Friday, October 24, 2008

I'm here and I'm ok

I haven't posted in two days and I'm sure some of you are wondering what the heck is going on here - am I ok? Has something happened?

I'm fine :) Wednesday evening I was very cold and had a bath and went straight to bed without writing anything here. I'd meant to write last night but my back got all woogly again. The woogly back feels like something is plucking at my spinal cord in different places and my back responds by clenching the muscles there. If it's really bad, my whole body clenches and relaxes. It's very uncomfortable and exhausting.

My back gets woogly on occasion but last night was pretty bad. Sometimes the woogles start because I'm tired. Sometimes what happens is that the Fentanyl patches I wear for pain management stop working (they're good for 72 hours which usually means 72 plus or minus a couple of hours) and I start going through narcotic withdrawl. I get shaky, anxious, woogly back, nauseous, and clammy, but the symptoms subside once the new patches go on. If the woogles are bad I'll take Percocet (for breakthrough pain) and/or Ativan.

I love the Fentanyl because it works so much better than the Oxycodone for pain .... but I could definitely do without these withdrawl symptoms. I feel like a junkie looking for a fix when they appear and I don't like that.

So last night I had these woogles - and they were really, really bad - and all I could do after changing the patches and taking Percocet was crawl into bed and try to desensitize myself. It was like every time anything touched my skin (especially my back, hands, or feet), the woogles came back. Eventually I fell asleep. I've still got some light woogles in my back today but they're not too bad.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Chantelle,

Given that you were in Ottawa this weekend, I'd guess that what you've got isn't a cold, it's a mild flu. There's one that's going around here -- the whole city's been talking about it -- but since it's mild it's easy to confuse with a normal cold. Matt, Josh, and I have had it too. :-( Anyway, that might be part of the reason why you've been feeling worse than you might otherwise expect. The good news is that it does pass in about a week so it shouldn't be long before you're feeling like yourself again.

Cheers,
Anne Marie