I’m using a bit of a different approach today, sort of like a diary or journal.

December 8th, 2020

Usually I sleep pretty well. These days, because I’m retired and I’m disengaging from non-profits I’ve been involved with for a long time, I have a lot of “free” time and I should be able to sleep when I want to and for how long I want to. It’s strange then that I still go to bed at a regular time and get up at 7:30 every morning. It doesn’t always work out that way, mind you. Oh, I always get up at 7:30 AM, but I don’t always get to sleep when I go to bed around 9 or 9:30. I often read until 10 or later, sometimes much later because if I can’t sleep, it doesn’t make much sense to just toss and turn hoping to be overcome by sleep. So, I take meds, sometimes lots, most often less than lots. My objective is to sleep, not to wallow in a sea of opioid drunkenness. Sometimes I thought about smoking opium, getting a den going in my studio, but I don’t need that. I have hydromorphone and gabapentin. Today is the first day that I said to myself;”Enough is enough. I’m done with the amount of pain I’m in and I’m going to take as much med as I need to deal with the pain. Surprisingly, although I did take what we call a breakthrough dose of hydromorphone, it wasn’t a lot more that I normally take and I felt a whole lot better.

I’ve been sitting in my recliner most of the morning. Moving hurts. Piss on moving.

By 5 or 5:30 I’m done. All I’m good for is surfing Twitter to see what outrageous things Trump and the Republicans are doing. Sleep sounds good at this time. I didn’t sleep all that well last night so I doze in my chair. The house carries on around me. I sleep through everything.

7 PM or so, Carolyn has made dinner and we sit down to eat that. Carolyn is my angel. She makes very few demands on me, not that I could respond to demands all that effectively. I though I might be able to do the dishes at one point but standing for any length of time is a problem. I kind of feel useless. I don’t like that feeling.

December 15th, 2020

Bah, I decided to fast forward a week. My days are pretty much one like another and I have no intention of boring you to tears giving you a blow by blow description of my daily activity. However, this morning I spoke with my GP. That’s worth writing about.

I had a couple of MRIs on the 23rd and 25th of last month of my back. They did the lumbar and lower thoracic area on the 23rd and the cervical and upper thoracic area on the 25th. Both imaging sessions failed to uncover any signs of myeloma, which is great news. However, there are many signs of disk degeneration and plenty of reasons why I’m in so much pain all the time. At my age it’s not a great idea to embark on too much invasive surgery so I’m left with pain meds and light stretching and exercise to deal with the pain. Problem is, most of my pain is not caused by muscular issues except in my legs and that pain is related to myeloma so exercise is pretty much pointless. I’ve also had a fair bit of excavation going on in my distal femurs by myeloma proteins. That process is not happening right now, it’s in remission, but for how long, who knows. There is residual neurological pain from that situation.

Like I said, I spoke with my GP this morning. We discussed the MRIs and what to do about my pain. Pain management is very important to me right now, obviously. There are pain meds for this and pain meds for that. We have to try to tailor my meds to my pain. That sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Have a headache? Take acetaminophen or aspirin. Well, as I’ve explained in another post, there are various kinds of pain that require different meds to treat them. Gabapentin is used for neuropathic pain. The issue is how much to take and at what intervals. I’m faced with the same kind of decisions with hydromorphone. How much? At what intervals? Truth be told, I could easily take enough hydromorphone to eliminate my pain. Problem is I probably wouldn’t be conscious either.

The picture below, a drawing I did some time ago and posted on Facebook, aptly describes how I’m feeling these days, sort of discombobulated. It’s meant to be a self-portrait for those of you who might be having some difficulty putting the pieces together and recognizing me in the bits.