My VA visit went both bad and good today. The bad was that I almost fell again, had to ask them to let me lay down on one of the beds as all that sitting in waiting room got my back hurting real bad, and the whole reason for me going was to sign some papers before they would renew my pain killer prescription and I didn't need to do so. However I had taken the wrong pill bottle with me to show them how much I had left and they may have renewed for the wrong stuff and that may explain why I didn't have to sign any papers. I dread the thought of going down there again. My back is still hurting from the trip up there. 

Oh yea, I was going to tell them about the Loratadine not really helping enough to warrant continuing to use it and that I am using the Flunisolide in addition to the nasal sprays. Hopefully I'll remember the next time I am up there. 

The one bit of good news is that she may be able to arrange some physical therapy locally. I don't think it will get me back to work, but it may improve the quality of my life and that is a biggy for me. The only problem is getting to it. 

I got caught in a vicious circle of late. I started sitting up a lot and got my back hurting so bad I couldn't lay down on it, so I would sit up even longer and get it to hurting worse. The past few days I have been forcing myself to lay down until I got the pain down to something manageable. It was becoming unbearable. I have been using some of my pain medicine at night to try to get to sleep. It doesn't work very well. 

I am almost out and the VA tells me that I have to sign some papers agreeing to only get medicines from them in exchange for the pain medicine. No big deal about signing, but it will hurt a bunch just to get to them to sign the papers. Thankfully I still have some powerful pain meds left over from when I had the kidney stone broken up. I will be taken them with me to show the VA what I still have left. 

Sometime ago we sent out a letter to Senator Mitch McConnell asking for help with my social security claim and he seems to be following up on it as we recently got a copy of a letter where the social security sent him a status report of my case. He then sent a copy back to us as well. However with it now going before a law judge there isn't much he can do to help us. 

I wish this ordeal would just be over with. I don't want to be a burden on my family, on the VA, as there are a lot more deserving vets out there than me, nor a burden on social security. I would rather that the doctors find what is wrong with me and fix it or if unable to do so, to just own up to it and tell the social security people that I should be on social security. 

I have had a time lying down of late. I normally blog from my laptop and I am always lying down when I do so, but of late it has been harder to lie down than to sit up. I have tried several times to blog and my back hurt too bad to lay on it and I just gave up. The last blog I cut short, as I couldn’t stand the pain any longer. Even though I have had a good day today, my back is hurting enough to cause me to lie kind of sideways off my spine. Of late I have been having nights were I get very little sleep and nights where I get plenty. I got to bed early last night and slept till morning. After breakfast I was so sleepy I went to bed again and slept till about 2pm. Since getting up from all that sleep, I was able to get up and sit down without too much pain. Normally when I sit up for long periods, it hurts like the dickens to get up and sit down, but today was different. The only annoyance today was my side. Well my back is bothering me some now that I have lain down, but it has been worse. I have been using more of my pain medicine of late to get me through the rough times.

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I am dreading tomorrow as I have to go for some lab work. I guess it has to be done.

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Well I have to cut off for now as my back is becoming even more of a problem.

It has been a good day.

Today has been a pretty rough day. I woke up about 4 am this morning and couldn't go to sleep. I tinkered around on the Internet till about 7 am and tried to get up and got this terrible shooting pain from my hip. My hips and back have been killing me ever since. 

I took a Percocet and that took a while to work. I don't have many so I use them only when I really hurt bad. 

I was eventually able to get back to sleep, but I was going to try to see our neighbor who was in the hospital and wasn't able to do so. 

After waking I decided to take a shower and I was hurting so bad after that I couldn't brush my teeth. I already split up the time when I shave from when I shower, now it seems I have to do that with brushing my teeth. 

I saw a commercial on TV about problems people were having with Reglan from one of the lawyer offices and got to thinking that maybe I had used it too and sure enough I found a paper that comes with your prescriptions that shows that I had taken it. I looked up the drug on the Internet and it indicates that problems occur with people who had used it long term. I couldn't remember how long I was on it and couldn't find any more prescription papers either. In any event the problems those people were having were not quite the same as my problems. They were suffering from involuntary movements and although I do have some tremors, they are not my major problem. I was so hoping for a better understanding of what has been happening to me.

