Nerve blocky block blocks
I haven't written for ages (a trend!) partly through a lack of energy to bother (writing about feeling shit is not the first thing you instinctively want to do when you feel like shit) and partly because things have been wonderfully mentally busy. Yeah, you better believe I'm launching a new site months ahead of my surgery. Hey, people who use being 'ill' as an excuse to sit at home watching telly all day whilst claiming benefits - y u no learn from me? (I'm writing this a bit high, soz for self-congratultoryness). My surgery has been brought forward to December, have I already blogged that? Maybe. I've had some pretty horrid ortho work done recently, but my dental arches are moving nicely in pre-surgery preparation. My teeth get gold stars. Cool. I love my current cocktail of drugs but my levels of pain/uselessness are still annoying. I ate some Haribo the other weekend and ended up in bed for three days. Kinda annoying...espesh as cola bottles are, like, THE BEST. So I had my first ever appointment with the 'pain clinic' a month or so ago and a very lovely anaesthetist referred me for nerve block therapy and trigger point injections - which I started today. I'm excited to see if it gives me a bit of a break. It's weird having injections in your head/spine. If you don't like needles, you probably don't want to think about it. I had four sets done altogether, a la this picture I nicked...
It felt very odd. I wasn't sedated either - I AM SO BLOODY BRAVE - which meant that I felt all of it. They really dig the needles in and wiggle them about a lot, it's a nasty kind of very sharp pain (especially if you think of *where* these big ass needles are being inserted) but the pumping of the steroids and local anesthetic is just the most bizarre feeling. You just feel like your skull and spine are being flooded with this odd painful burny fluid. But ever so often it kinda feels quite lovely - but that might be my sadistic/sick of it all tendencies. I had a nurse by my side just to stroke me. She was nice. And pretty. I liked her.
I had to lie on my front with my face in a pillow for this procedure and at one point I had a huge surge of panic go through me and thought I was going to die. I calmed myself down though. (Evidently, as I'm not dead). I pretended I was on America's Next Top Model and that Tyra was watching how I handled the pain of going through the 'dramatic makeover' episode. I'm sure you ALL know the makeover episode that features each cycle... where they bleach the girls' hair and cut it all off and the weak girls bitch and cry and the strong girls just put up with it and Tyra becomes their bezza? Yeah. That has become my odd 'mental place' that I go to in my head whenever I have really nasty procedures done. (Far too often at the moment, it has to be said). WHAT WOULD TYRA DO? It is my mantra. Slushy, huh?
Once the injections were finished and the bleeding had subsided, I was asked to flip over and lie down. VERY STRANGE. "Am I lying down?" I asked the nurse, like a complete numpty. It's hard to explain what having a completely numb head feels like - but trust me that it's odd not being able to feel the pillows beneath you.
So I stayed in hospital a while, stayed very still, counted ceiling tiles, read an amazingly tacky magazine...
The end xxx
p.s
Thank you Dr Fozard and Prof Haers, you rock.
