Daily Log #4 (Pain Medication)

There wasn't much going on today. No mail to worry about because of President's Day.

My kids were home from school and playing video games most of the time. In the past, I would have wanted to go somewhere whenever they had a day off. Even if it was to play catch or something. Instead, I spent the day working on my novel.

On a normal day, when the kids are at school and my wife is at work, I get up around 8:30am. Even if I don't get much sleep the night before I'll get up early most days. Our dog requires a lot of attention and she won't let me sleep in too long. She'll jump on the bed and start hitting me with her paw to wake me up. I'm up earlier to make sure my kids are getting ready for school, but once they leave I try to get some more sleep.

When I get up I'll go get a bowl of cereal for breakfast if my wife hasn't made some oatmeal for me and left it on the counter. I go back to bed and turn on my laptop while I eat and I check on all my games (two) that I have going on Facebook. I'll go through my email too.

When that's all done I get up to take my morning medications and take a shower. There is no way my day feels like it's started until I take a shower. I love hot showers!!! I used to take showers for twenty or thirty minutes (until the hot water ran out) and because I was usually up and out of the house for work before anyone else got up the shower was my way of going over the things had had to do that day. Now my showers are just long enough to wash my hair and clean up with some soap. My groin starts hurting the minute I stand up and putting weight on my legs starts the pain shooting through them. So by the time my shower is finished, I am too, so I take another pain pill around then. I usually don't shave because that requires standing up longer so my beard can get a little rough sometimes.


After that I have to lay down for a while and wait for the pain pill to kick in. Most people look at me like I'm a drug addict when I tell them how much pain medication I'm taking everyday. I'm sure some think I take it to get that "high" feeling, but that is far from the truth. I take it to ease the pain. The pain NEVER goes away and the only thing that the pills do is make the pain TOLERABLE. I would be a rich man if I got money for every time someone said to me, "You shouldn't take that or you'll get addicted." The problem is that they offer NO ALTERNATIVE. If I could do this some other way then I would. If I could have some miracle treatment to cure the pain I would do it. I hate taking any kind of medication and when someone puts me down for taking pain meds I want to tell them to go cram their opinion right up their you-know-what. If you can't offer an alternative then keep your mouth shut! You're ignorant about the crap falling out of your mouth!

There is a huge difference between addiction and tolerance when it comes to pain medication. A person who is addicted is taking the meds because the feel they need to or want to because they want to feel the high. A person who is building up a tolerance is having to take more and more to have the same affect to take away the pain. When a person starts taking these meds because they have the urge to and not when they're feeling pain then they have a problem. When a person only takes the meds to ease the pain and only as a last resort to get the pain under control then that is a totally different story from addiction.

This is one of the things that makes people with Chronic Pain feel alone. This is probably the second hardest thing for anyone to understand who has not experienced this type of pain. The hardest is to understand the consistency of the pain itself.

What worries me is building up tolerance for the stuff the doctors prescribe. I know it's going to happen and there is nothing they, or I, can do about it. There really isn't many effective pain medications out there and the ones that are are usually opiates. The medical industry really needs to come up with a better solution so those of us taking these meds don't run into more problems from the meds than there is from the pain.

There are unpleasant side effects from these medications that no one in their right mind would want to go through. I have constipation that is so bad that I usually can't have a bowl movement without an enema. That's after I take laxatives. My stomach cramps from the constipation and enemas really suck. There are many other side effects as well. So tell me why I'm only taking those meds because I'm addicted??

I really wish there was something else I could do!!!