I just spent 10 hours in complete and utter agony in an emergency room in my country hospital from IT. But in truth the attack started 7 hours before I even left for the hospital.
Before dinnertime last night the pain starts - for this particular time it's all on the right hand side, but it's attacking me in solid wave of pain from under my jaw in a ziggy kind of line all the way to the tip of my skull.
The TN monster. Whatever you like to call IT. During those 10 hours I was injected with Toradol (Ketorolac IM) twice and a decent shot of Morphine once. First injection - Toradol. Injected with this on arrival by RN. I then passed out as it was 5 am and I'd been up all night. I then woke at 6:15 am ready to scream, but RN wouldn't get the doctor on call as he'd been awake already for 36 hours. He was due to start his next "awake" shift at 7:30 am so I wait for him, still in agony. Weird as usually the first Toradol shot is effective. I pass out again and when I wake up they say I missed breakfast and did I want some sandwiches to eat. Very kind, but no thank you - the pain makes eating impossible.
At 8 am doctor talks with RN and she then comes to give me a good shot of morphine, I said to her I knew I should have let the dogs outside (truth - my dogs were locked inside my house and it's summertime here)
Morphine shot knocks me out, quite literally, and I thank goodness for some small mercies. I wake up around 10 am, (2 hours later) feeling actually a little better now - it's back to around a 10 out of 10 by then so the pains not completely gone (LMAO!) so I ask if I could maybe try a 2nd shot of Toradol as the doctor had said I could have a 2nd Toradol shot but not before 11 am - but he'd not written it up in my chart so I'd have to wait till the doctor came back. I pass out again - then I woke up around midday and they offer me lunch so I accept as by now I hadn't eaten for a full day.
I eat, try a little walk outside and come back in ready to both throw up and pass out and the pain is back in full. I tell the RN this before I once again pass out. I wake up another hour later and the doctor it seems had still not written the meds request in my chart and had now himself gone to lunch. So I get up, weak and droozy still from the morphine and the pains still a killer in my head from IT and go to the bathroom. By now I'm so dizzy and weak I lay down again and once more i pass out. I wake up at 2pm now. Ask for the toradol as my head still hurts - they don't understand after having had one Toradol and a morphine injection how I can still have pain, LOL.
Half an hour later, I get the 2nd Toradol injection and I pack my things, thank the staff and leave for home. It's been a long day - I've been home only for 1.5 hours now (it's now 4:30 pm) and all I just want to do is to go back to sleep. The pain is now only a 3 out of 10 instead of the 15 out of 10 it started out as last night, but my issue now is well the pain has now been going in my head for 18 hours non-stop (albeit with varying pain levels more recently) and I can still feel it persisting. ARGH ARGH ARGH!!!!!!!
You poor thing I feel so sorry for you. My TN is playing up and I am housebound at the moment as it is snowing and there is a freezing wind. So I dare not go out. Hope your pain subsides, how are your dogs? they will know you are not well dogs always do. Wish there was a answer to this condition. I shall be thinking of you today and hoping you are coping. Love Margaret
Thank you Margaret, we all have these days - I am more sorry for you that you are housebound at present due to snow and freezing winds - have to dress like the michelin man to go outside only if you ‘have’ to. My dogs were great, they were so happy to have me home too and they let me sleep again this afternoon. I woke at 8pm because my phone was ringing - my Mum, worried about me because she knew I’d gone to hospital but I forgot to phone her when I got home. Oops. Then she was sorry because she woke me and she thought it’d have been better had she let me sleep, I told her not to worry, if I was meant to sleep I would have slept and considering I was still tired I would get back to sleep no worries.
No need to tell her that the pain was waiting for me the moment I open my eyes. It’s now been an ongoing attack for about 26 hours but at least now a 7 is bearable compared to what I went through. Oh and they won’t let a person use a heat pack in the hospital! Weird huh? Too many burns apparently.
Bob, thank you and yes, without humour what are we? I live now with the knowledge that what will be, will be - the pain is going to come for me at times and as my Mum is fond of saying “Everything is meant for a reason” and it keeps me going. I have accepted the TN. I hate it as we all do, but I accept it. And boy has it made life easier. I’ll be thankful to get back to sleep tonight, it’s now 10:24 pm here and I’m keeping my fingers crossed figuratively that sleep will come
LOL about your joke about facebook being quiet - that was actually funny and made me smile, thank you!
I’ll be happy if the pain stays at a 7 or less tonight, so I don’t have to drive back out to the hospital again this evening or tomorrow morning. But just in case, I’ll leave the doggy door open this time so they can still go outside if they need to - if I get “held” up at the hospital.
I’m hoping you are sleeping at the moment, as I know that is what helps the most for me (and for about 30-45 minutes after I wake up). Hope you are getting to say bye to the pain of IT for awhile today!
