Pain
Last night I became unable to manage the building pain in my body and had to head to emergency to get help. I could barely walk or move my body was so weak and so filled with pain. Wolfe helped navigate me into clothes and out to the car. The clothes were hell.
During a flare up my skin is hyper sensitive and parts of clothes hurt and the parts that didn’t felt rough and scratchy and itchy. It was minor compared to the deep underlying pains. Major muscles in my back and legs. My bowels also cramping with the IBS, my bladder/urethra irritated feeling like when I get a bladder infection, but knowing its not, just the fibromyalgia irritable bladder because it would come and go in waves of severity like the rest of my pains.
Everything starts to become surreal as all that exists is pain sensations, and I start to disassociate to cope, losing track of time, my location, my identity, reality. Mostly all there is is the pain and little parts of my brain dialogging about it. All of a sudden I’m religious, voice in my head is praying up a storm, simple repetition please god please god please god, please jesus, jesus, jesus. It feels loud but I’m not saying anything, it’s just in my skull. Another part of me is saying bad things to me, it’s a part I censor when I’m well, but it realizes it’s out of it’s cage no one strong enough to put it back in… ‘you’re not sick, you’re faking it, you’re pathetic, stop crying, don’t be such a weak little girl, pull yourself together, why are you wasting everyones time, why are you doing this to Wolfe, why are you doing this to yourself? don’t be so stupid!’ and a small scared voice occassionally responds with teary ‘I can’t help it, please, I want it to stop’.
I’m sitting in the hospital waiting room now, but I can’t see my surroundings. My eyes have been inflamed and light sensitive all day, but now the light is blinding and too painful my eyes are closed, We’ve been there a while, I can feel something different in my body, a nice feeling, a rhythm, I’m not sure where it comes from, is someone bumping the wheelchair, no it’s me, I’m rocking. I don’t know where it comes from, rocking my body, it’s not a choice, not a conscious movement, it just happens, I can’t figure out what muscles or body parts are making it happen, just that I’m curled down over myself, my body is on fire, and there’s a rhythm, I hold onto the rhythm, I’m burning, but the rhythm feels nice. My body is doing something right. Rocking.
Wolfe is touching me on the shoulder and talking to me, it scares me and I jump. It hurts. I was somewhere else, I don’t know how long, but all of a sudden all the pain comes flooding back again, I was only out of the pain for seconds, I want to leave again. Wolfe tells me I’m blacking out, that I have to try to breathe more, that they’ll be letting us in soon. He’d stepped away for a few moments to let the staff know I was starting to black out with the pain. I don’t know how to breath, the breathing is weird, random breaths caught between pain, but I don’t choose when to breathe, the breathing, like the rocking is choosing me.
Finally we get to a bed, Wolfe has to a lot of supporting/lifting to transfer me to the bed, my body is non responsive. I don’t know how to move myself, I feel paralyzed with pain and weakness. Once I get laying down on the bed, the pain starts to ease up a little bit, and I realize the sitting position I had been waiting in was really bad for me. I’m now able to communicate a bit, and shift myself a little. Wolfe places his jacket between my knees because he knows when I have this kind of pain sensitivity my knees resting on one another hurts, there’s no padding on the joints. The rocking mostly stops, comes and goes with waves, and now sometimes I’m over-taken with uncontrollable shivering/shaking with the muscles.
I’m not sure how much time passes, a nurse comes and takes my pulse again. Wolfe tells me that earlier when they used the machine my heart rate was up around 140-150, and my blood pressure 150/75. I remember when they had done the blood pressure because the cuff hurt so much I almost blacked out with it, my body was shaking/convulsing throughout the test.
A little while more and the Dr. comes, I’m already feeling much better, my pain sitting around a 5-6, instead of waves of 8-10. I’m still in horrible pain, but I can carry on a conversation, the tears have slowed, I no longer have reams of snot pouring out of my nose, and I’m able to move my own body parts, he tells me he’ll get the nurse to give me a shot of painkillers in my backside, and he’ll give me a dose of ativan to help me go to sleep. I’m exhausted, and know if the shot gets my pain down to about a 3-4, that I’ll be able to sleep through it with the sedative.
I’m also almost hysterically happy, the relief of my pain being where it is palatable. I never knew I could be happy to have so much negative pain, but the fact that it wasn’t the ’super’ pain I was having just a little while ago was mind blowing. You make deals with yourself, yes, I’ll take this level of chronic fibromyalgia pain as long as I don’t have to visit that other place again.. the one where you forget how to breathe and you can’t think or move, and reams of snot hangs from your nostril in glistening trails. I don’t want to visit that place again. It was a terrible ride, and a horrible journey to put Wolfe through.
Next Wednesday I see my family Dr. I had been back and forth on whether I wanted to try one of the newer medications for Fibromyalgia, because of the side effects, etc. But I’ve had a pain induced change of heart. I’ll go on another medication trial to see if it will help, anything that might prevent a repeat of last night.