Something’s, just make you smile

I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. When you start to feel desperate, we all think about things we shouldn’t do, but I knew inside, it was the only answer. Somehow, I had to reset my system, force my body to do what it’s supposed to, rather than running mad, as it has been the last few days. I remembered several months ago now, that I was at my wits end with the pain I was in, so I took the desperate measure of taking a double dose of my Morphine booster. I had gone to sleep scared, as I didn’t know if I had taken a dangerous dose or if I was going to be OK, I slept the whole night and woke with my pain much reduced. I never once thought that it was the Morphine that made the difference, just the fact, that I had had a really good sleep. Last night, I didn’t take a double dose, I took a dose and a half. Snapping the tablet was easy enough, swallowing it, not so easy, as the sharp edge kept catching on my throat, but on my third attempt it went down. All I was looking for, was for my body to slip into a deep sleep, and stay there. If I could bypass the fight to get to sleep, then go into a deep enough sleep, there was just a chance that when I woke, I might find the improvement I have been longing for. I lay there for a while, still feeling all the sensations, the insects crawling over my legs, the fire and numbness of my feet. Just as it has been for the last few days there wasn’t an inch that I could find, where silence was actually known or remembered. Everything that had been there for the entire last 36 hours, without a seconds break. I lay there, waiting, hoping and even slightly praying because I had quite simply had enough.

Adam had questioned me during the day, over why I hadn’t gone to bed in the afternoon. I told him the truth, I didn’t want to sleep, I was going to listen to my body and just do what it wants. What I didn’t tell him, was that total truth of why, I didn’t want to lie down. I didn’t want to be in bed just lying there feeling once again all the things that had kept me awake the day before. I had already hatched my plan, I was going to keep myself awake until 9 pm, then take my extra meds and sleep then. Sitting here, I was still able to blank the bulk of it out, I could use distraction to it’s fullest, not a total success, but enough for me to ignore all but the worst. When I woke just before 7 am this morning, I feared that it hadn’t worked. I was pain once again in my lower back and I was desperate to go to the loo, as for the rest of me, well my bladder and back, were screaming so loud, I felt nothing else at first. 7 am, there was an hour and a half before the alarm was due to sound. I wasn’t really tired, but I knew that I could still sleep and that hour and a half, could just make all the difference. I sat in the Kitchen for a few minutes, just smoking my cigarette and working my way around me, searching to see what I could find. What I found made me smile. There was pain, there is always pain, but there was also silence, beautiful silence. I had stepped back in time, between the what I now consider my resident oddities, there was nothing, normality, skin that was just skin, rather than a mess of messages that just didn’t belong. The first of my goals had been achieved, all I had to do next, was to lie down.

I have to admit, that I was hesitant, part of me said just stay up, accept what you have and have a good day. An hour and a half, though, is a long time when it comes to being relaxed and rested. I had to give it a go. Climbing back into bed, was as hard as it was to get out. I don’t know what has upset my back, but it is determined to produce pain in the morning. I know it’s not the mattress, we only replaced that a few months ago. I had hoped that it was just part of all these heightened sensations and although this morning, it didn’t hurt as badly as the past two days, it still hurt. I had also been playing with the idea, that I have been spending my nights, reacting to what I could feel, even in my sleep and I was somehow twisting my spine, but I couldn’t be sure. Once lain down, I found the perfect spot where the pain almost vanished, then I waited. At first, there was silence, everywhere but my back and my hands and arms. The wheelchair had done it’s normal, but the rest of me was totally silent. I lay there still smiling into the darkness, no rainbows of light, just darkness, and silence. Yes, there was a growing numbness in my legs, but it was just my legs, not my face or anywhere else. I smiled my way back into sleep.

The smile didn’t even vanish when I did get up to find Adam still asleep and not on his way to work. My fears of my new getting up hour had happened, he had slept on and was by the time I got up, late for work. Even that didn’t upset me, it’s funny how something as simple as sleeping deeply and my body shutting up, has made me feel so good. It’s three hours on, over those hours many areas of displaced sensations have returned, I don’t know what will happen when I next lie down, right now, I don’t really care, as I slept and I’m smiling.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 30/12/2013 – So where am I

There was no catching up for me yesterday, I knew before I went to bed for my nap that I was already a couple of hours behind, no matter what I tried the time just kept slipping away. I am already over an hour……

 

 

 

Relief of time

I retreated to my bed at 8pm, exhausted and with such a need to lie down that there was really no option. The day had been quite average until Jake turned up just after 6 to collect a new cymbal for his drum kit. I had bought it throw Ebay for him and with him working it meant there was someone there to take it in when he was at work. He didn’t stay that long, around 45 minutes while he had a coffee and we caught up, by the time he left I we pretty well wiped out. I really don’t get what the difference is between my sitting talking to Jake for a while and sitting talking to Adam is, but I have noticed time and time again that I talking to a stranger or a friend drains all the energy I have. I sat with Adam for a while but I had taken all I could so I admitted defeat and when to the bedroom.

Just lying on my back with the bed, rather than me holding my weight was wonderful. I lay there with my arms clear of my body, as both of them were on fire with lightening pains heading from my elbows to my finger tips, mimicking my feet and ankles. The pain had been rising through out the day, with no real relief, even after I took my evening meds and I had been sat with the arm of the chair to take the weight of my arms, I still felt like they were draining my strength by just being there. I tried position after position, my favored one of my arms crossed and my hands locked over the opposite shoulder brought little relief. So lying on the bed with no need to use any muscle to do anything was a great relief. That is the beauty and the danger of bed, it is too appealing a place to be, the pain doesn’t go but the effort required to deal with it does. Yes my hands were burning and the lightning pains were all still there but the strain running up both to my shoulder had been eased. I know well enough that staying totally still is often the way to get round this sensation and for sleep to take over. I have always been impressed by the brain decision that you just can’t sleep with this pain, and the fact that that was my last thought. That process of switching from awake to out for the count, never seems to be one that you can track, it happens and there the day ends.

Waking to the alarm found me at first unable to sit up, the now rested muscles didn’t want to stop resting, I had to grab the side of the mattress to pull myself up so I could sit on the side of the bed. Like most morning all the sensations of the day before returned, it’s rare to wake with a different set, but things normally settle, it is as though your body has to return to the day before, before it can decide what it will do today. For the last few day thought each day has been a continuation, just as it is today. 12 hrs straight sleep has changed nothing, by the time I had pulled myself fully to my feet, I had already upset my arms enough for them to start once again to scream at me. I admit fully I am as tired now 4 hours later as I was at the end of yesterday, my afternoon nap is calling loudly and I just hope that lying down will bring as my relief as it always does, as my body has the heavy feeling. It seems some what odd to say that just carrying your own body around is too much, especially when nearly all of the time you are sat down, but it is. Both my hands are screaming constantly at me and I really don’t feel a great relief from taking my meds this morning. At the stretch of the time they should have stopped working, I thought for once I would feel a great relief but there was no feeling of things getting better just the normal continuation of how things are. Although I hate my arms again today the rest of me is holding steady so there are good points as always.