...has got a hold on me." Recognize the lyrics to that old Kenny Rogers song?
I slept last night right up ‘til noon today. But it wasn’t an undisturbed sleep. My liver, hip joint, and right shoulder kept waking me up. I did the old sweating number a couple of times, as well, which also woke me up.
But I did learn something last night as well. A while back, I felt too exhausted to get out of bed to get to my pain meds, so I brought my pain meds to bed. Now that I have them bedside, how do I tell if I already took some?
I awake in pain, roll over, take a pain pill, and go back to sleep. I awake later, in pain, roll over, take another pain pill, and go back to sleep. I awake again, in pain… You see my problem? Pretty soon I’m not going to be waking up in pain, if I even wake up at all.
I found that out last night, but I went the opposite way. I didn’t take a pain pill because I might already have taken one and didn’t remember. I’m very big on survival instincts, if you haven’t been able to tell by now. So, I might have caused, or at least contributed to, my pain issues overnight.
So, I’ve had to dig out the pillboxes and I’ll have to figure out a system to stock the two different pain meds so that a sleep-befuddled mind like mine can understand what’s going on in the middle of the night.
I have short term and long acting meds. The long term only needs to be taken twice a day, 12 hours apart. The short term needs to be taken every 4 to 6 hours, even though I no longer have the acetaminophen to worry about. The problem exists that I can stretch things out to six hours when I am feeling good, and that throws any schedule off.
For a while, I was writing the times I took my meds down on my mirror in dry erasable marker just to try and keep track. But I’m not always near my mirror to keep track of what was going on. Then I switched to my iPAQ. Better, but still not satisfying enough for me.
But I have my pill box set up for tomorrow; I’ll see how it works.
Sorry this is so late, but I wanted a hot bath so I’ve been indulging. It does help a bit. And I just took my last pain meds for tonight. Hopefully, I’ll sleep better.
Kunolunkwa, y te quiero!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Not trying to nag here, but I have a comment on this post ;-). You should take the long-acting pain meds every 12 hours, religiously, NO EXCEPTION! You should take the fast-acting pains meds every 4 hours, religiously, NO EXCEPTION! That may make the scheduling easier.
The point right now is to CONTROL your pain, NOT just treat it when it arises. So, that means taking the pain meds to PREVENT pain, before it actually arises, is O.K. It does NOT make you an addict, nor weak in any way. So, just take them ever 12 and every 4 hours, no matter what, and it will be a bit more simple ;-)... just my two cents.
And I know you love me and I love you too!
Amy, if you want to call it "nagging," go right ahead and call it nagging. But I don't consider it nagging! I'd much rather hear something a couple of times, if that's what it takes for it to soak into my chemically befuddled brain than to hear it only once and lose it to my memory problems. Repetition is sometimes the key! :-)
I did start something similar to your suggestion, only set up for 5 hours. It seems to work, as does my current pillbox routine. So, something is working finally!
I was going to complain that I wouldn't have enough pain meds to go with a dose every 4 hours, 'cause usually they calculate the quantity of the perscription for the longest interval, in this case every 6 hours. I say usually. I checked the bottle and found that I do have enough meds to get me through 30 days at one capsule every 4 hours. How strange is that?
So, I'm going to use up the old PC at my current rate because it does contain the acetaminophen and I don't want too much of that. Based on that rate, I have just over two days worth. When I start on the new meds w/o the acetaminophen, I will probably go with your suggestion because of a change in the drug itself.
Works for you? Works for me!
Post a Comment