Gosh Dang Heck!

Sorry for the non-foul language, but man, I’m trying SO hard not to be at my wit’s end, but here we are!

I had the brain surgery they suggested; the brain bolt. It was whatever; if I had to get it again, I’d do it. It’s not stupid painful for more than a few minutes. I didn’t love it or anything, but it was a lot less than what I expected.

But when they found that I’m not a good candidate for either the shunt (because my pressure isn’t always over 40, sometimes, it’s as low as 14, which is the high end of acceptable), nor the decompression surgery (because my pressure does get up to and past the 40s.

The literal words used were “I just don’t know what to do for it, other than throw pills at it”.

Today, they’ve prescribed me Morphine. 4 a day! When my pain flares, my csf pressure skyrockets. The best they can do at this point is to manage the pain (and memory, and spasms) with medication, and since I have a stupid high tolerance to pain meds, they have been amping up what I should take.

And I really do have a high tolerance. When I got my skull drilled into, and a needle put through my brain, they tried giving me Fentanyl to knock me out… and when it had absolutely zero effect on me, they tried another dosage of it. And another. And one more after that. And since 4 doses of Fentanyl didn’t so much as make me drowsy, they went ahead and just drilled.

The issue with me and pain, apparently, is when my body is ripping itself apart, it spikes my cerebral spinal fluid pressure a ton. That puts me back into the stroke zone (of which I’ve had two, I’ll pass on another, thank you). So we have to manage the pain, even if I feel like I can just deal with it.

So I’m taking a new one, a STRONG one, one who lists side effects like death and false sense of happiness and weight loss and relaxed and calm feeling and literally “Holding false beliefs that cannot be changed by fact”. Like, the pamphlet actually said that!

I’m kinda scared to take this stuff!