Take a chance on me

Will you take a chance on me?

If you had the ability, the skill and the tools to help someone in need, would you?

How far would you let someone deteriorate before intervening?

If there was the smallest possibility of changing someone’s life for the better, would you do it?

These are all questions I want answered. You see, I recently got my results back from a recent MRI and CT scan of my left hip, and the findings were not great. Multiple cysts, bone growth on the head of the femur, irregularities within the acetabulum and fraying of the labrum. To simplify, most are de-generative changes which is accelerating the arthritis in my left hip joint. I was only diagnosed with very early arthritic changes back in February ’10, where previously there was none.

I have been in severe pain for many months now, and most doctors attribute it to chronic pain. If you have read my previous blog posts and know my previous history, you know I have been through quite a lot and have had many surgeries for problems within the left hip cavity. At this point in time, and for quite a few months now, I have been unable to get out of this acute pain and its levels of 7 and above out of 10 on a basic pain scale. Before each surgery I have had, multiple scans have shown a proper cause for the pain I'm experiencing within my left hip. Once again scans have given a decent cause for the acute pain I am in. I feel like I am suffering from ‘Chronic Acute Pain’ because over the course of 4 years now, pain has subsided after surgery, and yet when something goes wrong once more, scans prove there is a cause of some sort and surgery has fixed it. Now the problem is; and this is where the chronic pain part comes in, is because of all the doctors and nurses I have seen, they have taken quite a long time to reach the point of operating, and the pain continues up to this point and becomes quite severe however always subsides afterwards. Now this is where my questions start to come in.

I have recently seen a new orthopaedic surgeon, who after consultation, and reading the results of my latest scans seems hesitant to help, in case he makes the pain worse. This is a similar situation I had with my previous surgeon.

This is a risk I am willing to take. Is he?

If you had the ability, the skill and the tools to help someone in need, would you?

How far will you let me deteriorate before intervening?

If there was the smallest possibility of changing someone’s life for the better, would you do it?

Even though I am no more qualified then the person next to me in the field of medicine and how you operate, if you see a patient in severe pain, and there is obvious arthritic changes within the structure of the joint and you know it will only continue to get worse, wouldn’t it be easier and more helpful to the patient (me) to intervene those changes now and take that risk that you may actually help that patient, even if it’s the smallest percentage, to give them a better quality of life than they had before?

I have continued to hear that my age is a problem in regard to a hip replacement, well so is my quality of life. I have none. If you can help, you may actually be able to give me back some quality, so the rest of my body doesn’t deteriorate either. I see a number of specialists for problems that have occurred from a lack of a quality of life. My body is deteriorating because I can’t do the normal things that a 24 year old might do. I am living like an elderly person, relying on almost full time care from my 60 year old mother. I am filling my body with pain controlling medicines just to get through each day, which I barely do. I am slowly losing the confidence I once had to be a teacher. I know I would make a great teacher, my prac skills have shown so. I'm intelligent, smart, funny, kind, practical and fully aware that I will never return to being the person I once was, and be able to do the things I used to do. But please…

I beg of you, please take a chance on me.

The pain of painkillers

I know it’s been months since I last posted anything, however I thought that I might just skip ahead of what’s happened over the last few months and discuss something that is in topic in my life now, and it’s quite a serious topic; Painkillers.

Disclaimer: ** Please take note that all medications should be taken seriously and under the advice your doctor. These views are my own and based on my personal experiences. The medications I am speaking about are addictive and should never be abused or taken without your doctor’s consent. **

At some stage in our lives, we’ve all taken a couple of panadol, maybe even some panadine (panadol + codeine), to get us over that cold, or headache. Some of us have even taken much stronger pain medications that have been prescribed by our doctor. I’m planning on discussing not only how painkillers work, but how our bodies, mine in particular react to the medications and when we deprive our body of these ‘ingredients’ we use frequently and long term, when taken by people, when they live with chronic pain.

