It's Been a Crazy Week..

..

I know I haven't blogged in ages. Typing still hurts my fingers so I'm using them sparingly. Thank goodness I had the sense to get my 100 Thimbles of Peace done early, since I was worried my fingers might get worse. I've also taken time out to read the UNODA Peace Poem entries. You can find my poem here.

It's a haiku I wrote in honour of Sadako.

I have been keeping busy, but the real reason I haven't updated on this blog because I was waiting for things to calm down a bit - the last two weeks have been really crazy. I've been bouncing between doctors and other specialists trying to sort out where my hand-arm pain is coming from. It's been coming and going, trying all sorts of medications, and then last Saturday.. everything exploded

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This arm-hand pain wakes me up regularly during the night.Then I sit up on the edge of the bed, dangle my arms down and wait for pain to ease. So... last Saturday I wake up groggy with bad pain. I sit up, dangle arms... and the world exploded. MASSIVE pain.

I know I stood up because I remember thinking I mustn't move again, or sit down - too much fear of causing more pain. Hubby got out of bed so somewhere I woke him. I remember yelling, "DON'T TOUCH ME" at him, I was so scared of more pain. but then the pain got worse anyway and I started to hyperventilate, wanted to faint, thought it was me going...

so hubby phoned for an ambulance. I scared the life out of him. My parents woke up to hear him freaking out and so they were scared too... human panic dominoes!

The ambulance medics took me in sitting up, as I didn't want to move, draped in a blanket as any touch or movement hurt, but by then the pain was easing-increasing in waves.

LONG story short - I saw three doctors, was there for ages and the pain wore off naturally, but they gave me strong pain killers to take home. I saw my doctor and I have lots of people dashing about trying to sort out more tests for me.

In the meantime the pain medication hasn't helped. I have had two pain-explosion mornings since then, but I'm coping better. Knowing I wasn't going to die (lol) I stayed calm and it was weird. The pain gets HUGE at the worst stage, but by staying calm and I could watch it and see where it came from. It radiates out from my left hand, middle finger. How amazing. I never knew watching pain could be beautiful and yet so damn unbearable.

While sorting out tests and stuff at the doctors I was given a stronger pain med to try. mmm.... what can I say?

It never helped the pain, but it did make me groggy and more sleepy. So sleepy that some nights I kept falling asleep upright on edge of bed when I sat up to ease the pain. That was scary, so I sat in a chair on Friday morning and woke up pukey, very dizzy, and my dreams were on fast forward. I mean that literally! My dreams, each time I woke up, were zooming by at top speed like when you zoom the TV maybe 6x speed. surreal!!

I now know strong pain meds are not the answer. It’s taken 48 hours for the dizzy-groggy to wear off, with help of dizzy meds that… make me sleepy! I have slept everywhere!

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I stopped the pain medication and the pain is no worse, but my groggy-dizzy is MUCH better. No more of the strong stuff for me!

I'm still feeling more upbeat, because I have doctors trying to sort it out and I'm learning to fix things myself - by staying calm, taking naps and trying some stretching exercises the chiropractor gave me that definitely are helping. It's not fast or easy, but I can see improvements. I'm more hopeful than I was this time last month, which is really good.