Just call me Anna

I feel like Anna Nicole at the music awards. My head is spaced out—practically empty in fact—and my speech is slurred. If it weren't for spellcheck, this post would not be intelligible. I actually sound a little drunk and I can’t concentrate or think or in a straight line. At various points throughout the last three day I’ve been nauseous, my knees have been very inflamed (so much so that Mum could feel the heat emanating from them with her hand hovering a half-inch above the skin), I’ve been dizzy, very very tired, and just generally shit house.

Why? Well, I'm glad you asked. I went to see Dr KHS on Friday. The pain in my legs has been getting worse of late. It’s morphed from an ever-present ache in the muscles and bone to include nerve pain, both shooting and tingling (though thankfully it hasn't progressed to stabbing...yet...), and I was hoping for something—anything—to stop it. He gave me a month’s supply of another type of anti-convulsant drug which he advised I start immediately, and we discussed some other options for the future.

At the moment I take several different medications: an anti-depressant (sertraline—because we all know what happens when my depression gets out of control), a prescription anti-inflammatory (meloxicam—as needed), guaifenesin—a somewhat experimental treatment for fibromyalgia, and until recently pregabalin, which is actually an anti-convulsant (ie anti-epilepsy) drug that blocks pain receptors in the brain (I wrote about it here and here). This has been replaced with carbamazepine which does much the same thing. Fuck I hope it works better.

He suggested we could try me on a tricyclic anti-depressant, which would treat the pain and prevent migraines and depression, although he conceded that the sertraline is much better for depression than the (older) tricyclics. The only reason I didn’t say “yippee” and start right now is that it would take a month to change over—one week of sertraline at a low dose, two weeks of nothing, then one week of the tricyclic before it took effect—and I just have too much happening at the moment. Perhaps in summer I can do it.

I’ve written before about feeling trapped. Today I felt it even more keenly than ever before, like a twenty-three year old trapped in the body of an old man. I caught myself wondering if this is how Pop felt for the last few years of his life as his mobility became more and more restricted. We went for a family barbecue today, to celebrate family day, to which we drove down a winding dirt road. It was like being in a paint-shaker, every bump resonated through my body like thunder claps.

I feel like a fucking lab rat at the moment. There is so much more to life than this, it’s like I can see it from the sidelines and I just want to get out there and play.