day 814

The occipital pain has been stronger in the past two days than it usually is. I actually sat yesterday with my eyes closed for a while to make sure it wasn't migraine pain, but I can't feel the throbbing or the feeling of the blood rushing to my brain, and it's concentrated in the back of my head instead of on the right side where the migraines usually occur. It makes for an interesting time trying to sleep because that leaves me one option - my left side. The right side is out of the question, and when the back hurts, then I can't even really go from the left to the back like I can when it's not doing this. Since I don't have anything for breakthrough pain, I can't take anything to help with it. This, again, is one of the things that frustrates me about the pain doc I had for a year - nothing for breakthrough; just suffer with it unless or until it gets bad enough to go to the ER almost an hour away, jolting and jostling on the Missouri roads, to get a shot of Dilaudid and one of Phenergan, and then another hour home.

I am hoping the new doc that I see in January has a better suggestion for me than what I'm doing now. This really stinks. When I have days like these all I can really do is hang around the house, alternating between doing simple non-stressful chores and sleeping. Exercise, one of the things they really push, is out of the question. It hurts just to BE. The thought of the motion and the additional stress it puts on the pain is just too much.

I don't know if I'll get the quilts done for Christmas that I tried to finish last year either. It hurts my head to work on them too long. It's extremely frustrating to have them sitting there, knowing I want to and am capable physically of doing it, but realizing that pushing the pain in my face and head to do that kind of work is only going to make things worse. I don't know...maybe I'll just do it anyway.

I'd like my doc to go through this for a while. I really would. Maybe it would help him see how it really feels and how frustrating it is to not have the choices a person should have to improve the quality of life simply because I also happen to have a psychiatric diagnosis and therefore by implication cannot be as ill as I say I am. The prejudices associated with mental illness make me want to scream.

So much for that. I feel a bit better having gotten that off my chest.