Tag Archives: medication

Brain buster

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They say when you watch something, it never does what you’re looking for. Well, mine eventually did. I’ve been staring at the phone on my desk, willing it to ring, for the incontinence nurse to call me and let my know what her boss said. When she did, you would have thought that she was reading out the results of some sort of competition, giving me all the points that they took into consideration, before just telling me what I wanted to know. They have looked at all the scan results and my history and present problems, especially those being caused by my intestine and bowels and for now, they don’t think that I need to have any form of a permanent catheter. What they want me to do is to be careful to be sure that my bladder is as empty as possible whenever I go to the loo. This means that I have to double void each time. For those who don’t know what that means, I have to stand up and move away from the toilet for a minute or so, then return and try again. I also have to use a method I have already been using for years, to rock gently side to side and back and forward, which as I knew already, makes the urine move out of it’s hiding spots and out of me. They believe that if I continue to do this, I should be alright until the problem with my bowels is sorted, when hopefully, the problems should lessen. She once more added that if I do find again that I can’t empty my bladder, then I must call for medical intervention immediately.

I didn’t tell her, but when I spoke to the district nurse on Friday, I had talked through with her, the reality of implementing her final point. She was just as I dumbfounded by the idea of calling 999, within minutes of finding I couldn’t empty my bladder. We talked it over and quite rightly she agreed with me that that was just not a viable plan. I can with ease sleep for 13 hours without once getting up to go to the loo. Therefore, my bladder, nor I, am in any type of danger for that length of time. That is, of course, as long as I am not in severe pain. As she said, I’m not stupid, I will know in myself if I need help or not, but maybe that guideline of 13 hours, should be my max. I am also not stupid enough to leave it any longer than that, as I am well aware that urine can turn toxic to my body with ease. Which is a problem for anyone, but for someone like me with a compromised immune system, something I need to be careful about constantly, hence the double voiding. Should I feel at all that I need help, then I should call NHS 24 or my doctor for help. There should be no need for me to be dialing 999 unless I know something is horribly wrong. Both NHS 24 and my doctor would be able to send out a district nurse armed with a catheter to my assistance. After that, well then we can talk it all through again and possibly include a detailed chat with a urology consultant.

I have come to the conclusion that the continence nurse who has been coming to see me, just likes to scare people. There was no need what so ever for her to have worried me the way that she did. She could quite easily have left here without saying a word about permanent catheters at all. Returned to her place of work and talked it through with her boss, then telling me, exactly what she did, when she phoned me. If she had done that, then I wouldn’t have landed up feeling as I did and I would have had a much better end to my week. I have learned one lesson from all of this, should I see her again, I will not let myself be wound up until she has checked her “thoughts” with someone else first.

I have to admit that I have been lucky and I haven’t come across many like her. On the whole, the medical profession has always told me their thoughts, but done so in a way, that it felt like they were imparting information, not telling me that there was no other option when there was. Just like the consultant who I saw about my bowels, he laid out all the possibilities, what they could and they couldn’t do and what they thought needed to be explored first, hence the enemas. Even though I left there knowing that this was the last possibility, but at the end of the day, if I couldn’t cope with it, the final option was down to me, I could request a stoma. When I left there, I felt a little shell-shocked, but I didn’t feel as though I had lost control. In fact, it was the total opposite, and it left me with a new problem, when and how to make that decision, and I still don’t know how to do that.

It took me many years to realise that the medical profession doesn’t have all the answers. What they have are possibilities. In an emergency, they make the decisions for us, but when it comes to those things that aren’t going to kill you in the next ten minutes, the choice suddenly becomes ours. No one can do anything to you without your permission, that’s clear as you always have to sign those disclaimers, but there are times when you want them to tell you, not suggest to you. About three years after I was diagnosed, my health was so bad that my Neuro offered me chemo. It was all explained to me, how it would affect me and most importantly, what they expected it to do for me. What they were offering me, was a way of turning back time, they could say how well it would work, or if the results would be long term, or just short, but it was the only option there was. To me, that was an easy choice. Without it, I was heading downhill so rapidly that I would have been a vegetable long ago. It didn’t feel like a choice, it was a no-brainer. Everyone wants to live, to be able to function as a person. I wasn’t going to say no, if I had, I would have hoped that they would have sectioned me and done it anyway. Where I am now, is totally different.

