14 January 2011 Day 25 - Bic Runga & Semisonic - Good Morning, Baby

Friday 14 January 2011 (1,3), Day 25 in Hospital Pain Treatment

Well, it's been quite busy here in the program, and progressing more rapidly than before. I hope to find more time to write and re-post lost journal from Day 20.... Thursday, during lunch, one of my pain classmates mentioned that it was Thursday the 13th... (wooooo-ooooo), ridiculous.... "it's worst than Friday the 13th....," they said they were jk....

I've been thinking about this ol' favorite of mine for a while this past few weeks and decided it was past due time to post: Bic Runga's debut with Semisonic in their song "Good Morning Baby" (I hope I'm gonna make it thru another day....), which was what I was thinking during the 2nd week here in the pain treatment program during the Holidays in Dec....





My Rx-induced osteopenia-osteoarthritis has been really bothering me this past wk&a-half now, yet they are adamant about keeping all my impingement (restrictive) devices from me while in-patient (restricting me from restrictive devices.... mainly my wrist splints for during sleep and physical therapy exercises, so I've really fallen behind in my shoulder impingement pain-reducing strengthening exercises with my thera-bands). I should be able to return to using my aides once I return to my regular out-patient physical rehab program @DC.
However, 'til then I'm on full restriction, no mobility devices in-patient on the floor, and only limited use with permission only when outside on "day" trips.... I wanted the Rollator to push my heavy groceries back on public transport when returning to hospital from grocery store.... (I will explain this story, since I wrote it on Day 20, yet that posting was "lost" in cyber-space, on why I am wasting valuable money on expensive organic vegan groceries, while the government medicare insurance is wasting over $50/meal costs charged by the JHU hospital, daily on in-edible foods ("trays" vs gut-wrenching blobs on the "buffet" table), which cost less than $5 bux down in the cafeteria yet I'm still being charged full $50+/per tray/meal anyway....) .... My classmate JS says in jest, "so are you still wasting your $50 meals on the Kosher menu trays... ha ha ha ha ha...." Y, Yes, of course! Y not, I'm hoping each time, "curious", if they will ever send anything up except the same eggplant-veggie wrap and/or the fried eggplant parmesan, both have that's right - dairy products in them, which I avoid eating at most costs... let's see... flour based products like the "wrap" has gluten, dairy, eggs, usually, and then there's the cheese inside the wrap, which all have caused me tremendous amount of ab pain during the first 2wk that I endured eating some of the veggies between the "Kosher" "trays" and the "buffet" of blob that they call food here... and also, of course fried anything parmesan has wheat or flour products, gluten and oils and also of course dairy and/or egg products... all of which I must avoid eating since they are the main culprits of my ab-stomach pains... and you'd think the pain treatment program is to help reduce amount of pain and suffering one endures and yet here we are all suffering much more pain than we did before we came into the program, because they ween us off the pain-meds and then add other substances to our daily intake which definitely increases more pain, cuz it always gets worse before it gets better.... ye-ah, right... we get it.... pain treatment program....

Anywho, it's been a "rough" (huge understatement there) 10days thus far since 5 January til now... my roommate (they moved me after Day 15, from one end of the hall (the better end, and warmer too, esp in that private room I first had during 1st 2wk) all the way down to the other end toward the front of the hospital in the smaller room....) for the past wk&a-half, who loves "cold" air (bbbbbbrrrrr shudder, shudder, shiver shiver....) as opposed to my love of Caribbean-temperatures above 75deg F., has truly gotten worse before she will get better due to the "weening" down of her old pain meds, i.e. lower titrations of addictive type of pain meds vs. increased titrations of non-addictive (or so they say...) alternative meds for "chronic" pain/medical conditions...

Frankly, I was okay the first few days of my titration of SNRIs to "reduce" chronic-pain symptoms, until they suddenly upped the dosages in 2-day increments instead of 4-5day increments, and for the past 4-5days of sudden increase, I still suffer from insomnia and all my multiple sleep disorders at night, and despite being able to get more than 4-5hr of sleep some nights (now that's a lot more than I used to get @hm before being in the program, so about 2-3hr avg per night & usu less than 4-5hr at the most on a regular basis then), yep despite getting more sleep than I used to without the new meds... and now on the increased meds, my sleepiness in the AM also has increased so that it's been soooooo hard for me to wake up... that as of Saturday morning, even after crashing in bed early and sleeping right away, after having 4x's more meds than the first day they started me on them... less than a week ago... I was unable to "wake" up, no matter how hard I tried, (well, I really didn't "try", it was more like noise e.g. loud talking by my roommate, her nurse and husband, and/or combination of both or all three, every 30min or so, that kept arousing me from my deep dream-REM-sleep this AM between 8:30 - til about 11:30 EST (-5GMT)... anyway the dream continued every time I was aroused and couldn't "wake" up and immediately fell back asleep within "short" time (relatively)... and what a dream it was:

The most stressful part of the 4 hours were: 1) the nurse woke me very early (before 8) to take vitals (always sux cuz most of them want me to actually STAND UP for 2nd BP... and everyone knows a person w/ severe joint and neuromuscular pain, arthritic pain, and rheumatic pain doesn't "get up" right away, takes up to 2+ or more hr most times....blood-work is worse cuz they may jab u w/ needles as early as 5); 2) roommate talking loudly on ph w/ hubby or nurse, making me think she was talking to me... ; 3) noise every 30min; 4) actually wanting to and trying to "wake" up yet cannot actually keep eyelids open....; 5) knowing I am not awake nor asleep during those minutes in between partial arousal and before falling asleep... (UGH!!); 6) cold air!!!! (draft from 30deg F. air outside keeps drafting in the thin transparent windows... esp since maintenance guy suddenly came by 2 Thursdays ago to "remove" dangerous screws from the window area and then all the old blinds along with them... that's another story I wrote on Day 20 that disappeared n2 cyberspace...) which I sooooooooooo much despise any air below Caribbean temperatures....; 7) the dream was soooooo goooooood and seemed sooooooooo REAL that I really really really wished it was really really really happening instead of what was really going on in the room: me sleeping and trying my darndest to "wake" up so I could actually get the the fresh market before it closed at noon....

So, what was this wonderfully painful dream that seemed to continue on every time I fell back asleep....????? I was dreaming that I actually woke up early after the week-end dr left sometime around 8:23AM, and made necessary phone calls to my former "mother-in-law" for our plans to meet and go out (yay "day" outting from the hospital walls...), and what was most frustrating was that, although in the dream I was making the phone calls, I kept having difficulty getting through to speak to her about the program moving us from our current building location to another location much further away on a cruise ship shuttle bus/boat device which I thought would go directly from land into the water, then I had to keep reminding myself that it is only a shuttle to get us to the other building/hotel location where we'd be transferring us and all our luggage to a cruise ship that would take us to "Romans Islands" after a 3-4day cruise...

Wow, now that would be a great addition to our pain treatment program, in reality... I was trying to explain to Mum on my mobile and asking the driver/operator of the boat shuttle bus where we are and what address we are going to be dropped off to transfer onto the cruise ship, because part of the pain treatment program is to integrate us back into real life activities and one of the requirements was for us to go on this cruise to the islands, and see how well we perform on this activity to gauge whether we were ready to go back in the "real" world, living our "normal" lives with our chronic medical conditions, if we would be able to "manage" our pain such as standing on a small moving boat and getting around on the seas without our "sea"-legs, just yet.... That was a strange and curious, interesting dream and how nice it would be if it were REAL....

Good-morning, Baby, I hope I'm gonna make it through another day....