Wednesday Wishes

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my health so today’s Wednesday Wishes have to do with them.

My health tends to always be on my mind since I’m always in some sort of pain and trying to think of a solution. There are no solutions to the pain it seems.

(Quick background for all my new readers: I broke 5 ribs in July 2012 but we don’t know why or how. No accident, nothing. My blood results and bone density/scans were all good. I was in pain for a year before they figured it out. Now it seems that there is permanent nerve damage in my rib area which I am being drugged up for).

I have an appointment with my pain management doctor on the 10^th. The medicine I take requires I come in to see her every 3 months. Luckily I don’t worry too much about the medicines I take. My worries lie in the fact that I still have very painful days.

The bigger worry is that the medicines I take are not compatible with pregnancy. Which means that when Thomas and I decide to start trying (and if I get pregnant accidently) I have to stop taking the medicine. I depend on the medicine to not be crippled in pain. I’m still in pain with the medicine, without it I can’t function.

What will happen when I get pregnant and can’t get through the day? I worry about having to take time off work in order to make it through the pregnancy. I worry about the fact that it would mean that we would have less income coming in. (I have to look into getting Aflack or Colonial Life for supplemental insurance to cover this period, but that is a monthly cost).

On a different health note – for the past six months to a year, whenever something happens in my life – whether it is buying a car or now refinancing my house – I get what I think are tension headaches. For some reason I always leave my Excedrin at home and Tylenol does nothing to subdue the pain.

So my wishes for today are that my health improves. I wish that the hormones that pregnancy brings will help with the pain and I’ll be able to work and have a nice pregnancy. I wish that I can eventually wean off some of the medication. I wish that this headache side effect to life events goes away, they suck!

What are your wishes today?

Ribs O Pain

I was going to write about my week today but I need to feel sorry for myself for a little bit. This is a long post, and it deals with my chronic pain and my fears of being able to be pregnant. I’d appreciate you reading it, but I understand that there are a lot of words and nothing in ways of pictures. 

I know that there are many, many people who are dealing with a lot more pain than I am. But that does mean that my pain doesn’t matter. It does. 

I’ve always had upper back pain. Okay, not always, but from about the age of 14. I’m a couple of months away from my 30^th birthday now. That pain, though, would be strong some days and less severe other days. I was prescribed a muscle relaxant that I would take when the pain got to be too strong for me. I remember that from about 6/2014 2012 and before I was maybe taking it once a month. 

Then in July 2014 I got hurt. I don’t know how, exactly, though. The only thing I remember is zipping up a dress and feeling pain down my arm. I thought I pulled a muscle or something. Nearly a year later I found out that I had broken 5 ribs on my right side. During that year I was in so much pain I didn’t want to do anything. Towards the fall I couldn’t get up or lay down without help. I had to lay on my right side to have some type of relief.  The doctor’s I went to told me it was just inflammation and to take some anti-inflammatory medication – which never seemed to help. 

Finally in May 2013 a doctor at my new insurance through Kaiser ordered me an x-ray, which revealed 3 broken bones. An MRI (or was it CT scan?) later on revealed 2 other broken bones.  

I got the call at work and started to cry. I wasn’t imagining the pain after all! There was a reason that I felt stabbing pain under my right breast. 

Then came another problem. Why was I still in pain if my initial injury was nearly a year earlier?  

After seeing different doctors, having scans, blood work, and countless other things done I was given the sad news: if you’re still in pain you will probably always be. It’s unlikely it will get better. 

The bones had healed somewhat. They are still healing now, though, 2 years later. So the pain that I feel now is not the broken ribs, but the result of the ribs being broken. 

Nerve damage. The doctor explained that when the ribs broke they probably damaged the nerve that runs from the spine in between the ribs. While nerves do heal, they should have healed by now. 

So the answer is medication. I’m on a nerve pain medicine called Gabapentin. I’m at the highest dosage (800mg, 3 x a day) and I’m taking Tramadol along with it twice a day. 

I’m still in a lot of pain. I feel it all the way from under my right breast to my back. Sometimes, when the pain is more unbearable than other times, I take a Norco instead of the Tramadol. But I’m afraid that I’m hurting myself taking so many medications.

The last few days the pain has been worse than it has been (maybe the adrenaline of the wedding and honeymoon masked the pain?) and so I started thinking about when I have kids. 

When Thomas and I decide that we want to have a baby I will have to be taken off the Gabapentin. It’s not compatible with pregnancy. Thinking about this makes me cry. I want more than anything to be pregnant and have babies, but how can I do that if my body doesn’t agree with it? If my body will betray me and give be so much pain that I can’t handle being pregnant. 

I’m so afraid of not being able to have my own children. I worry about our finances. While I won’t lose my job (a positive of being a government employee), I only have so much paid time off, and it’s nowhere near enough to cover 9 months off. 

If you’ve read this, thank you. I needed to get it off my chest. I needed to talk about it.