If the enemas work properly, they will not only move the faeces out of my body, but they will remove the pressure and pain that I live with daily. The short spell I had last month when it appeared it was working, I found a new appetite for food, I could breathe with far more ease and both the pain and pressure were gone, even my mood improved. It was wonderful. Now, we’re back at the start, it is as though none of it ever changed. If I have the stoma, well it removes the problem of getting rid of the faeces, and hopefully the pressure, but there is no guarantee it will change the pain in any way. The pain is caused by my nerves and removing them and my intestine, might not change the pain at all. I will also spend the rest of my life with a bag attached filled with poo. How do you choose?

This week, we’re stepping the enemas up to three times a week, if that doesn’t do it, I could have them every second day. How many weeks or months is a fair trial? What if they never give me the result that I want? Am I asking and expecting too much? When do I say enough and if I do, will I be any better off? This isn’t a no-brainer, this is a brain destroyer.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 08/08/2014 – The small things

Once again I crawled off to bed at 8:30 and slept all the way through, which of course leaves me with a problem as to what my new drug routine is doing, as every night I have taken my drugs later, I have gone to bed early. Now that doesn’t make any sense to me at all, surely not taking my drugs should make me want to go to bed later not sooner, as I have shifted my routine and once……

Emotional overflow

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I found myself sitting here falling into floods of tears, for what feels like no reason. I was fine until the district nurse called, it was the one that I really like, although I can’t tell you her name, so nothing new there then. She was the one who came to see me first, to talk through the whole process of them coming here to give me eneama’s and to help me with the problems I had then recently started to have with my bladder. I have seen her a couple of time since then, but following that gap and after the news I had from the continence nurse the other day, I decided to update her. When I started to tell her about the possibility of having a permanent catheter, the tears suddenly started to flow. I didn’t expect them, as there hasn’t been a single one until then, but with the door opened, they have just kept reappearing without permission.

All of this intervention and changes that are underway with my carers, plus the feeling that I am losing more and more of my abilities to live normally, just suddenly became too much. I know that right now, nothing is definite and in many ways that in itself, is making it all the harder. Right now, I would love someone to just say this, this and this are happening and it will all be done by such and such a date. As I said to the nurse, I hate the fact that it is up to me, to make the decision as to if or if not I have a stoma. All this fiddling around with eneama’s which work sometimes and not others is starting to get to me. If it were as simple as them pushing the liquid in and I sat on the loo and everything just left my body, then great, but it’s not. Again today it failed, nothing other than a couple of tiny blobs that must have been sitting low in my guts. The bulk, the bit that has been sat there for two days, causing me discomfort and even pain, didn’t shift at all. Of course, we didn’t know that was what was going to happen when we were talking. She had asked me if I had an appointment to return to the hospital, which I don’t, I told her that as far as I knew,  it was now up to me. If we didn’t get a result with the eneama, good enough to leave me comfortable, and if I decide that I can’t handle things any longer, then I will request a return appointment, to give the go ahead with the stoma. She said that she was going to check the letter from the doctor, as she said that she felt that there should be some kind of follow-up.

Having gone through all the disasters of the eneama’s failing, and the fact that I am still finding myself no further forward in getting rid of the pressure and the pain, I agreed that it was time to try a change. Although it was something I don’t really want, from the point of view of having space in my life for other things, like being me, we’re stepping it up to three times a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, if that fails, we’ll go for every second day, which is what the consultant wanted, but not my GP, the district nurses, of myself, who all felt that was just too much. We have to try everything as a stoma, is the final step, one that I don’t want to take, if, something else could mean I could avoid it. As I said the other day, I believe that my bowels are behind my bladder not wanting to empty, so it could be a fix for both. No, I don’t want a permanent catheter either, if it can be avoided.