When we take pain medication, it doesn’t have an effect on the part of the body that is hurting; it takes effect on our brain. To be precise it takes effect in ‘three specialized regions of the brain: the physical sensation region that identifies and localizes the pain (somatosensory cortex), the emotional feeling region that experiences suffering (limbic system), and the thinking region that assigns meaning to the pain (frontal cortex)’. Source

To simplify this, any type of analgesics (painkillers), don’t effect the area that’s injured, they simply block the pain signals going to the brain, or interfere with they way the brain interoperates these signals. This in turn affects the body’s nervous system so that pain messages are scrambled.

There are two types of painkillers: Non-narcotics and Narcotics. I'm mostly on the latter unfortunately. I won’t go into the difference between the two, too much because I want to share my story. If you’re interested in the types of painkillers, you can find infomation here.

As I’ve just mentioned I'm mostly on the narcotic variety of painkillers. Narcotics can involve much more than the generalised assumption of opiates like heroin or morphine etc but it also includes codeine which in lower doses is available over the counter at your pharmacy and even your body’s natural narcotic; endorphins.

Over the past 11 months, my body has endured an increased amount of narcotic medicine including oxycontin, oxycodine, and also morphine and pethidine while hospitalised but also during this latest experience, it’s been the highest dosages of this forms of painkillers I’ve ever been on. While my pain medication expands much beyond these, in the form of various types of muscle relaxants and anti-depressants, it’s reducing the oxycontin that has the most effect on me. Oxycontin is similar to morphine, but it’s a slow release medication, that has a 12 hour controlled release of its ingredients to give you greater control over your pain long term.

Over the past 8-9 weeks I have started my journey into reducing my body’s dependence on this drug. As pleased as I am to say “I feel that I no longer need the same amount of this medication anymore”, I know my body is addicted to it. This addiction means that to reduce the side effects of coming off this medication, I have to take it slowly and carefully, so that I don’t make myself ill and cause serious harm to my body. Because of the type of pain and injury I have, this is the 4^th time I have started the withdrawal process of coming of my pain medication, and I hope it’s to be the 4^th time, I will do so, successfully. At this moment (8^th June 2010) I'm 1/3 of the way on this journey of reducing my pain medications, so I can once more become effective and efficient in my daily life. (Although I know many people function quite normally on these types of medications, I still find it quite foreign, and don’t like the way it takes control over my body).

The first two times I have done this process quite quickly and with little side effects as I was not on the oxycontin for any longer than 4 months. During my 3^rd experience with this drug, I was taking it for a period of 10 months before I started “coming down” and I can honestly say I really felt the side effects of reducing the meds too quickly. I’ve experienced vomiting, diarrhoea, nausea, cramping, headaches, hot and cold sweats, and loss of appetite to name a few. This was 2 years ago. I remember while going through this, that I said I was never going to take oxycontin again, if I was to be in a similar condition. Well here I am again. Having reduced my intake by a 1/3 now, very slowly some other side effects are starting to show as I continue to reduce my body’s dependence on the drug. I'm already starting to experience:

• Nausea
• Cramping
• Diarrhoea
• Headaches
• Fatigue
• Night sweats

…and this is just so far. Coming off oxycontin and its withdrawal is often compared to a person going through a ‘heroin withdrawal’ in terms of its intensity. The only we have some control over this experience is to take the time to reduce the medication slowly, in small amounts and over a long period of time. Sometimes I think it would be easier to come of the medication easier and much quicker by reducing it every 3-5 days as opposed to every 1-3 weeks and just get the withdrawal pains over and done with instead of drawing it out, but I have to remind myself to do it the healthy way that wont harm my body, or stress it out too much! I hate to think what it has done to my overall health in both my brain and my organs!!!

I hope I’ve explained this so it translates that we have to be aware of what we take to manage our pain, but most of all like food – make us aware of what we are putting in our body’s and its affects afterwards.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate it and any other input, or expiriences is welcome so feel free to comment!

- Jen xx

**note: when I write my blogs, I write the way I would speak most of the time, and I apologize if things don’t quite make sense or don’t come out clear. I have a tendency to write at night, and this is when I'm most medicated.