Tag Archives: morphine

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And “The Plan’s” Begin: The Plan v 1.0 – Sparrow Hospitalist

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The last 24 hours have been horrendous…no pain meds at all, only the magnesium.  Oh and in the midst of this horrendous pain, they decided to do the MRI.  MRI + Massive Pain = severe anxiety and no MRI.  As I sat waiting for my turn in the MRI I began have a panic attack because I knew there was no way I could possibly make it through…my nurse finally came down and pumped me full of morphine.  It was as if I could feel all of my worries and pain melting away.  I made it through the MRI and brought me back to my room.

A neurologist finally came in and laid out a plan to treat the rebound headache.  And so it begins. They have given me the first round of medicine, Topomax, to treat this, what should I call it, shitty headache. I’ve been told that the side effects could be interesting. For example my nurse who had also taken this medicine told me it made her stupid. She would order food at a fast food restaurant, go to pick it up and wonder who ordered it for her or she would get up to go to the bathroom and couldn’t find the bathroom in a one bedroom apt. so this should be an interesting next couple of days.

They tell me it could take 2 to 3 days for this medicine to work, if it works, and if it doesn’t work they try something else. so it looks like I will be in here for a little while yet. On a positive note and even though I feel bad, I am really happy that my mom and Bob are coming home. When I was going into the MRI and was in so much pain all I could think was ” I want my mom” and now I get my mom. Up until today Dan had been so sick he couldn’t come up to the hospital.  I was so glad that he was feeling well enough to come visit today and bring me a few things from home. I am so thankful for such a supportive family and so many supportive friends I love you all and thank you for all you’ve done including all the prayers. I’ll try to update again tomorrow.

feb 16th meme

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Rebound Headache

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Valentines Day!  What better way to spend the day than to spend it with people waiting on you hand and foot.  I got a Valentine Day card this afternoon.  The doctors decided to admit me after doing an MRI and running a bunch of blood tests.  They decided that I have a rebound headache.  Apparently when you stop all over the counter and narcotic medication all of the sudden you can be left with one of the most horrible headache ever.

“Rebound headaches (medication-overuse headaches) are caused by regular, long-term use of medication to treat headaches, such as migraine. Pain relievers offer relief for occasional headaches. But if you take them more than a couple of days a week, they may trigger rebound headaches.”

So they stopped any and all pain medication instantly and started me on Magnesium for 24 hours.  The pain was the worst pain I had ever experienced.  The photophobia was horrendous as well as the phonophobia.

“Photophobia is a symptom of abnormal intolerance to visual perception of light.[1] As a medical symptom, photophobia is not a morbid fear or phobia, but an experience of discomfort or pain to the eyes due to light exposure or by presence of actual physical sensitivity of the eyes,[2] though the term is sometimes additionally applied to abnormal or irrational fear of light such as heliophobia.”

“Phonophobia is an anxiety disorder, not a hearing disorder. Phonophobia is a fear of loud sounds. Phonophobia is also called ligyrophobia. The name “Phonophobia” originates from the Greek words for sound and fear.”

Today I learned many new terms and discovered that head pain could really be that bad.

But today I also felt like a new woman for about five minutes and it was fabulous. A huge shout out to my friend Dawn Tomlin for bringing me toiletries so I could shower and brush my teeth and balloons too. It looks like I’m going to be here for a at least a couple of days as they try to both determine the source of the headaches and to control them.  Thank you for all of the prayers and please keep them coming.  Tonight’s probably going to be a rough night as the first step in trying to find a new medicine to control the headache means eliminating the pain reducing medicines.

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Clean Hair!!!  It is a wonderful thing.

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The great feeling of the shower only lasted for about 15 minutes, but it sure did feel good to be clean.

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ER visit #3…I have the best friends

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I went to work feeling ok…still a mild headache which had remained constant all week.  But I didn’t take any medication at all this week.

I did however make great strides in helping out at work.  After combing through lots and lots of notes, it truly was back to the beginning we needed to go.  So I gathered up what information I had found and went over it with my boss.  At 3:00 pm we had a meeting with his boss to discuss our findings.  At this point we were all very hopeful that this would solve the problems the facility had been having for the past 7 years.  But we wouldn’t know until all the final details were worked out and we actually tried it (for which I would not be there, but on this day I didn’t know that it would be the very last day I worked at this place of employment).  The meeting ended at about 4:00 and at approximately 4:15 pm unbelievable pain struck above my right eye.  It came on so fast and so hard that I wasn’t sure how I would get home.  But I made it and went straight to back to bed.

My first thought was that the spinal headache has returned. Back to bed I go hi ho hi ho.  Laying down helped a little bit, but the pain wasn’t completely gone when I laid down, so there was a chance that it wasn’t a spinal headache either.  I just didn’t know what to do, but by 10:00 pm the pain was so severe that I decided I needed to go into the ER, but this time I was going to go to Sparrow ER.  Now to be done with this bleeping headache (little did I know)!!

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The only problem is that the boys are in bed and I can’t drive myself.  Social media to my rescue.  I asked for a ride to the ER and luckily my dear friend Christina stepped up to the plate.  She even stayed with me until 2:00 am.  By that point they said I would definitely be there until morning when Dan could come get me unless they were going to admit me…at 2:00 am they still didn’t know what they were going to do.  Back in the ER to get a 2nd blood patch (at least I thought this was the problem). Hopefully this will be the last procedure I have in 2015 (If only this were true!)

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This was a smile of relief.  They gave me morphine!

All tucked in for the night at Sparrow. Looks like I will be here for a little while, likely until Monday when full staff is available for testing. But I am nice and warm, my pain is being managed and it is very peaceful.  Counting all my blessings on this very very cold and blustery evening.