Geez...this past month has been a rollercoaster of feeling good and feeling horrible, feeling hopeful and hopeless, feeling confident and feeling defeated. After being on a dose of 25 on my pain patch for about 2 weeks, I weaned down to 12.5. Unfortunately, my body didn't like this change very much. I was in a lot of pain and tried for several days to try and cope with it, thinking that I just needed a few days to adjust but after about a week, I had to go back up to 25. I felt very frustrated and defeated. I had felt so pretty proud of myself so far in this process so far and my original goal was to be off my October 1. When that didn't happen, I tried not to be too hard on myself and had gone to my back up plan of hopefully being off my November 1...which could still happen I guess. Over the weekend, I went back down to 12.5 and so far so good. I go back to my pain doctor tomorrow so I'll see what they think and say. After I am off the pain patch, I am also needing to wean to a different medicine for breakthrough pain. Not sure when that will happen. I think my body needs a few weeks of rest and routine, without changing anything or adding anything. My pain is relatively the same as it was when I was on the higher doses of the pain patch, and I do still have back pain. I'm still getting massages often so that helps some. I did recently get re-approved to long term disability and now I am officially on Medicare as my primary health insurance which will hopefully help financially with medical bills and expenses. I know that I am truly blessed to have so much financial assistance while I am disabled. I know that some people are not as lucky and struggle very much to pay bills and make ends meet. Vanderbilt has been very good to me.
Speaking of Vanderbilt, I have had multiple dreams lately about being back at work. I don't know if it is because recently, a lot of my friends have changed jobs and are no longer at Vanderbilt, so I am feeling a disconnect, even stronger than I did before, from my previous passion. I have this recurring dream that it is my first day back at work, everyone is happy to see me, and I enter a baby's room and it all comes back to me like riding a bicycle. In some of the dreams, things are just as they were when I left them, but in others, the whole hospital has changed. Not sure what God is trying to tell me or if its just all coincidence or that fact that I am always thinking about how much I miss work.
Harrison is still working as hard as ever and is actually in Boston all this week for work. Not sure what I am going to do with myself for 4 days with him gone. This is actually the longest we have been apart since we've been married. We have been incredibly blessed to be able to be together so much. I'm blessed that he doesn't travel much for his job. Because he knew he would be gone all week, he took Friday off and we met my parents down at their lake property and took Reese to play. We took a nice boat ride, and drank wine while we watched the sunset from the dock. It was a great day and such a great blessing to spend such a gorgeous fall day with the people I love.
I'll try and update more later this week once I get a report from the doctor. Thanks for reading.