Thank you Kristal, I was asleep - but my phone rang and it was my Mum, she’d tried 3 times to get through to me as I forgot to ring or message her that I was home from hospital and safe. Oops but I am going to try and get some more sleep now. I’ve been up again for 4 hours now so it’s time to get some sleep as it’s almost 1 am. I still have pain but I can live with a 7 out of 10 easier than what it was i did have.
Wish me luck - off to bed now! I hope you are pain free and slept well Kristal, Bob & Margaret! Thank you for your concern and replies!
Dear Kerry,
I’m so sorry that you have been going through this. I have mixed emotions about the ER - sometimes they ‘get it’. sometimes they don’t. And the wait for the doctors can seem eternal. I really wish that they had been more proactive in treating you, like mixing the morphine and the toradol to give it a BIG kick in the pants…my husband goes with me to the ER, and always tells them to give me a BIG dose right up front, instead of alot of little doses spaced out. That never helps for very long, and I will usually have the same outcome as you, in pain again the next day. The doctors there have figured out a trick - they mix benadryl with the dilaudid or morphine, saying that it somehow enhances the effects of the opiates - strange, huh? But your doctors might be open to that, since it is such a safe drug. It knocks me out for a bit - it is so nice to have my hubby right there when I wake up. I hope that this in some way helps - it feels so difficult to know that you are so far away and I couldn’t drive over and help even if I tried.
I pray that when you wake you will have some relief. My husband calls the deep sleep after a long bout of pain as ‘coma sleep’ because nothing will wake me, and I sleep for longgggg hours. Hope that this is also the case for you.
Hugs,
Lily
Thank you for writing to me here! I too have mixed emotions about ER’s and I truly wish your ER would write to my ER and give them their ideas on how best to tackle these type of attacks. That’d be brilliant hey? I will have to look up dilaudid and see if it’s used here in Australia also, I hear you and others mention it from time to time and I never heard of it’s use here in Oz.
The bigger hospital over on the Gold Coast where I grew up, use the morphine in a drip system via an IV and that is worse because as you only get the dose gradually I usually lie in the hospital bed hallucinating horrid things and evil creatures, lmao. And often I am able to leave right away after the dose is finished. It was the very first time at my country hospital in Beaudesert yesterday that they EVER offered me a morphine dose and they just inject the whole lot in one go. Much nicer way of getting it. No hallucinations, just sleep and then dizziness and more sleep.
I wish it had helped more than it did - the pain is still in my head - in the forehead, cheekbone, ear and temple.
In all likelihood I would have slept longer - as it is I have so far just gotten 5 hours, as it was after 1 am when I went to sleep and at 6 am my Border Collie puppy age 6 months, decided he needed to go outside and obviously I wouldn’t wake up - so he jumped on my chest and lay down on the back of my head. SIGH. That woke me quickly. But I’ll try and get back to sleep if I can now the dogs are back inside.
Maybe the reason the pain has lingered is because the humidity outside is at 90% as it has been for a day and a half now. It’s just raining on and off, no storm - just a low pressure system sitting overhead now and I hope it goes away soon.
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions - benadryl huh? I mean isn’t that a cough medicine? Certainly sounds funny, but if the doctors think it works better - then who am I to question their ideas. If it helps, then it helps - and ultimately that is all that matters! I am glad you have a hubby there to wake up to I am always on my own and that sounded lovely and also romantic in a way
Kerry,
I’m so sorry. I hope your pain doesn’t return. That is so exhausting. I’ve been fortunate. I haven’t resorted going to the ER but have been very close. At my worst I could take sleeping pills (more than I should) and usually ride it out. I’m praying for you.
Liz
Hi Liz,
Thank you, stage one is over now, I went back to sleep this morning and woke up at lunch feeling GREAT! But that hasn’t lasted. I went to put on some lip cream for dry skin earlier and the touch on my lip was elecctrifying so since then every now and then I get a deep spasm right through the lower jaw. Oh well. I am trying to decide if I try taking pain pills now or wait and see what happens.
I cannot get sleeping pills from my doctor, the best I’ve got here are over the counter antihistamines and xanax. Unfortunately, the pain tends to override any intention I had of sleep.
But I did have valium here once, and it had as much effect on me as a cube of sugar would. I don’t seem to react as intended to certain medicines, and don’t react much to sedatives in general. Even anesthetics used for surgery they have to double the dose. And there’s no way a GP will allow me to do that.
But thank you for the prayers, hope He’s listening.
Cheers ~ Kerry
Dear Kerry,
Now I’m in the middle of one - was at the ER last night, they doled out the shots little bits by little bits, so unfortunately it did not work and I am on my third day now. Oh, how I wish I could sleep…damn, I hate this…I would cry be we all know what that does to the pain levels. Wish me luck, I pray that something will stop this.
Lily
but at least now a 7 is bearable compared to what I went through. Oh and they won’t let a person use a heat pack in the hospital! Weird huh? Too many burns apparently.