When she left, I was still lying in my bed, with tears rolling down my face. It was me who told her to go, I felt able to get off the bed and to go by myself to the loo. Keeping her there, felt like another pressure that I didn’t need, as I knew she had many other people to see. She double and triple checked and assured me that if I needed her to stay, she would, but with her gone, the tears then flowed freely, without the restriction that I was putting onto myself, of not wanting to cry in front of her, for what felt like no reason. I lay there for about another ten minutes before heading to the loo. I already knew that nothing was going to happen, I had had the eneama inside me for twenty minutes and I felt nothing. I pulled myself together while I sat there on the loo and told myself to stop being so stupid. It kind of worked, if two or three times an hour escaping liquid running down my face, could be called working.

I don’t know why I suddenly feel as though I am under pressure by all of this. It’s not like anything has really changed. Maybe, it is a psychological change that is needed. Maybe, I need to start seeing my eneamas as routine, not as something that is there as some sort of demand to perform. I’m not stupid, I do realise that it is the fact that I have the final say when it comes down to the stoma, that is getting to me. I so wish someone else would stand up and tell me what to do. I just don’t feel that my mind is in the condition to make such a huge decisions, as it feels like it should be a purely medical decision, but I also see that it can’t be. The continence nurse saying there wasn’t a safe amount of time to have a bladder that didn’t want to empty, hasn’t helped either. There must be a point when it changes from safe to dangerous. I don’t want to call for an ambulance for my bladder to suddenly empty by itself when I reach the hospital, just as it suddenly let go other night. I don’t want to even have to go to the hospital at all.

The district nurse phoned me in the afternoon, as she said she would. What I had said was totally correct, the decision about the stoma is all up to me. I admitted to her that I am at this second in pain from my guts, she rightly said to me that it’s a long time to Monday, so one of them is going to be here tomorrow, to try again. Maybe tomorrow, it will be totally different. Maybe tomorrow it will work, and maybe tomorrow I won’t have to worry about all of this ever again, which tomorrow that is, I don’t have a clue.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 06/08/2014 – I’m still here

Everything has to be rushed this morning as Teressa and John will be here around 11am, they are coming for lunch today as there is some show that neither Adam or I have ever heard of, but apparently has been running in Glasgow for around 20 years, that they want to go and see. It is always the way……

Dumbstruck

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The world and it’s dog, think of MS as a condition that affects muscles, both in pain but mainly weakness. They see us as future cripples, the people sat in wheelchairs, rarely seen without a carer and simply waiting for the day to pass. After all what value are we to the world, the cripples who can no longer work. Some look at us with pity, but most don’t look at us at all. We are invisible, long before we disappear completely by becoming housebound. I can say that, because if someone had asked me when I was 20, that is probably roughly what I would have said. Just as I saw spina bifida as people wearing calipers until my son was born with it and then died 12 days later. None of us really know what any chronic condition or disability is like until it somehow touches us. Even now, I couldn’t tell you if my Jeffery felt pain or felt anything at all, I just had to take the word of the doctors, that he was at peace in his misshaped body.

MS isn’t just weak muscles and pain, it is so much more. All you need to do is read my blog from its start to today, and you will see that there isn’t a single part of me that it doesn’t affect. Although, I do have to add that what you would read is my version of PRMS, one of five forms that MS took until recently, now there are only four. I discovered yesterday while reading on line that PRMS no longer exists, we have been absorbed into PPMS, although how I’m not sure. I’ve read the description often, and I quite honestly don’t fit. Yet, who am I to argue with the great and the good of the medical world, I am, after all, only the person who lives with it. In fact, I’ve lived with it now for over 30 years, but if you were diagnosed with RRMS, SPMS, PPMS or even benign MS tomorrow, I couldn’t tell you what lies ahead, because I haven’t lived your life. It’s not just MS that this is true of, whatever the condition, all of us would find our own quirks, symptoms, and difficulties, that’s just life though, as none of us live the same one in the same body.

