SweetSue knows this story. None of the rest of you do. So I'm here to tell it.
Let me take you back 20 years, to a day I was moving from a dorm room down three flights of stairs and then into an apartment for the summer, up three flights of stairs. I was an avid runner back then, running on average 6 - 8 miles per day. So I went for a run to ease my mind and relax my body. Not a long run, but a hard run.
I woke the next morning unable to move. Unable to get out of bed. Unable to reach the phone. Somehow I crawled to the bathroom pissing and crying all the way because of the pain. Somehow I was able to reach the telephone to call for help, one flight down.
None of the drs seemed to believe me about the intensity of the pain. They seemed to think that I was drug seeking. At the time, I didn't even know there were drugs that could help with the pain.
10 years hence. Enter Ginette, who soon became the wife-bot. She believed me when I said I was in pain. She saw it in my face. She saw it in my stance. She saw it in the way I held my body. She saw ii in the way I spoke. She saw it,a nd was the first one to do so.
4 years hence. A day in the garden like any other, except I dug six holes to plant tomatoes. They had to haul me to the hospital in an ambulance. The ambulance attendant was afraid I would strike out from the pain and hit him in the jaw. I'm not a violent man, but I could've. It was pain like the very first time, unable to move, unable to walk, unable to function. The morphine they gave me took away all the pain, but made me blotto. They sent me home the next day with a prescription for morphine that made me puke and puke and puke and puke. I called it turbo puking for lack of another word. Turbo charged turbo puking. I stopped taking the morphine and gritted my teeth, cried through the pain.
In the mornings, I wake Ginette by calling her name. I cannot turn over in bed to shake her awake. She wakes and gets a glass jar for me to piss into. She has to hold the jar for me to piss because I cannot twist enough to hold it myself. So demeaning. So embarrassing. I was completely mortified but had no ohter choice. When it comes time to get out of bed, I tell the wife-bot to pull me once, keep pulling me, don't stop no matter how strongly I cry out, no matter how much I plead with her to stop, because I know that if I don't continue trying to get out of bed on the one occasion, I won't have the strength to try a second time. Keep going, Ginette, Just keep going no matter how much I cry, no matter how hard I scream, just keep going. Keep going.
In the hospital, they make an appointment with dr. S. for me, a specialist in pain management. On my first appointment with dr S., he gives me between 20 - 30 shots in my back and an epidural to stop the pain The epidural numbs me out from the waist down. The shots in my back numbs me out from the waist up. Add a Fentanyl patch (200 mcg/hr, twice the recommended dosage) and Tylenol 4s for the breakout pain and I'm finally able to walk without a cane again. Even outside. Freedom! Elation! Almost pain-free! Now THAT'S the way to live!
Fast forward 6 or so years. I'm in a new province, having lost dr. S as a dr. I go to a pain clinic here who wants to take away my Fentanyl patch and t4s. Okay, sure. But what will you replace it with? They say Methadone. I say NO. I say Cannabis. They say OKAY.
So at the end of February, 2017 I will attempt to titrate off my huge dose of Fentanyl and T4s and replace it with Cannabis. I'm looking forward to it, if only because the Fentanyl has begun to not work as it once did and the T4s no longer take care of the breakout pain like it once did. I'm looking forward to having a medication that works again. And to be honest, I'm looking forward to having more control over my own dosing, my own medication and my own pain requirements.
So that's my story. I hope it may give strength and hope to another as I continue to update what happens to me and my pain over the next little while.
All my best.
when I saw the link in your journal SweetSue 
