didn’t phase me as much as it would most, but if you still don’t understand why I didn’t call, well read my last post.
Pain doesn’t really upset me any longer, it is one of those things that the longer you live with it, the more use to it you become. In fact, I have noticed that I don’t take nearly as many of my Morphine boosters now, as I did even a couple of years ago. It isn’t because the pain is less, it is more that I can now deal with it better inside myself. Once you realise that not even that level of pain is going to kill you, well you breathe through it and wait to see what happens, if that fails, then you wait for the tablets to work. I frequently find myself putting up with it for a couple of hours, before the idea of a taking a tablet appears. When the pain is in my stomach, I am more likely to take an anti-nausea pill than I am to take anything else. As the pain has become worse, so has the nausea. Hardly a day goes by, that I don’t find myself feeling like throwing up, or with a mouthful of sick, that has suddenly appeared. It doesn’t matter how much pain I am, feeling sick is something that always gets more of my attention and far faster.
I am still waiting for my appointment with the Gastro consultants, and after the problems on my recent visit, I am quite honestly in two minds about going. Yes, that is how much it has affected me. Adam told me the other day, that the appointment is next month and that it is at 11:45. If he can rearrange it to an appointment between 9am and 10 am, then I would feel far happier about going. It is a fact that we have learned over the years, the earlier you can be there, the sooner you get home and with fewer the problems. It makes sense if you think about it. We have had to endure several long and tedious waits for a four man crew to be free, as the stairclimbers have stopped working. The earlier in the day you use them, the more likely you are to have a smooth trip. No matter how much pain I am in, or how many times I have to eat extra tablets, I don’t want to go through another horrendous day like the last one. I am quite honestly, no longer up to it.
Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – Understand OK
Two Rooms Plus Utilities 