medication update

So I have had a couple of days of the diazepam and its done wonders for my back and pelvis pain, especially at night. I am no longer waking up in agony in the morning. This has got to be the first time in years that my sleep hasn't been prematurely ended by back / pelvis pain. The down side is that I am only allowed these tablets for 5 days due to them being highly addictive. After the five days is up I will be back at square one.

My hip pain isn't being touched by the diazepam. I know without seeing the Dr I have a flare up of bursitis caused by walking for Lilith last week. My hips have been like this since 2008. As long as I keep walking to an absolute minimum my hips behave, anything above this and I am in agony. The worst thing is they will take months to settle.

Due to not being on top of the hip pain I rang my GP today hoping that he would finally break out the big guns and go above tramadol and head into morphine territory, not because I am a junkie but from past experience I know that a few weeks on oramorph will actually settle the pain down. Unfortunately my GP and I do not see eye to eye on this. I can understand his position but I don't think he wholly understands mine.

For the moment I have been prescribed a gel Ibuprofen to massage into my hips 3 times a day. He has also given me a cream that is derived from chili peppers. Apparently the cream confuses the nerves and disrupts the pain signals. The plan is that I am to put the ibuprofen gel on my right hip as this is the least painful and use the chili cream on my left hip and see which one works best. He said I may just have to wait it out for the pain to settle. Believe me I will not be doing that. If the pain doesn't settle I will be ringing him daily until he starts listening to me.

At present the chili cream is out of stock at the pharmacy and they hope to have it in for me tomorrow. Once I have used it a few times I will let you know how I get on. My skin is very sensitive to chilli's so I am going to get hubs to get me some latex gloves as it will be bad enough with my hip and buttock burning without the palms of my hands joining in. It doesn't seem to matter how much I wash my hands after dealing with chilli's I can't seem to get its natural oil off my hands.

I have quite a few years ago managed to get chili in my eye and oh boy did that smart!

The GP  has asked me to come and see him for a face to face appointment to discuss Lilith's letter. I asked him if we couldn't just discuss it over the phone as a trip to the Dr's or the local hospital is causing me to be bed bound for 3-5 days afterwards. He then suggested I should wait until I felt better to come and see him. If you hear a thud its me banging my head against a brick wall!

Thud, Thud, Thud......

Its not his fault he is new to me and my situation, at least my other GP as crap as he was would come and do a home visit if he needed to discuss something with me. It was a rarity but he understood the damage these visits to the practice did. I think I may need to write to my new GP to explain things, I don't think I have been explaining myself very well and I forget that he doesn't have the time to sift through 37 years of medical history. Its frustrating but I need to find ways to help him to help me or at least meet in the middle.

He did say on the phone that he felt Lilith's letter had been very good and I had obviously got a lot from the appointment - if you just exclude the back spasms and bursitis.

I am finding it increasingly frustrating that no one in the medical field is taking the level of pain I am in seriously. It seems at odd with all the posters you see in all the accident and emergency departments where they urge you to tell a nurse or Dr is you are in pain. Outside a hospital environment it seems you are left to get on with it.

Its a difficult situation I don't want to irritate my new GP who is on my side (well more than the last one) however I don't see why I should be in pain when there are medications out there that could resolve this.