NeonBlue Dreams
Wake up call

Yesterday I had a bit of a scare. For the past six months I’ve been on some pretty heavy duty painkillers. The pain I’m now getting in my upper spine isn’t responding to anything much, not even the morphine-like buprenorphine patches, but I have to say that the rest of my back’s responded well to it, and hasn’t been troubling me so much. Yesterday morning though I overlaid a little and consequently was in rather a rush to get ready for work. In my eagerness (ha!) to get to work, I forgot that Tuesday morning’s the time for changing the patch. The buprenorphine patches need changing every four days to keep the levels of the stuff circulating in my blood constant, so by lunch time my body was starting to notice that it wasn’t there.

The last few days I’ve been over-doing it a bit. Normally when I’m at work I don’t go into town at lunch time because the walking’s too much for me. Just walking around the office and around the department’s enough for me. Monday though I developed an urge to go bargain hunting at Primark, which I followed up yesterday with another trip there. Okay, so it isn’t that far away. I managed the walk there and back okay, though I was taking it steady, but it was when I got back to work and went a-wandering off down the corridor to the admin office that the problems started.

Halfway back to the office I felt the crunch in my spine that signals that something’s shifted where it shouldn’t have done. The spina bifida means I have two sets of facet joints that aren’t formed right, so my spine has a tendency to move in directions it shouldn’t, and when it does, and starts pressing on things it shouldn’t, that’s when the fun starts. So I stood there in the middle of the corridor unable to move. It was all I could do to stay upright because my legs turned into blancmange.

When I did eventually manage to move, it was small shuffling steps, because even the simple task of walking became a major feat. I’m not sure how I managed to make it to the office, but when I got there I discovered another problem. I couldn’t sit down. When it moves a certain way I get referred coccyx pain and my troublesome sacroiliac join starts playing up. Perched on the edge of my chair I tried to log back into the computer system. I’d locked my screen before I went out lunchtime shopping, but I couldn’t even concentrate to remember what the hell my password was, because the only thing that mattered right then was that my back fucking hurt! Nothing else mattered. The whole of my universe was filled with that searing pain. I was thinking I’d probably end up having to go home, but then just thinking of how I’d manage that was an exercise in trying to untangle the Gordian knot, because to get there I’d have to sit in a car, and as at that current time sitting was somewhat of a problem…

Plan B was to try another walk, on the grounds that maybe moving around might free something up, so off I went again with the small shuffling, back down the corridor, feeling with every step like an electric shock was running down my spine. That didn’t work, so I opted for Plan C, which found me on my knees on the floor, draped over a chair, with my arms hanging down the other side of the chair. The idea was that if I could get my spine to curve a bit in the other direction and get the spaces between the vertebra to open up a bit, maybe it would free something up. I probably looked ridiculous, but at that moment I really didn’t care. I remember vaguely wondering how the hell I was going to get back up again, but top of my list of priorities was stopping the damned hurting. Getting up again came at that point a distant second. That wasn’t working either though, so there was nothing else for it but to get on the floor.

There’s a bed upstairs on the ground floor in the first aid room, but at that time, the thought of getting upstairs was something akin to scaling Everest, so with gritted teeth I managed to roll off the chair and onto the floor, ending up half under the spare desk, and narrowly missed getting trodden on by one of the surveyors who’d picked that moment to come into the office, but again I really didn’t care. Blessed relief! Flat on the floor and with a little pressure off whatever was trapped, it started to ease a little. I lay there for a while, and then tried to do a few of the gentle physio exercises to get things moving and hopefully get things back into their rightful place. I rested again for a few minutes, and remember thinking wasn’t it in case of a nuclear attack you were supposed to hide under a desk or something, or was it an earthquake? I couldn’t remember, and slept through the recent one anyway. A few more exercises, and then rest again, and then gradually it started to ease enough that I hoped I might at least be able to get up and maybe sit down.

The getting up bit as usual when I end up on the floor for any reason was rather an effort and somewhat ungainly, but once upright I found that I could at least walk with not such small shuffling steps, though I was walking very gingerly. I managed to make it to my desk, and found that I could at least sit down without feeling as though I was sitting on broken glass, and rummaging in my handbag I found that I’d at least got some tramadol in there to tide me over until I got home and could stick another patch on. The afternoon passed in a tramadol induced blur - tramadol makes things kind of “interesting” in that time spreads out and random thoughts creep their way into my head that I have no control over, but at least I managed to last the course, and I managed to get some work done.

The day’s events though taught me a number of things:

1. There’s a good reason why I don’t normally attempt to go into town at lunch time when I’m at work - don’t do it!
2. There may be bargains galore to be had in Primark, but they’re not worth an hour of agony for afterwards
3. Remember to change the damned patches when you’re supposed to!
4. Aged 35 I find myself on heavy duty painkillers that I’ve now found out the hard way my body can’t do without

It was the final point that got to me. This isn’t the first time my spine’s done it’s crunching thing leaving me with severe problems, and it sure as hell won’t be the last, but normally if I’m dosed up with my regular painkillers and such like, I can ride out the storm without getting pain to that extent. Last week I saw my GP about the pain I’ve been getting in my upper spine that isn’t particularly responding to the hefty doses of opiates (I’m waiting for an MRI scan on that), and he said, “I don’t know where we go from here” (talking about the painkillers). I don’t either, but at 35 I’m on a hefty dose of some heavy duty painkillers, and it don’t look like I’m going to be going anywhere without them for a while. That’s kinda scary. Hell, who am I kidding? That’s very scary! Knowing that I rely on a number of drugs to get me through the day with some semblance of a normal life, and that without them things start unravelling pretty quickly is a pretty sobering thought.

If you can’t fix it, you gotta stand it. That phrase follows me round like a bad smell, and just like the story there ain’t no happy ending. There’s no magic cure, so I guess my only option’s to keep popping the pills. I’ve gotta stand it, but it don’t mean I have to like it none.

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