...and reeling...

The pain I am experiencing from this withdrawal and detox is fascinating. The pain is throughout my body from my toes to my eyeballs along with hot and cold flashes that come and go. The greatest aches are from my elbows and forearms into my wrists and hands as well as from my hips through my knees and into my calves and ankles. I also have pain in my eyes - directly under my eyelids. And the inside of my mouth hurts as well, specifically the roof of my mouth.

Throughout the day I have also had back pain in the thoracic vertebrae. Daniela has kindly rubbed my muscles when the pain has gotten intense. At the moment, my hands are killing me, but for some reason it's not making typing difficult. And my ears ache as well. Ya know, I guess it's safe to say that I am in pain just about everywhere in my body - from my toes to my eyeballs [I feel like I've heard that somewhere].

So that's the update and I hope I can tough it through without taking anymore Roxanol. I want to get this over with as soon as possible.

My Latest Adventure

My latest adventure, with the help of Dr. Allerton, is to get off of morphine for good. I was on a 25 microgram patch for...quite a while...many months. A month or so ago, Dr. Allerton put me on a 12 microgram patch for which I noticed no withdrawal symptoms.

On Friday November 7th, my patch was due to be replaced (they must be replaced every three days). On Wednesday November 5th, during my chemotherapy treatment, Dr. Allerton recommended I not replace the patch on Friday and instead simply take a 5 mg dose of Roxanol (liquid morphine) when ever the withdrawal symptoms become too much to deal with. The idea is that I will eventually no longer require the Roxanol and be able to push through the detox symptoms (commonly know as DTs) without the use of it.

I'm looking forward to no longer being on the stuff. As I have posted in the past, I have woken up in the middle of the night going through a detox because I forgot to replace my patch a few different times and it's quite an unpleasant experience. I definitely look forward to being without it. The only part I left out is asking Dr. Allerton how long this process is expected to take. I'll have to send him an email and find out.