At times people have asked me what is the worst thing about the conditions that I have. Yes, it is plural, I like the majority of people with a chronic condition have a collection of them. Why they travel in gangs, I can’t tell you the medical reasons, but I’d make a guess that once our bodies are weak, we are susceptible to other developing. As for the worst part of it all, well, it depends on what day and at what time you ask me. In the mornings, I am most likely to say that it’s the pain and by the evening the fatigue, catch me in the middle of a brain fog, and I’d most likely look at you stupidly and say very little of any sense. Chronic illness is a minefield filled with monsters, just waiting to take over from each other when the others have got fed up of playing with you. But if you have one, you already know this.

Today, though, my physical monsters are just treading water, the pain levels are set at normal and my fatigue just slightly higher, today, it’s the monster in my brain that is having the most fun. I have started and not finished a dozen things already, and my poor browser, has been straining under the number of web pages that I have opened, most I have little idea why. Concentration is little more than a distant memory. I have even stopped this post more times than you would believe, returning and having to read my earlier entries, and then sitting here trying to work out where I thought it was going. Even now, I’m not sure. Mind you, that’s nothing that unusual. For some reason, today seemed like the perfect day to change broadband suppliers. I had been thinking about it for a while, but out of the blue, I found myself actually doing it. So hopefully, as of the middle of next month, I will be flying on high-speed fiber and miles from the company who couldn’t even answer their phone without getting me angry and leaving me in tears. Yes, I will double check all that I’ve done when my own brain has returned.

I know that I am being rather flippant today, that is quite often the result of living in a muddle, as if you don’t take it on the light side, you’d drive yourself mad, if, I’m not already. Seriously, though, unless you are living with a brain that has been affected by something like MS, you don’t have a clue just how frustrating and depressing the whole thing is. I know that I am still managing to type out word after word and that I will appear to many as not having the slightest problem, but take my word for it, my brain is a mess. All of those wonderful tricks or the gizmo’s that are supposed to aid me in my everyday life, to me, are totally useless. It doesn’t matter what it is, my brain finds a way of turning it into an ignorable annoyance, something that doesn’t apply to me, or at least not at the moment it is trying desperately to put me back on track. It doesn’t matter if it’s a post-it note, a list, an alarm or even something huge in the middle of my computer screen, I can ignore it and totally forget ever even seeing it. Life with my brain is now one long smooth line, uninterrupted by all those annoying little things, like eating, washing or taking my meds. Well, it would be, if I hadn’t long ago started using Adams brain to fill in what I missed and of course my carers now keep me straight as well. Yet, I’m lucid and intelligent, well I think I was once, and might be occasionally now, as long as I don’t engage my brain, it will trip me up in seconds, if I let it and even when I don’t.

There is nothing in my life that annoys me more than those hoards of people who have happily brushed aside everything I have said, then try to tell me of this amazing way they know, of getting things done and never forgetting again. I learned long ago that I wasn’t only invisible, I was also mute as what I have said, was clearly unheard. Until you have spent an entire day, with my brain, in control of your life, you won’t understand, any more than you can understand the effects that pain has me, outside of the pain itself. When your brain is being eaten alive by lesions, nothing is as simple as it was just a week ago, far less a year ago. Unlike my body that now sits in a wheelchair, there is nothing visible that supports my brain. I can’t show it to you, all I can do is tell you, but then, of course, I forgot, I’m mute.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 01/08/2014 – A spark of truth

I am waiting for the phone to ring, Teressa and John are due to come and see us today the first time we have seen each other since Christmas. To be far I doubt I will get a call before 12, after all, they are on holiday and as she is staying with her brother, I know last night will have included more alcohol than is …..

Which, what or way next

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The mental overload that I have found myself within the last few weeks is becoming exhausting. Why is it, that when life finds a chink in your mental armour, it then pours in more and more until you want to scream at everyone, “Just leave me alone”. I find myself exactly where I feared when I agreed to the help of carers. Finding those glorious gaps where I am alone and life is peaceful, seems almost impossible now. Two months ago, my life was easy, Adam and I alone on Saturdays and Sundays and every weekday when he works, I was here by myself and our evenings were about us, nothing else. Now, I have just Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, when life is as it was, the rest, are messed up, changed and noisy with people. How can just one hour from each day being changed, feel like a total day taken over?

