Category: Pain

MRI’ll Do Whatever You Want If You Let Me Out Of Here

On Monday night, I was supposed to have an MRI on my elbow. However, once they got me in the tube and took a series, they said that my elbow was too close to the edge of the tube and they couldn’t get a good image. So I was scheduled this morning for an “Open MRI”.

An Open MRI is a gigantic upright cylinder that looks like a Mayan ruin with a slot in the side that they slide you into like a pizza into an oven. There’s barely enough room for them to slide you into this slot – later on I discovered that I could get my good hand up to my face, but only just. But before they slid me in, they put your arm into a ring that is plugged into the device – I suspect that’s some sort of focusing magnet. The tech said “I need to open your elbow up”, and so she put me into an extremely uncomfortable position, and then put weights on my hands and arm to keep it in that position and filled the space in the ring with cushions “so you don’t move too much if you start spasming”. I should have taken the hint and left immediately.

Anyway, after they peg you down in this uncomfortable position, they said “ok, this is a 2 minute series”, and you hear some thumping and whirring noises and then some pulsating noises. Then it stops and before you can say “can I have a second?” they say “ok, this is a 2 and a half minute series” and it starts making noises again. Each series got progressively longer until the last one, but because there was no time to flex my arm in the interim my elbow was getting more and more painful, my hand was going numb, and my upper arm muscles were spasming after about the second series. Before the 4 minute one, I yelled out begging for a break, but they either don’t hear you or don’t care. By the end of it, I was crying. I tried pinching myself or biting my lip or anything to distract me from the pain in my elbow, but nothing worked. By the end of the 4.5 minute one I was ready to tell them anything they wanted to hear. By the end of the 5 minute one I was ready to swear there wasn’t anything wrong with my elbow any more, or ever if that would make them happier, so we might as well stop right now.

But it’s over now, and I might regain the use of that arm in a few hours. I hope it was worth it.

Blood.

(As the closest I’m going to come to acknowledging Talk Like a Pirate Day, I’m going to talk about blood.)

I had to have a 2 hour glucose tolerance test this morning. This involves a 12 hour fast, then taking some blood, then drinking some glucose drink, then coming back at 1 hour and 2 hours later to have some more blood drawn. Since that meant 14 hours between meals, and not being able to go to work in between the 0, 1 and 2 hour blood draws, I was anxious to get it over early as possible.
Continue reading “Blood.”

Progress on the pain front?

My doctor says I’m incredibly low on vitamin D, probably because of Rochester’s perpetual gloom and my own vampire-like avoidance of direct sunshine. (In spite of the lack of direct evidence, I *am* a red-head and I get sunburn way too easily). He says that anything between 40 and 100 is normal, and anything below 30 is seriously deficient, and I’m at 17. I’ve got a prescription for mega-dose vitamin D tablets. I’m supposed to take one a week for 4 weeks, then one a month, and start taking fish oil as well.

He recommends this lemon flavoured Norwegian cod liver oil that he says tastes nothing like the cod liver oil of my youth. I don’t believe him – instead of tasting like vomit, it will taste like lemon-tinged vomit, I’m sure.

Side effect, or my imagination?

For two or three weeks I’ve been trying a different pain medication, a NSAID called “relafen”. I’m not sure if I’m imagining it, but it seemed to me that last weekend when I went flying I was more susceptable to motion sickness than I have been in the past. And yesterday while I was concentrating on something on my screen (ok, it was the live updates from the Giro D’Italia, not work), I suddenly felt like I was going to lose my balance and fall over, which is kind of odd to happen while you’re sitting still. I also seemed to have to remind myself to breathe when I was concentrating – but hey, it was a exciting mountain stage, what can I say? The “hey, I’m losing my balance” feeling just happened again today, even though the Giro stage I was watching work I was doing was pretty unexciting.

One web site listed vertigo as a very rare side effect of relafen. But why now after 3 weeks, and not back when I started?

Oh well, I’m seeing my doctor tomorrow. Maybe he’s got a different medication to try.

And so it begins again

Once again into the breach, once again risking the severe depression that follows every previous attempt to do something about my pain. So it goes. The pain has gotten so severe that I really have no other choice. Just hope I can survive the let down when it doesn’t work.

So I have a new prescription for a new NSAID, and orders for x-rays of my knees and elbows, and a bunch of blood tests. And a promise that if nothing turns out, I’ll get a referral to a pain clinic.