After 12 days in hospital, I returned home on Saturday. Twelve days of disappointment, hope and, ultimately, despair. I am back in Limerick more broken than before I left it.
I had a reaction to the first drug they tried on me. It was being funnelled in through a little tube in the stomach area, but that area became inflamed and sore. They switched to an oral form of the drug. The pain eased slightly. I thought there was light at the end of the tunnel but after a couple of more days it became clear that this new drug was failing too. So, ever the optimist, the doc change me to another medicine, again to be taken orally. As they increased the strength of the drug every day, they reduced and finally eliminated the pills I was on. This new drug seemed only to be making me groggy, but I was hopeful that once I returned home, to my own environment, I would notice its positive effects.
Then I started being physically sick, throwing up the meds I had just taken. I was sleepy and nauseous, and all the time the back pain continued to burn me up as before. So, following a discussion with the doc yesterday, it was decided to abandon the new drug and return to my old one – the same ineffective one I was using before my fruitless hospital stay.
To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. I am crushed. The final option open to me is the spinal cord stimulator, but it could take a month before this happens. I want to have it because I will try anything to reduce my pain. And yet I am scared, because if it fails, there is nothing left. It will be the end of the road.
The doctor, like all the others I have dealt with in the past, started off full of easy optimism. “Eighty or 90 percent of people respond very well to such and such medication. We’ll get you sorted.” Then, when that med fails, he shrugs his shoulders and says, “Well, we’ll try this other one so. Up to 90% of people get great results from it, etc, etc.” And when that in turn fails, and I ask why it hasn’t worked for me, he says that I fit into that difficult tiny percentile of people who are unresponsive to various interventions. Which is so devastating to hear. The disappointment as much as the pain is killing me, literally. I’d rather docs didn’t offer false assurances but I suppose they have to be positive for the sake of their patients.
Two years ago I would not have believed that there were people in the so-called First World who had to live with chronic pain. I thought medicine had advanced enough to ensure that people did not have to suffer 24/7. But now I know that there is a vast community out there living with chronic pain, whose best hope is a few hours of relief every few months, if even that. I have increased empathy for people I see who are bent over or in clear physical distress. It is a lonely place to be.
I am 54, and I can’t imagine going on into pension or old age like this. I can’t remember what it is like to have no physical pain, to go to bed looking forward to the next day and not dreading it. The disappointment and the despair are killing me, even if the physical pain on its own won’t finish me off.
frommypulpit 