My morning did not start off too well today. The phone started ringing and neither my brother or my mother heard it. I got up to go answer it and stumbled right to the floor. The scarry part was I couldn't get back up. I had to call for my brother to help me.
That happened to me before when I was still working and I had no one to help me then. All I could do was just lay there. Thankfully I was eventually able to get up on my own. I don't know how to express how I feel right now.

 

I am hurting real bad right now. My hips, shoulder, and the left side of my stomach are hurting. Last night was so bad I couldn't post a Blog about it. I turned the computer on and brought up MS Word, but was feeling so bad I shut everything back down. 

I got a notice this past week about jury duty. I thought about trying jury duty just so that some judges could see what I go through daily, but I felt that in the end I would become a distraction that they wouldn't put up with and would try to force me to sit there without fidgeting around in the seat uncomfortably or getting down on my knees for relief from the pain. 

I have had to get on my knees when I was still working to get through the day and still do so at my own computer and when playing video games. With video games I can also stand and lay down while playing. When I was still working I would lay down on the floor when the call volume was low. I had requested weekends, as the call volume was particularly low, however they always moved me back to weekdays as the call volume was so low they couldn't warrant keeping me on weekends.

I sent a letter in with the jury duty papers explaining my situation, but without a doctor to back me on this they still try to force me into jury duty. For me that would be tantamount to torture and I am afraid of that.

I woke this morning aching all over, my hands and feet were numb and tingly, and my left hand was swollen bigger than the right. I was feeling so weak I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk. Every step I thought my legs would just fold up under me. I loathe going to the hospital, but I was almost on the verge of doing so. What is happening to me?

I only got two hours of sleep and want so much to go to sleep. I stayed up all night the night before and didn’t go to sleep until late in the morning. It seems I cannot stay on a regular sleep schedule.

I have slowly started talking these gibberish words when trying to express how I feel. I caught myself doing it a lot this morning. I am so tired.

I used to believe I couldn't get addicted to anything, as I wasn't that in touch with my own body to know what it needed, but I am beginning to learn otherwise. Video games seem to be my addiction. I will play all day and all night until my eyes are burning and red. I usually end up going from sitting, to lying down, to kneeling, and to standing up almost continuously in an attempt to keep playing despite my back pain. The sad thing is that I have to have it to escape this unending boredom. Unfortunately I have gotten my back to hurting so bad from playing that I am spending more and more time in my bed trying to recuperate. My mom noticed and asked me about it and I told her I have been spending to much time of late playing games and just needed to rest.

I need to keep my mind active and the on-line feature of the games allows me to communicate with other people. That is the other thing that I fight daily, loneliness. I wish so much that I could have a normal life like everyone else; a wife, children, and a home of my own. 

My mother cannot understand why I want so badly to be out of her house. She keeps reminding me that this is my home too. I wish I could explain to her how much of a failure I feel like having to live with her. I love her dearly, but she wouldn't hear my explanations no matter how many times I explained it to her. I got frustrated with her when she wanted to know if I was using enemas for my constipation I tried to explain to her I didn't feel comfortable with talking to my mother about sticking something up my nether regions, but she said I was being childish. I really hate that word. I tried to explain to her that I am and adult now and should be able to handle things like that without having to come running to mom for assistance. She didn't hear it. She uses that childish word whenever I disagree with her on something. That more than anything makes me want to be out on my own. 

I wish so much that these stupid doctors would stop concentrating so hard on what isn't wrong with me and find out what is wrong and fix it. You cannot fix what you cannot find. 

I really don't want to be on social security, but that seems to be my only hope for something like a normal life on my own. I feel like I am in a nightmare I just cannot wake from. My greatest fear is what to do if I am denied social security benefits. What do I do?