Unreal

This is a wildly unreasonable amount of pain. I would go to the hospital if I had any reason to expect to be taken seriously, but the one time - the one time in seven years of constant pain - that I went to the ER because of increased pain that I could not tolerate, the first thing the ER doctor said to me was "We can't give you anything intravenously." Being a chronic pain patient in the ER for pain is not a positive experience.

I don't actually know what it feels like to be simultaneously impaled rectally and vaginally, but that's the best description I can give. It woke me last night, and the pain was so intense I thought I would vomit. In the morning, it had calmed some but was still far above my average of 7 on all of our favorite pain scale. Since 9:00 this morning, it has fluctuated between that and "someone is shoving the spike farther up my rectum." It is truly not okay.

Why is it that I do not have something to take that simply knocks me out on the infrequent occasions this happens?

My state needs to allow medical marijuana. Or medical cartoon anvils to the head.

Grrr

Had Distraction Technique for fourth time yesterday. Husband was with and was lovely. It helps a great deal to have him touching my face or holding my hand through this godawful procedure. Didn't cry third time, did yesterday. Might have been more painful, or might have been that I took 3 ativan instead of 4 yesterday. Good news is that there have been no pain spikes since yesterday, and there weren't any for three days after Time #3. Bad news is baseline pain is very high today. Plus I've caught some virus. I notice I do not do well with "other" pain or discomfort - increasingly so as the pudendal pain lingers into its third year. I feel like whining and bitching. I want to go home, snuggle up under a fuzzy warm blanket and whimper/cry until I fall asleep. And no dreams about dying cats or secret grandfather's rooms or any spooky bullshit like that, either!

Angry, much?

Pudendal Neuralgia & the MAPS Pain Clinic

It's not vulvodynia. This is interesting, because what is often Dx'ed as VVD isn't - it's this pudendal neuralgia mess. At least, according to my new doc - he says what I have "encompasses VVD" but goes beyond it. Sometimes (though not often), thank god for Old White Guy doctors. Dr. Stanley Antolak, in Edina, MN, came out of retirement to treat pudendal pain. He did a series of horrific tests on me to determine exactly where the nerve damage is (and it is nerve damage), then began a series of steroidal injections (blocks), which helped a bit...for a while. If I have sex, it's totally blown. Looks like I'm headed for surgery, I think, but not the kind where the pudendal nerve is destroyed - Antolak will go in and literally yank it over to a new place, on the theory that it's entrapped somewhere, rather than just inflamed.

At some point, I'll try to blog the experience at the U of MN pain clinic...probably after I report the treating practitioner to her board.

In the meantime, Prozac wore off (well, it has been seven years) and in the search for a new solution, plus lots of pain meds (I've been off 'em all for months now...but yay! the pain is still horrid!) and directly injecting things into my nervous system, I've been pushed into Serotonin Syndrome...let me tell you, that's a fuckin' day at the Fair.

How is everyone else doing? Thanks for checking in, Lora. Haven't wanted to write. It's been a really difficult two years.