Also planning to make Thursdays a regular feature day, focusing largely on our shared history as people with disability.

Painkillers vs Chocolate

This may prove to be a bit more rushed than I intended but its one in the morning and I’ve been distracted with writing and commenting on other issues. The result is that this may be a bit brief. In a sort of follow up to my last post I wanted to talk more about some of the alternatives to drugs that I use from time to time because I’m always on the look out for more. I’m thinking here about things like food or little practices that help alleviate pain rather than the herbal vs pharmaceutical debate.

Like a lot of people with chronic pain I find heat is frequently of help. It can get frustrating as a by and large prefer cooler temperatures but my joints like it hot. Heaven has become, more and more, a large tub of hot water, possibly involving jets.

My other great help is chocolate. Something, probably the dopamine, in chocolate has convinced my body that its an excellent solution to pain. Its reached the point that a chocolate craving has become one of my better indicators that my pain levels are on the rise.

Often these little boosts aren’t enough but its nice when I can do something other than turn to the pill bottle to manage my pain. I’m always on the lookout for other tricks and techniques that might help. Any day I can avoid drugs without having to endure more pain as the trade off is a big win in my book.

Back at last

Well, after a lengthy hiatus I’m back and trying to get into the pattern of reading disability blogs again, and keeping up with my own. The long pause has largely been due to a return to University. I handed the last of my papers a week ago, bringing the term to a successful end.

To a lot of people it doesn’t seem like much. I did three courses, the bare minimum to be full time and pretty much had to stop everything else to pull that off. Even then, if it weren’t for some good friends and the immense support of my wife I don’t think I could have pulled it off.

I’m now into recovery phase. This is both the obvious aspect of trying to catch up on some rest, but also letting my body recover from the toll of the medication levels I needed to get through the term. As much as I loath using drugs more than absolutely necessary I got well into the higher doses of the narcotic I use for pain management.

Amongst the result was a rush to the doctor’s a couple of weeks ago as side affects finally took their toll. Now I’m finishing a treatment for the side effects and getting ready to break the addiction to the narcotic itself.

I’m fortunate that its a synthetic opioid and as such the addiction is no where as severe as other narcotics I’ve had to use in the past. I’m also going to be coming of an anti-depressant in the next few weeks so that I can try a new daily pain management drug.
So, instead of catching up on all the things I had to put off during Uni, I’ll be sitting in bed letting my body recoup. At least it means I’ll be able to catch up on my reading.