I know that last week was exceptional, as I was really meeting and building the picture of my needs from the incontinence service and the district nurses, but even when they were here to do my enema this Monday, it felt like my entire day was reshaped. The enema on Friday hadn’t really worked. I did warn her that I didn’t think the contents of my bowels weren’t in reach. As she squeezed in the contents of what looked like a rather large bottle, all I felt was the tip of it, then 15 minutes later the liquid starting spill back onto the pad she had supplied for such an outcome. Neither of us had really thought it out either, as although my wheelchair was to hand, I had my trousers and knickers still around my ankles. Not exactly a good move when my body was racked by tremors and we had to somehow get to the loo. Trust me, it was a journey that I wouldn’t have managed without her assistance, otherwise, my white bedroom carpet wouldn’t be so white. It wasn’t as though my bowels cleared, they just took exception to having something enter it from the wrong direction.

Until late that afternoon, that was all that happened. The hours passed and nothing other than fast journeys for small amounts of liquid. I really shouldn’t have wished for action as that was what I got all day Saturday. Every time I moved, I had to go to the loo to clean myself up. I went from nothing happening, to a slow seepage of solid that I could do nothing about. On the good side, it was also Saturday that I started to feel pressure right across the top of my stomach, a pressure that I knew all too well. Late Sunday, it started to turn the corner and if life went to my bodies normal plan, that would have meant three more days of gentle build up, them two or three days of pain, before it would move again. Normal was interrupted on Monday, by enema number two, and the wonderful relief of all that future pain being interrupted by relief. As Murdoch used to say “I love it when a plan comes together!”. Because it cleared as far as possible, there was no follow-up leakage, no pain nothing, just my body doing what everyone else does with ease. Monday also found me on a good day. When the nurse arrived the tremors were quiet and I wasn’t normal, but about as close as I ever get. That meant that once she had me safely on the loo, without either my trousers of knickers, I told her to go. She could see clearly the difference in me and was happy to follow my wishes. I think she had been gone about twenty-five minutes when I started to wonder if my choice had been a wise one.

Somehow, I had to return to the bedroom, play about with the new mega towels she had delivered (quite honestly, if you added tags, it would fit a 6-month-old baby), get redressed, locked up the front door properly, and tidy up all the bits and pieces she left behind. That whole period from her ring the doorbell to then was about an hour and a quarter, and I didn’t have the tiniest drop of energy left, twenty-four hours on, and I’m still not revived. It appears that I somehow managed to empty, far more than just my bowels.

It’s Tuesday now, that means I am alone today, this is one of my peace days that I knew so well, but every second of it so far feels, like I am working towards finding the energy for tomorrow. The morning will find me once more with the nurse, and another enema, although I doubt there is much there after yesterday’s spectacular success. Tomorrow afternoon will see my carer here for my shower. How am I going to make my way through all that, and still be alive enough to enjoy my evening with Adam? A double whammy, that right now sounds like something that is going to leave me beyond wiped out, but I have no choice, this is the agreed plan, the way things are to be until we know exactly what works and what doesn’t, for my bowels. It goes without saying that I am more than hopeful that the space between each enema in time will be expanded.

It is bad enough that I feel so out of control of my body, but to throw in the sensation that my life has been taken over and planned by others, well, it’s left me just a little numb right now. Yesterday, the chemist arrived with yet another new drug, something else for me to swallow on the instructions of my doctor. It feels right now as though all I do is swallow and breath in medications, and when that fails, the nurses take over and insert it where I can’t. If anyone can think of any orifice they have missed, well please keep it to yourself. I always thought that our bodies were supposed to carry us through life and to bring us pleasure along the way, life now is all about medications, just to make it work at all. That pleasure piece, well, it’s still there when there is the time, just a little harder to find, and far less fun than I remember.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 06/07/2014 – Some scares never heal

I feel that bit more under control today, not as lost and as though I am grasping at anything in my mind to keep me in line and still moving. It’s mad how something you knew, but didn’t want to hear, can really through you into the worst of muddles and make you just want to stop the world in it’s tracks for a while. I would even go as far as to say that my determination not to be beaten, is returning, not in the angry…..

