Jun 30

Painkillers

Tag: CP, FailTommy @ 3:00 am

paracetamol

Firstly, okay guys, the House jokes were funny at the start, but c’mon, give them a rest, will ya?

Last night I had between 3.5 and 4.5 hours sleep.

Knee pain, which is chronic at this stage, was worst it’d been in a long time, so sleep just wouldn’t come. I finally drifted off some time between 01:30 and 3, finally.

At 4:30, I was woken by the pain. No, this wasn’t me waking naturally, or by some bird calling outside, this was the pain waking me.

I tried to get back to sleep, but eventually resigning myself to staying awake somewhere around 5.

I listened to a mix of audiobooks and music through headphones for a while, until about 8am, when I decided I probably shouldn’t fall asleep during physio, so I tried one last time to fall asleep.

I think my sleep soldiers found a vulnerable weakness in the knee pain’s relentless machine-gunning, as I fell asleep until 09:45.

That was the knee pain interfering in my normal workings. I never took anything for my knee because I said I’d just work through it. It wasn’t stopping me doing anything, so I ignored it. However, if it’s stopping me doing something like sleep, then I’m going to take something for it.

And now of course, despite what I said up top, you’re all comparing me to House with his Vicodin. Two things. I’m not on these full time. This morning was exceptional, because the pain was incredibly bad, stopping me functioning, and secondly, the meds aren’t a solution. They’re keeping me at a tolerable level of pain while we find out what’s causing it.

vicodin

That’s what I find frustrating about all this. No one seems to have any idea what’s causing this. I’m getting an MRI on Wednesday in Dublin which *should* tell us the cause, and that should give us a treatment.

So, reiterating, the pain meds aren’t permanent. They are for the time being, as I continue to strengthen up the muscle, which should ease the pain. A natural painkiller.

**

I finished writing this at 20:47 on Monday night, but I’m publishing it at 3am on Tuesday as a little nod. I wonder if I’ll be awake when this goes out..

6 Responses to “Painkillers”

  1. Joe Scanlon says:

    Sounds like tough going :-( I hope the MRI gets to the root of it. Best of luck on Wednesday.

  2. Tommy says:

    Thanks Joe – slept like a log last night, thankfully!

  3. Mark says:

    Hope you find the sourse of the pain sounds like hell for you

  4. Grannymar says:

    Sometimes we need to break the pain cycle with some meds. I had to give in to taking stronger painkillers for my hip.

    Do you think we should form a group? The PainKillers would make a good name for us!

  5. Pat says:

    I love you

  6. Suzy says:

    Joins the group :) Taking meds is not always a bad thing, removing stress, for some of my pain finding and removing triggers like red wine etc, exercising, physio etc definitely are all a help. But i’ve worked around the meds and had to and it’s needed and so be it.

    Hope you get info from the MRI etc. If it’s a long term thing there are excellent pain management facilities in the country too – including working on non med strategies/treatments like some listing above.

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