Chronic Pain

Life was cruising along "normally" until something went terribly wrong with my pancreas. I would have these very painful attacks of pancreatitis which would last from five to seven days and usually end with me in the hospital having the symptoms treated but no etiology discovered. The attacks started with one or two per year and then increased in frequency and severity. Out of sheer desperation I went to the west coast's expert on pancreatic disorders. He subjected me to five hours of invasive and abusive testing only to discover nothing. However, the probing, prodding, and biopsying sent me into the worst pancreatitis attack to date and it lasted for eight months. Since that time I have had unending pain and nausea.

Living with wracking pain and nausea that feels like being on the verge of purging all of the time is Hell. Every second of every day I fight back the urge to cry out from the pain. It never goes away. I have been a patient at a pain management clinic for the past three years. Pain management is an experimental process whereby the doctor starts the patient out with different combinations of pain killing drugs and increases or decreases doses depending on the efficacy of the prescription. If the drugs don't work, then a new regimen is started with a new combination of drugs. During the three years with this physician I have been through five trials. The latest just two days ago. Thus far the drugs have only taken the edge off the pain and made it bearable to get up and do the daily activities of life. Still the pain persists. It's there all day, every day.

Living with the side effects of the drugs isn't much better. Narcotics, especially opioids, naturally depress the central nervous system. They also depress the patient. The first regimen of drugs involved using Fentanyl lollipops for breakthrough pain management. The lollipops, unbeknown to me, each contained two teaspoons of confectioners sugar and over the thirteen months of using these lollipops the sugar took it's toll on my teeth. Thus far I've lost eleven and had nine crowned. This newest regimen of drugs (Methodone and Oxycodone)make me feel like a zombie all of the time. I have no motivation, I'm sleepy or sleeping all of the time. I think the doses are just too high. I just can't imagine somebody wanting to feel this way. People pay outrageous amounts of money to get stoned like this on purpose. I don't like the lack of sensation and loss of mental acuity that the drugs induce. I have little or no motivation to do anything. I have a myriad of projects I should or want to do but I just can't get moving to do any of them. I'm not that kind of person and I don't like what the drugs have done to my personality. But then I'm not sure I'm brave enough to stop taking them. I don't know if I could stand the pain. I know the depression is at least partially a result of the drugs but there's also the loss of my past lifestyle due to the pancreatitis that contributes in a major way to my depression. I once was an energetic, funny, enthusiastic, high school math teacher. I don't know if I still have what it takes to do that job anymore. I really want to try it again and be successful at it but I just don't know. The not knowing fuels the depression as well.

I'm in this downward spiralling pit. The pain makes me use the drugs. The drugs make me depressed. The depression worsens the pain. Around and down I go, ad infinitem. Something has to give, if I'm ever going to have some sense of normalcy in my life again. Motivation being lost like it is keeps me from accomplishing the things that really need to be done but I just can't shake myself into action. Everyone has advice but it doesn't help. I'm the kind of person that has to do it himself and I just don't seem to have it in me now to get motivated. It's like there doesn't seem to be any point even though I know there is. I need to work on my house so it can be sold and we can move into something more manageable. The fact that it's my departed father's home doesn't help either. Ghosts. I feel bad that I don't go out and do the things I used to enjoy anymore. There doesn't actually seem to be anything that does bring joy anymore. Living with a person who's as bad off or worse than I am really places some pressure on me to take up the slack but most days I have trouble getting dressed---for what? My depression was getting better for a while but I've hit a bump in the road and it doesn't take much to set a depressed person back sometimes a long way. I worked very hard to become certified to teach in Texas filling out endless forms, fingerprinting, background checking, taking six hours of examinations on teaching standards and mathematics, all at a cost of nearly a thousand dollars but I missed the boat and everything came through at the end of June and there were no teaching positions available by then. It seems to have been all for naught. That was a lot of work for nothing. I augment our Social Security Disability income by tutoring college students but it's too spotty to count on and the income too little. We're slowly going under financially and I can't do anything about it. Thus the spiral continues.

I'm writing this for me to help me gain perspective and vent. Maybe reading it over and over, something will jump out at me and help me climb out of the pit. Doubtful, but one never knows. All I know is that at the present rate of descent I'll be so depressed that I may be unsalvagable. And then there's the pain. Ever present old friend always there to gnaw at me. Round and round we go. Where we stop nobody knows.
What a fun ride this is.