I have so many intentions for this year but, sensibly, I’m reining in my usual impetuous eagerness. You see just a week ago I went to my GP to see what the next stage for for handling my chronic pain resulting from the spinal stenosis (and the Tarlov cyst perhaps – who knows…). The next visit to the pain doctor, the lovely Dr Norman, is not until March and that is just too much time to put up with the increasing lack of mobility and not being able to get on with things. I was on the verge of attempting the scary prospect of registering for PIP or whatever it’s called now, and a disabled badge so I could consider shopping more often. It was time to accept and get used to how to live as someone “disabled”. Now I don’t have a problem with that, apart from the rage which just will not go away but at least stays tucked away in its box, but it just seems as though there should be more that could be done.
Anyway – before I ramble on about what I can actually now put off for a while yet… My GP prescribed Gabapentin, which can be specifically for nerve pain. And it works a treat! I’ll not dwell (too much) on why the f**k this was not suggested before and make the most of whatever respite this gives me. Mostly I want to dance and skip and make a huge list of things I just may well be able to do now, but a couple of days overdoing things in the kitchen has calmed that notion somewhat. I will take some time to get used to the idea that I can now walk the few hundred metres to the surgery now instead of driving, that I could walk to my girl’s school and even to my boy’s. That I can do things with them – take my boy to Forbidden Planet, just the two of us, take my girl to a show perhaps, go out more in general – have a life beyond Facebook! Oh the things…
The pain, still called George for want of something better, is still kind-of there, but smaller now and less tender. I know it won’t go away unless the source is repaired, but now I don’t have to consider that for a while longer – that is not something I want to risk until the children can be independent – a few more years… And the Gabapentin will become less useful in time. But for now, a list to be written of what I actually can do this year. Such fun!