Slow and Easy

That will be the order for today let me tell you.

I'm sure I slept last night.

It just feels like I didn't.

I swear I saw every other hour of the night, all night long.

And I ran out of positions to try for comfort.

Just couldn't find one.

Eventually, after arranging pillows in the proper positions, I flopped down on my tummy (a position I really hate!) and managed to fall asleep for another 90 minutes.

And woke up with a sore neck!

There's a reason that my most natural sleep position is on my left side but my left hip has now gotten as bad as my right and I simply cannot stay in that position for more than an hour.  And I cannot roll over without physically getting up so I actually have to wake up to switch positions and that is a major interruption to my sleep.

Because my first mental awareness on coming awake is the burning pain in my hips -- I really don't even know which words to call on to describe the pain.

But it is always with me.

Sometimes more so than others.

Once I was "up" for the day, the pain was unbelievable!  Every step was a supreme effort.

So, today I will again be wearing the TENs machine all day because without it I apparently can't walk!

As to the problem with my neck, Santa helped out tremendously with that problem.  He brought me a few wonderful additions to my arsenal of pain management tools.  One of them, a Shiatsu Neck Massager, has proven to be especially beneficial in my case.

Last fall, after my "incident" in Nova Scotia, my doctor ordered x-rays of my neck and shoulder area to monitor the progress of the whiplash that I had suffered.  The test indicated that I have osteoarthritis in my neck and my doctor quickly ordered up physio and suggested that massage might help.  Since I was already using both services, we just added the neck area to that which was being treated (we were already treating the area, we just concentrated a little more closely as a result of that diagnosis).

Bonnie uses the Shiatsu Neck Massager

I use the masssager every morning and it seems to keep my neck quite happy.  I've christened the unit Janet, after my massage therapist.  When I took it to show it to her, I told her that my neck was in good shape now because I have "Janet on demand."  We laughed at the time and agreed that it's a good thing it can't address all my pain areas, or she might be out a client!

By the time I took it to show it to my physiotherapist, I had realized that I could use it in other areas which have also proven to be supremely beneficial to me.

My physiotherapist was mightily impressed when I told her how else I was using the neck massager!

I suffer from debilitating calf pain and my weekly physio sessions combined with my bi-weekly massage therapies help to keep the cramps at bay.  But since I started having "Janet" massage my calves (the Shiatsu balls grips my calves in precisely the right spots!) the cramping has been all but eliminated.  And my foot pain (both in the heel and in the ball of the foot) has been decreased significantly since I discovered this trick.  Now, whenever my feet hurt, I can simply put Janet into action.  She does a fabulous job!

These pain management tools, combined with the acupen which I use on my way to bed, all help me "function" from day-to-day while I'm home.  Of course, there is also the jet massage tub that soothes my aching joints on a regular basis too.  And the stair lift assists me when I need to get up and down the stairs.  But I must be at home in order to take advantage of them.

My real difficulties occur when I leave home and have to function without the benefit of these non-medicinal pain managment techniques.

My pain level is increasing with each day because we have decreased the Cesamet dosage.

I'm due to reduce it further tomorrow.

John and I have decided that I will not reduce it this week.

Instead, I will stay at the same already-reduced dosage for at least another week.

Our reason?

We have noticed that I actually have an appetite the past few days.

At least I managed to eat breakfast yesterday morning, and I ate supper last night, interspersed with a sort-of lunch.

Now I'm not saying that I ate a humongous amount of food at any one of those sittings.

But the point is that I ate much more food at each sitting than I have eaten in the last long while.

So we are encouraged that maybe the lower Cesamet dosage has in fact helped with my eating difficulties, perhaps suggesting that it was the dosage causing the problem.

If that is the case, we should give the new "bowel protocol" that the doctor put me on last week a longer opportunity to work its magic to see if the abdominal discomfort and pain are a result of a motility issue.  If it is, and the pain on eating subsides, perhaps we might rethink our treatment plan vis-a-vis Cesamet.

John is concerned about how quickly my pain level has increased with such a small reduction in the dosage (which was exactly my doctor's concern -- what else will he give me?)

And frankly, with the state I'm in today, I have to agree with John.