Tag Archives for blog

Gratitude and Creativity: Go Where Love Grows

I’ve been having what therapists may characterize as ‘emotional breakthroughs’ since becoming ill. One of the most significant is about love. Not the impossibly romantic kind they depict in movies, but the kind where people embrace you warts and all and let you know that they care for and value you always. Because of my growing understanding of that kind of love I’m reconnecting with and growing relationships with people who I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I didn’t know them.

Go Where Love Grows

Go Where Love Grows

Some of them are people who, because of the complicated relationship with my mother, I always felt guilty having in my life. Not surprisingly, since I’ve been ill they are some of the people who have been most supportive, especially when it comes to the emotional support needed as I try to cope with the current conditions of my life. These people love me. They have always loved me. The love they have for me is not dictated by biology or obligation. They love me just because they do. And I love them in return not because there is anything tangible for me to gain; not because I feel that I must reciprocate, but simply because I do.

My recognition that this love exists is changing me. It’s opening me. It’s making me feel positive even as I endure the pain of my illness. This love makes me feel less alone as I live every day in my small space because I know that I am not living through all of this alone. Most importantly, as cliché as it sounds, I now know the true meaning of the phrase “go where love grows”, and I hope others can experience this growth.

 

Edison Lighthouse – Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes

Nerve (Almost) Block Effects

On Tuesday morning I had a nerve block. According to the pain specialist who performed it, the procedure couldn’t have been more perfect. The needle was easily passed through my tailbone to deliver the anesthetics to my nerves – this may be the one thing about my condition that has played out as described in a medical textbook. Because they inserted the needle into my tailbone, the area has been incredibly sore so the only way I’ve been able to sit is straight upright as if I have a plank in my back.

Ganglion impar block

Ganglion Impar Block

For the past 48 hours, I’ve been dutifully keeping a log of my pain improvement progress every two hours. Overall, I’m not pain free but I have less pain than before the procedure. I still have my right-side oriented pain in my lower abdomen, back and leg but I’m experiencing what I’ll characterize as a constant low level of pain on the pain scale. This probably means that combined with the nerve block, I’m feeling the benefits of my pain medications for the first time in a long time. My hope is to lower the level of pain medications I take over the next few months so when I have surgery the doctors will have room to treat me before reaching the maximum limits of pain medication doses during my recovery. The pain specialists have told me that my case is very complicated and the possibility exists that my pain will be difficult to treat post-surgery. This nerve block will be a good indicator of what they can expect.

I’m also hoping to go for a few walks before the effects of the nerve block wear off. Walking for a significant distance is something that I have a lot of difficulty with these days. With the weather being as wonderful as it is, it would be nice to pack a lunch, walk to the park, and sit in the sun for a while. That’s such a simple thing to wish for, but it’s something I badly want to do. However, I know I’ll have to take things slow because I just came back from an appointment and the car drive there and back has affected me negatively and increased my pain. I’ll dream about the walk to the park while I rest my body.

John Mellencamp – Hurts So Good

Nerve Block Nervousness

On Tuesday morning I’m getting a nerve block. A Ganglion Impar Block to be more specific. The pain specialist ordered it during my last visit to the pain clinic for hopefully better pain management. The closer I get to the appointment, the more nervous I become. I know the intention of the procedure is to reduce my pain – although temporarily – but the process that’s been described to me along with the odds that it may not work are starting to play on my nerves.

I have instructions to start fasting at midnight tomorrow night because I will receive full anesthesia as if having a big surgery. Then I will check into the Outpatient/Ambulatory Surgery department at the hospital at 8:30 AM on Tuesday. Once I strip down to nothing but a blue hospital gown and my vitals are recorded, an orderly will wheel me down sterile corridors while making small talk with me about the weather. The destination will be an even more sterile room with scrubbed, masked strangers who will be predictably cheerful as they organize trays of instruments and measure precise quantities of nerve-numbing medicines.

Ganglion Impar Block Instruments

Ganglion Impar Block Instruments

As described, the procedure will require me lie face down on my stomach “with a pillow under the pelvis to help flatten out the lower lumbar spine’s natural curvature. Your lower back and intergluteal cleft [that’s ‘butt crack’ in layman’s terms] will be prepped and draped in a sterile manner before local anesthesia is administered at the point of entry of the needle into your skin. When your skin is adequately anesthetized, the needle will be advanced under fluoroscopy guidance until correct needle placement is obtained. Its correct placement will also be confirmed by administration of contrast dye. Once position is confirmed either a diagnostic block (to determine if your perineal pain is visceral or somatic), or a therapeutic block will be preformed.”

I think the best part of all this will be my lack of consciousness as I lie on that table with my naked butt in the air when they penetrate my tailbone with the needle. With that wondrous image in my mind, my hope is that when I wake up I will have better pain relief. I hope I don’t experience a pain flare up before that relief arrives as the pain specialist has forewarned. I hope I can have a few months of better pain relief before the next wave of intense pain arrives when I have the big surgery at the end of the summer. I know I’m hoping for a lot.

 

Pat Benatar – Anxiety (Get Nervous)