Living (Dealing) With Scoliosis

Pain Management

The first time I heard of Pain Management, a friend with severe pain issues was going in for epidural injections to eliminate excruciating pain and at the time I thought:  “What shit is this?  Just fix the problem.”  The very idea of “managing” pain was abhorrent to me.  Not just “fixing” the problem – and instead enabling someone to “live with the pain” sounded barbaric.  But here I am, signing up for exactly that – Pain Management.  The first time I went to Baylor Dallas for an epidural, my blood pressure was through the roof.  I had no idea what to expect and I was incredibly apprehensive about having an injection in my spine. But after you’ve done it several dozen times, you look forward to your little Propofol-induced nap (remember Michael Jackson?) and waking up a few minutes later feeling much better.  This was to be my routine every 2 months for about 10 years.

That and a LOT of narcotics.  Unfortunately that was my only option after the FDA pulled the Cox2 Inhibitors off the market several years ago.  I was doing great on Bextra.  No pain.  No side effects,  No falling asleep standing up. (I think it was Methodone that had that effect.  But the Fentanyl patch was similar + headaches…)  So we had to find pain relief that didn’t either give me headaches, knock me out or piss me off.  My system is fairly sensitive to these drugs it seems.

For years I got by on Norco, a combination of Hydrocodone and Acetaminophen.  The problem with large dosages of these, as any Doctor will tell you, is that your liver is going to be fairly pissed off at massive doses of Tylenol collecting in it’s filtering mechanism.  And if you overwork it enough… It will just up  and quit.  Kind of like a pissed-off employee.  So…  We eventually went to a time-release Morphine to establish a baseline, plus short-acting Norco as needed throughout the day.  The problem will all these things is that eventually your receptors become conditioned to the drugs and it’s just not as effective anymore.  So a few months ago we switched over to the dreaded (dum dum da DUMMMMM)

Oxycontin

Damn.

I HATE Oxycontin!  I will NEVER understand why people use this shit recreationally.  Not that I don’t appreciate the recreational use of pharmaceuticals (and I’m not going to discuss that any further) but this stuff is NASTY.  It just makes me feel B.A.D. in general.  For the first 3 weeks I had low-grade headaches – and just generally felt Wrong  Not right (“He just ain’t raht”).  And then there are the side-effects of all this stuff coursing through your bloodstream.  Like constipation.

Swell.