...by life.
To be specific, by the medical aspects of life, which have been roughly intruding on my life for over 10 years now.
I have a chronic pain condition, due to the fact that somewhere in the distant past, I have a Neanderthal ancestor. That is discovered by running a rather rare blood test, called HLA-B27, and I was positive. That means I had a higher likelihood of developing ankylosing spondylitis, and I did; it means I am ALWAYS running high levels of inflammation, and I hurt. Mostly in my back, but all joints and even sometimes my eyes. I was diagnosed in May of 2005, and have been receiving treatment from the same clinic since them. We've used anti-inflammatories, surgery, electrostim, accupuncture, and narcotics. The last 10 years have not been nice.
Here's the deal: I determined to get off the amount of morphine I was on a few years ago (165 mg/day), and in order to make that happen, I tried the (at the time) super anti-inflammatory, meloxicam (Mobic). And it worked like a charm, for nearly a year, until the lower GI bleeding started. So, we started me on a new primary patch, Butrans, which is a weekly patch that does a reasonable job of managing the pain, without goofing my head. For breakthrough pain, I have hydrocodone I can take as needed, as many as three per day.
But I miss those days in which the anti-inflammatories got me by,
So I asked if we could try it again, and was given a scrip which had to be compounded in Alabama, and the deductible was $85. Too expensive.
But then...I found a box of Flector patches in the medicine cabinet! Flector is an anti-inflammatory, and after calling the pain clinic, I decided to give it a try. Placed the patch on my lower back, where most of the pain was.
And 12 hours later, my guts are in a turmoil, and I've got GI bleeding again. The bleeding is bad, but it's the horrid feeling in my belly that's the real problem.
So, quite a bit of my productive time has been unproductive. I've slept when I could, and was sad, because I really wanted this to work.
Listen: I am reading BEAUTIFUL work! I want to continue to read and read, and then write the review that is going to pop this new book to the top of Amazon's sales list, and I want to do it NOW!!!
But it looks as though it will be put off for another 24 hours. Hopefully, whatever it is that NSAIDS does to my GI tract will be healed by then.
I'm so sorry. You're the third person I've met with ankylosing spondylitis - a friend's husband, and a woman I met on a cruise ship who couldn't turn her head, are the others. She seemed surprised I knew what it is.
ReplyDeleteI have chronic pain along with the CFS - but nothing like what you must have to deal with. I hope you get better research than we get - it would seem a bigger problem than mine. But if your brain still works - that would be a gift.