(As usual, I use the singular term, "pain doc," in reference to members of a practice. Some are men and some are women. Every once in a while, I may slip up and use a gender. Please excuse this. I am making a minimal attempt to protect the privacy of all the medical professionals involved.)
Last Wednesday, I made a few very pointed comments to my pain doc. Like most comments made in pain and anger, I meant the specifics of them as they applied to that particular time. Over that previous week, I had three separate appointments at that office. You probably know by now how painful it is for me to ride in the car. It's also painful to be around groups of people no matter who they are. The only real exception is when I'm drinking and it's obvious why I can't be doing that all the time. I was overwhelmed as a result and my porcupine spines were out.
The first pain doc appointment was actually more than a week before so it was actually two appointments in a week plus one related appointment this coming Friday. At the first pain doc appointment, we discussed ways of keeping me from moving so quickly down a path toward despair. My level of pain has been increasing much faster than the level of treatment my doctors can provide through narcotic medication alone.
We needed to think outside the box again. Previously, we had found solutions to some seemingly daunting problems. I was suffering from fibromyalgia symptoms but had no such diagnosis. My doctor informed me that fibro diagnosis is a process of elimination and that we had eliminated the other things. The doc put me on a fibro medication and my burning pain lessened as a result. I was trying to laugh about the bizarre things that my body does to me. I kept seeing television ads for medication to solve something called "restless leg syndrome" but I had the symptoms they were talking about in my arms. The pain doc diagnosed me with "restless arm syndrome" and put me on that medication as a test. It helped.
This latest outside the box thought concerns a medical device that I was supposed to get in 2002 or 2003. To be honest, I don't even remember what it does other than the fact that it runs an electrical current through problem areas. For years, I've shared the fact that a previous practice ordered this device for me and failed to ever secure it as a joke about inefficiency. At the end of that first appointment, the pain doc offered to make another attempt and I agreed. To be honest again, it was along the lines of a smile and nod. I didn't believe it would happen.
When I got home from that appointment, I got a call from the office stating that they needed to see me in two weeks about the device. I was at least half asleep and agreed. In fact, I was so out of it that I needed to call them back. I remembered that the appointment was for a Wednesday instead of my usual Monday but I forgot which of two Wednesdays it was. I had forgotten to write it down in my mostly asleep condition. I straightened that out in three calls or less and then I started stressing about this appointment. I tend to lose sleep before pain doc appointments and I'm not starting off with much anyway.
When I arrived at the second appointment, I was told very politely that the office had canceled my appointment. No one was sure why but I had not been informed. This was okay because mistakes happen and I can't be upset with someone who made an honest mistake and apologized. That's the sort of thing I resent my father for doing. In a way, I was relieved to not have an office visit because my sense of being overwhelmed was bad enough. I was given a prescription for the device and the information that it would be delivered to me for an in-home demonstration which is good. Remember. I don't really remember exactly what the TENS machine is supposed to do.
I got home feeling like I'd been let off the hook and the phone woke me from my nap. I was expecting a call from the medical supply company to schedule the delivery but it was the pain doc. I needed to come back to the office for a third appointment. Melissa wasn't home and I said that I would do my best because her schedule isn't quite so flexible in December. It turned out that she had off that day so I would have to come in for the second time in a week anyway.
It takes me an average of a week to recover from each appointment physically and mentally so I was still quite broken down. I was also loaded for bear because I feel the frustration from the person who has to drive me back and forth. First there was a canceled appointment and now there was another which I was unsure of how to treat.
As for the apologies, first there is the one to my beloved Melissa. Sorry I snapped at you and buried you in my frustrations. As I said before, "yelling" (I almost never raise my voice.) at the wrong person is a pet peeve of mine since I had been the target of it so many times. I'm also sorry that you had to absorb my frustration for all that time and you were buried in my feelings of being buried.
Secondly, sorry to the pain doc. I know you don't schedule appointments for the fun of it. I should have assumed that the changes were in response to commands from some higher in the food change. That person higher in the food chain is also not being malicious. They are responding to impersonal laws and professional requirements designed to "idiot proof" medicine. None of you are idiots and no idiot would survive practicing medicine for long.
My actual words were not all that severe. After all, I was taught to fear authority figures and that medical professionals were authority figures yet the fact remains that I react to stress like a porcupine. You may be pulling my spines out for weeks. The truth is that I am full of fear and helplessness. I spend most of my time like someone trapped in a raging river trying to keep my head above water and to avoid getting knocked out by debris. Sometimes, I feel like I'm drowning. You don't need to share that feeling.
Melissa saved me from my next encounter by postponing the third appointment with the medical supply company. I wasn't ready to handle it on any level. Having strangers in my home would have felt like an invasion so I would likely have treated them as invaders. I am very difficult to understand when stressed or tired. I was about 18 varieties of stressed and tired that day.
Now, I have had one day of calm waters that let me float down the stream. I got to enjoy almost 12 hours of being unconscious one day and a lovely glass of ale. When I returned to the 'net, I had 82 messages in my inbox to tell me that I need to reengage with the world soon. I'm not ready quite yet but it will work out. Life will knock me down again but I will keep getting back up. We'll take it one day at a time and be as gentle as I can to myself.
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