Chronic Pain — You are in My World Now

My hand is slowly getting better

August 20, 2012 by Tricia

I haven’t been writing on any of my blogs in the last two or so months as much as I used to because of the hand injury that I incurred in early June.

My hand is still recovering as the injury was quite bad, but it’s much better than it was when it first occurred! It was bad enough for most of the last two months that I could barely type.

I tried using dictation software to type my posts for a while and that was working as long as the room was fairly quite or at the very least had a steady background sound level, but for most of late July and August there’s been someone home with me all the time so there’s been lots of noise in the house. Plus, when you have to “speak” your thoughts, your blog posts, your email replies, your Facebook responses, your Twitter posts .. well, there’s a certain lack of privacy if someone else is around to hear every single thing that you utter.

Don’t get me wrong, for the most part I don’t have any big secrets that I’m trying to keep from my husband or temporary renter in our house or anyone for that matter, but I’m not accustomed to every single thing that I write (and would have had to say, sometimes repeatedly to the dictation software to get it right) heard by everyone in my household. It’s pretty strange to get used to!

I still plan on using the dictation software. My hand is still healing after all. But I need the house to either be empty or at least the room I’m in to be empty and fairly quite for me to use the software – for multiple reasons.

In other news – since I haven’t posted for a while … yes we have a temporary renter in the house. I’ll probably write more about that at another time. He’s kind of driving me nuts at the moment and he’ll be out of the house very soon .. like hopefully today or tomorrow. Yeah! Fingers Crossed!

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I’ve had better days

August 31, 2011 by Tricia

I am feeling awful today. I’ve had a horrible migraine all week and this morning I woke up with awful stomach cramps … bad enough that at one point I thought I was going to pass out!

Yes I’ve had much better days.

I’m seriously into just relaxing this evening and I’m hoping that my migraine will just go away.

Last year at about this time I’d just started a new medication for my migraines – which for the most part has worked very well (but not this week). Oddly enough for the first few months of being on my migraine medication I suddenly started dropping weight. Everyone was asking me if I’d suddenly started taking weight loss pills or something because I was dropping weight so fast .. but no … it was just the new migraine meds and the severe lack of appetite that they gave me.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon how you look at it, it seems that my appetite is back to normal although I still have some strange taste sensations from the medication. By this I mean I still can’t drink carbonated drinks like soft drinks or eat really fatty foods without them tasting odd or really salty. I guess that’s a good thing.

Ok … off to lie down with a big icepack on my head!

Walk the dog while taking a bike ride?

June 25, 2011 by Tricia

I keep seeing people riding by our house on their bikes with their dog trotting by their side. It seems like a great way to give the dog a bit of extra exercise.

I have to admit, we haven’t pulled our bikes out yet this year. My knee has been really bad this year. I was born with knee problems and now it’s turned into arthritis it seems. Yes I’m kind of young to get arthritis, but my leg bones aren’t positioned correctly – my tibia turns a little more outward than it should, so that messes up my knees. I have a feeling I won’t be riding my bike this summer – not until I get my knee feeling better.

My husband on the other hand would probably love to pull out his bike and go for a ride regularly. We live on a busy street, but in general the area is pretty good for bike riding, and if we wanted we could always get out the yakima bike racks and take our bikes to one of the fantastic bike trails in the area since we live near several fantastic interconnecting park systems throughout Toronto.

Our dog would love to trot along beside the bike. I’m certain of it .. oh and she’d be a fantastically tired puppy when the bike “trot” was finished. Perhaps she’d look all sleepy like she did when I took this picture of her back in January?

I want to get back to work at the hospital

June 25, 2011 by Tricia

It might be hard to believe, but I miss working in the Emergency Department at the hospital. Technically I’m still employed there as a nurse, but I’ve been on medical leave for over five years. I hope that I can go back one day soon.

I’m not sure what brought on this latest desire to get back to work, perhaps the fact that I was cleaning out my closets the other day moving winter clothes to the back and bringing summer clothes to the front when I came across all of my nursing uniforms. I want to get back into them someday soon.

I’ve also been to the hospital a few times this past month for some tests – MRI’s on my knees and an ultrasound on my thyroid, plus I somehow managed to get some cedar mulch in my right eye that had to be picked out in the ER, so yes I’ve been to the hospital a few time and I’ve seen lots of people that I know. Of course all of my old coworkers ask me every time they see me when I’m coming back and so on.

My Crohn’s has been quite a bit better lately so maybe it is possible that I can get back to work before the end of the year. We’ll see what happens. I’ve thought that before and had set backs.

The Migraines are back ..

December 17, 2010 by Tricia

I went to see my neurologist on Wednesday. I was fit in as sort of an emergency appointment because of some strange symptoms I’ve been having.

If you’ve been reading my blog you probably know that I’ve been suffering from some pretty wicked migraines and other migraine side effects/ symptoms over the last year to two years. Things like Migraine pain, dizziness, visual auras, buzzing in the ears, brain fog (trouble thinking … ) and so on … So back in March when I was seeing my neurologist for another problem I mentioned how bad my migraines were becoming and he decided to send me in for an MRI. Naturally I had to wait a while for the MRI and I didn’t end up having it until early July.

The MRI turned out fine and on my follow up appointment with the neurologist in August he decided to start me an anticonvulsant medication called Topamax.

Amazingly the medication started working right from day one. No other medication that I’ve ever taken for migraine has ever worked so fast. In fact, for the first month I was pretty much migraine and headache free. Unfortunately, but October, I decided to quit smoking and I started taking another medication to help me quit (Zyban) and I started getting headachey again. I don’t know if it was the Zyban or maybe changes in my body due to quitting smoking but either way the headaches that I started experiencing in October got worse and became more migraine like by November.

I also noticed around the beginning of October – prior to quitting smoking – that I had a heightened sense of smell. My dog suddenly smelled awful. She smelled skunky or musky and other things smelled so much stronger and worse than they used to smell. My husbands nephew came to visit and he had scented deodorant in his bag and I couldn’t stand the smell … oh and when he pulled out his laptop computer it stunk of the scented deodorant!

That’s the reason why I went to see the neurologist. The scent problem. The migraines were getting worse again and that was bad enough, but everything in my world smells and frankly my world smells bad.

We figured out that it’s the anticonvulsant that’s making me have a heightened sense of smell. the anticonvulsant works on the brains temporal lobes and that’s also were the olfactory area of the brain is … so the medication probably turned on the scent area of my brain. My smell problem probably won’t go away unless I stop the medication … but I don’t really want to stop it since it’s the only medication that’s ever helped me with my awful migraines … so we decided to double the dose I’m taking! Yeah … I know … I might be in smell hell soon!

So … I’ll try taking the double dose of Topamax for now and see how it goes. If the smell issue drives me nuts I have a prescription for another medication that I can try. Of course … doubling my current medication probably means I’m going to have skin or acne issues too! I’ve been looking into something called nanocleanse to use as a preventative if my skin starts to act up.

I’m just hoping that boosting my medication works. I was feeling pretty good in September and I’d like to feel better again soon. I just need to get through the next week or two .. the medication makes me feel pretty weird as I add more to my regular dosage. It’s a strange drug.