Diary of a Life with Chronic Pain v2.01

The pain has been pretty bad over the last few weeks, which hasn’t helped the
depression, but I also had a very bad therapy appointment which has affected me the
most. The doctor was a useless woman. She asked me if I was on methadone because
of a heroin addiction. She didn’t know why I was in pain even though she’d seen me
two appts previously and had asked me each time, and she all but blamed me for them
not being able to help me. She said – and I quote “As you know we cant help you
until YOU get rid of this pain problem”. Well, gee, thanks. It’s my fault now huh?
Why didn’t you say so sooner then! Jesus. Anyways they wont change the drugs, and
they cant do anything for me. But if things get bad then Im to phone up and they’ll try
to help. Hmmm, id told her I was suicidal and I was in tears in her office. I wonder
what qualifies as bad these days? Winning the lottery jackpot and losing the ticket?
Stubbing your toe on the table leg?

Tried to get my appt with the Pain Doctor brought forward a few weeks ago, and
ended up with an appt three weeks later than the one I already had set up in May. So
now, I’m having to wait until June. The reason is that the appt in May was NOT for
the Pain Doctor but for the useless nursing team who can do very little without his say
so. I saw the nurse last time and she promised she would phone me next day with
confirmation of the pain plan we had (which was actually to do no nothing but take
extra paracetamol – which did nothing of course when I tried it). She promised me at
that time that the next appt would be directly with the doctor because things were
going so bad. It turns out when she made the appt for May it was NOT with the
doctor. Now, I saw it say so on the sheet that it was for him. So, has he changed it and
tried to fob me off on the nurse, or has the receptionist misread. Neither would
surprise me as I’ve no confidence in either of them. So anyways, the first appt I could
get with him in person was mid June. In the meantime I was to phone daily for
cancellations as they don’t keep a cancellations list unless you have cancer. I’ve
phoned five times over three weeks, left five messages and have had no reply.

I try so hard not to unload all this on my friends. I guess that’s why I unload on here
or in the private journal or whatever, depending on my mood. But there’s only so long
I can say “yer alls fine thanks” when they know it isn’t and can see from my replies
that it isn’t. So I ended up telling them exactly what’s wrong. I have very precious
few friends in RL now. But worryingly it seems like I’m losing touch with some of
my most important net friends too. It’s really upsetting to see that two of my closest
best net friends no longer reply to my mails for weeks, and avoid me on Yahoo and MSN despite
being on the net elsewhere as ppl I’m talking to at the time tell me they’ve seen them.
I guess Ive gotten them fed up with my complaining. For all I know they could’ve
blocked me from the messengers system or their mail box. It’s really upset me, and so
now I’ve vowed to never talk about all this again to friends online, and Ill keep it all
inside and in the journals. I cant afford to lose anymore friends.

I got an email from a former college friend of mine. She sent me a mail to say she was
buying a new house, and is more than likely engaged etc and has a fabulous steady
career with a great wage. Im really happy for her. But it slayed me to read it. I felt
such a failure. Shes exactly where I wanted to be at that stage of my life – shes 3 years
younger than me. And where am I? I have no home of my own, still with my folks. I
have no money cos im on the social and living from payment to payment, a lot of the
money from which goes to my folks for rent. I have no job, no one will employ a
opiate doped chronic pain patient. I asked an agency a month or so ago what the
chances were of my getting a place on their books to do temp work on data entry or
something, and they just listened, and said they wouldn’t take me on and besides I
shouldn’t bother, best to stay where I am so I don’t lose entitlement to social as it’ll
take weeks to get back on it. I’ve no family of my own, kids etc. Not married. Don’t
even have a girlfriend.

Got Stoma problems too again. Damn thing keeps blocking, and of course the surgeon
isn’t interested, just wants me to take high powered laxatives forever. But I was
always told that taking laxatives long term is very bad for your system and my Doc is
reluctant for me to rely on them all the time.

It is just all too much. I cant deal with it all. Dammit im even fighting back tears
writing this. Its pathetic. God its all gone spectacularly wrong somewhere, and with
the all the medical depts falling over themselves to get away from me as quickly as
possible, and my having clearly offended some friends by being who I am, I feel so
alone though all this. Im not even going to get started on how lonely I feel every
evening. The folks are in bed by 8pm, sometimes even 7pm, and then Im awake til
midnight with no one to go out to see, or whatever.

The amount of fear I have in me now is unreal. I just don’t know how I am going to
face the remainder of this year, let alone my life. Earlier in the week I was so tempted
to just drink the full bottle of meth. I caught myself just starting at it in my hand when
id finished taking my dose. That scared me too. I always promised myself I’d never
get to that low level again, but I can see I’m following the same footprints in the
ground that I tread last time around.

One day something good may happen that gives me enough energy to keep going for
longer. Something fantasticly brilliant. Or maybe it could go the other way, something
else goes wrong and I just snap and have enough. But what can I do? Nothing; im
fresh out of ideas, strength and hope.

So I just keep plodding on. It’s all I can do, and maybe dream about getting that hot
date with that hot woman who works in the same department as me in this top job Ive
got, and take her home to my own pad to wine and dine. And then who knows where
it could go…… Yeah well don’t even get me on the subject of how long since the last
time I had sex.

Plodding. Plodding. Plodding. Its all I can do. And its no where near enough.