 

In search of help

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I’m trying so hard to move forward, to accept what has been happening in the last couple of weeks, but I still feel overwhelmed by it all. Every time that I open my mouth and hear myself talk, I just want to cry or scream, depending on the moment. I quite honestly don’t think that I have said more than five or six words recently, without a stutter or forget what I’m saying. It feels like someone stole my brain, but I’m not even sure that I want it back, well, without it, I probably wouldn’t feel so bad about the rest of it. I always knew that the day would come when I would lose control of my life and my body, but I didn’t expect it to all happen in such a short period of time.

If wetting the bed, forgetting and sounding like a fool all the time wasn’t enough, I have developed so many twitches and tremors that not even lying down, brings me peace anymore. Until now, although I knew my legs could melt from under me, I now have the added joy that they simply give up and fold. Something has happened around the muscles in my leg joints, at times it feels as though they simply won’t lock, and instead, shudder and hesitate, unsure whether to hold me or collapse. Before I never really felt scared of standing up, I have everything arranged in the house so that even if they melted, I was safe. Now, bang and they’re gone. The worst of it, though, is my arms are doing the same, I can’t even trust them to catch me. It really feels like every muscle in my body is plotting against me, and there is no way of getting them back. If you thought that the UK was having political problems, it is nothing compared to the fight going on inside me.

For five days now, I have been drinking Furosemide in an attempt to get rid of the fluid that has been collecting throughout me. Five days on, well my hands are perfect, my legs not too bad, but my feet, well they are still swollen, not as bad as they were, but they still aren’t my feet. Standing, when I can, is still painful and please don’t touch the tops of either of them, as that’s real pain. The really good thing on the fluid side is, I’ve had three clear night of not wetting the bed, but I don’t want to say that too loudly. I never thought in my life that my first action on waking would be to slide my hand under my bum, to check the moisture level before I move, but that’s yet another addition to my life.

Normally, I am really good at getting my head around things, to find a way to making it all fit and slot as just another part of my life. Right now, there is so much and so many different bits and pieces that I don’t really know where to start and even where it will end. The sheer volume of change is totally defeating me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not slipping into depression, it’s more that I’m slipping into an exhausted confusion. I just so wish that I could have a single day, or even half a day without something dramatic, exhausting or upsetting happening. I long to wake up in a dry bed, for the internet to work smoothly, without annoying phone calls, or no people ringing the intercom, who just want me to let them in, but it’s not for me. For my fingers to understand how to type, for the tremors not to take over and sheer rubbish coming out on the screen. I want to not feel sick, to actually want to eat the food I fetch, without discovering that I’m no longer hungry. If I am, I would just love to be able to eat it without my throat hitting spasm mode and making it all too difficult. All I want is for my day to start and end as days use to. Then, I might just have a chance to turn my mind to accepting any of what I need to work through. I don’t have the time to even think about it, far less work on accepting it all. Is normality, really such a huge thing to ask for?

When just over three weeks ago, I phoned the Doctor to say that I was in a flare, I thought a few steroids and life would settle back into life. I didn’t have the slightest idea then, just how wrong I was. I have never had a flare like this, as in the past, it has been one thing, a lost arm, not being able to breathe and talk, always isolated to a set or group of recognisable nerves. I didn’t even expect a flare could take over my entire body and screw it all up. I’m feel lost. All too often, I find myself just sitting here, trying to work out what next or even how I got here. I have no answers, no idea how to fix all of this, or if this is it for the rest of my life, nothing but new things going wrong, one after another. I have to get some kind of control, some sort of acceptance and understanding, but I don’t know where to start. If you have a clue, well let me know, as I’m totally lost as to what I do next.

 

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – Seeing it clearly

I think I have broken through the worst of this phase of uncontrolled muscle tightening, I sat last night on the settee without constantly having to put my arms into stupid positions in a hope of stretching the muscle to the point they would give in. It was totally motionless, I still did it occasionally but that was the big thing it was occasional not constant. So far the morning hasn’t been too bad other……