Bye bye Blogger

You may have noticed that I've been an absentee blogger for some time now and this is for a variety of reasons. To start with,the latest round of surgery has taken up a lot of my time...not that I have suddenly turned into a slug like creature from it, but I have been pushing myself as hard as I can to get back to full fitness and this has resulted in me either 'doing stuff' or being crashed out watching TV or sleeping (or at least trying to sleep!)....and not blogging at all.

Secondly...and I think this is more relevant, I am doing some other writing on a few personal projects...including my memoirs of course 😉 and I only have one set of fingertips to make bleed in all the typing... Anyway, blogger and my audience have suffered as a result.

So...  (is it OK to start a sentence with so?) I thought I'd 'officially' sign off on the blog and maybe start it again one day when I feel ready to get back to it. It doesn't mean that I haven't loved every minute of it, its just not fitting in to what I am doing right now, which is odd in a way, as I started it to see people through a scoliosis surgery journey and my recent op has been part of that. Of course, it may just be, that since my surgeon has now told me that I have had my final bit of spinal surgery....yes...the forever op he talked about has really been successful enough to be forever... I don't think I've any more to share...

Thank you all so much for sharing my journey with me. I will be leaving the blog up on the site and who knows...maybe I'll start writing it again one day.

Best wishes to you all,whoever you are and whatever you do with your life. 😃

House & Home

Some time ago I wrote about pain and its a subject I've been thinking about for a while...mostly because I've got into watching old box sets of House (I never saw it on TV first time round and the BIL has been buying them for me for Christmas and Birthdays!)...and partly because of my surgery. The latest lot of surgery was not exactly because my fusion has failed, or because my curve was getting worse (which was always a consideration since they fused less of my spine than they originally intended), but for some other complex reasons, one of which was pain.

It goes without saying that I have taken quite a lot of painkillers over the past few years, but nowhere near the number that Gregory House does. The TV programme makes great play of his addiction to Vicodin and I wondered just how much he is addicted, or in fact, how anyone who takes lots of painkillers every week may or may not be addicted. For myself, I watch House tipping up the bottle and shovelling pain pills down his neck and it really does make me think. I know its just a TV show, but, ever aware of how addictive the painkillers I take can be, I try and fool my body into not letting it know where the next dose is coming from. I take two now, one later, eight today, three tomorrow - I take enough to take the edge off the pain so I can function, but I don't look for my pain relief to kill my pain. I think the term painkillers is poor - it leads people to expect a 'cure', some kind of magic that will make it all OK. The thing is, I'm not sure that House knows this...is he looking for his pain to go away or just to reduce it to a dull background roar? Is he really addicted to the painkillers, in the way that they can give you a buzz, a high...or is he just addicted to not having his leg hurt, even if just for a short while?

Whichever it is, I find the whole character fascinating and Hugh Laurie's portrayal of him excellent. I know I identify with him on some level and that in itself is added interest. Of course, none of this really answers any of the questions I've been wondering about, but I am sure there are as many ways of coping with chronic pain as there are chronic pain sufferers and being grumpy and swallowing vicodin by the handful is just one of them....