Pain Level 10+

It doesn't happen often, but when it does come up, it really knocks me out.

Last Monday night I started to have extra pain that work me out of bed so I took my extra Oxycodone "break through" medication. I'm currently allowed 10 mg every four hours as needed.  Normally I have 10 mg of Methadone three times a day, so all told this can be a lot of pain medication.

Tuesday morning, my right leg was experiencing the most pain, with the left shoulder and whole arm taking up the rest. I was hitting pain level 10 as I was in tears at times.  I had a 14:15 appointment to get blood drawn in preparation for Dr. Burgess's follow up visit Wednesday.  While at that blood work appointment we decided to give the palliative care doctor, Dr Krivitsky, a call since his office was in the same plaza at CMC Pineville.  His office agreed to squeeze me in.

Dr. Krivitsky did not allow more pain medication, but instead prescribed 5 mg of Cyclobenzaprine twice a day for 15 days.  This is a muscle relaxant which should have countered the pain in the leg as the doctor found most of the muscles in my leg to be in perpetual cramp.  At about 03:00 Thursday I finally felt the tide turn.

It was a very bad day, and Laura had to suffer through a lot of my moaning, pain noises, and had to move my legs for me at times. I also have to admit I wasn't very pleasant company.  Come Wednesday morning though my legs were feeling fine and my arm was back to it's nominal pain level 2-3.

Today, I'm still running a good 4-5 for a pain level, my right knee is very weak, and I'm at max meds, but I hope for better tomorrow. I felt I needed to get a post out or two, because as you'll see, I still need some help.

This is the sort of day however that reminds me why I'm on disability.  I can go through several days thinking, "Well this isn't so bad, maybe I could have worked today."  But still as drowsy as I am much of the time, I am still designated as a non-operator on my car insurance, and I can't drive.  So it would cost a bit to get me to work in the first place. (about $30 round trip via Uber) Ten once at work, I doubt I'd have the mental capacity or concentration to discover any bugs I was being tasked to fix, and I would probably be working on the wrong branch of code.  Chances are, I would introduce more bugs than solve at this point.

I just have to continually face the fact I really can't be working.

Speaking of which, as of 5/31/2016 I am no longer an employee of Heartland Payment Systems, and I no longer have health insurance.  The COBRA paperwork has not yet come through for me to choose it, and I have spent a few hours working the heathcare.gov website. And it looks to be prohibitively expensive.  Hopefully I will find something that fits before too long.  Perhaps that's another post subject.