and Finally some good news!

Today was the pain pump trial.  They moved it up after my last visit into the emergency room.  I was told that I needed to bring comfortable clothing and someone to drive me home.  My dear husband works at the hospital, so I had the nurses call him right after the procedure was finished. He loves me so much that he couldn't wait for them to call him and showed up just as it was finishing.

The procedure was a bit nerve racking. They allowed me to keep my clothes on (T-shirt and sweatpants) and took me into a surgical room right off of the pain clinic. The doc told me to curl into a ball so my back was rounded. I apparently am so limber that I curled up too much for him and he had me uncurl about half way! LOL  They then numbed my back and stuck a catheter into my spinal column. It was the weirdest feeling in the world. It wasn't painful, but it felt like an intense pressure and I felt an anxiety attack coming on. I remember asking them if they were finished, and they indicated that they hadn't even injected the medication yet. As they pushed the Prialt into my spine, i felt both a cooling and burning sensation at the same time. Then it was over. They wheeled me back to my room (where I was surprised to see my husband) and waited. I was told that I'd be there for about 2 hours while they monitored me. About a half an hour into waiting I began to feel my stomach pain decrease. Then it started to decrease at such a fast rate that I almost started to cry. It was an amazing feeling to experience no stomach pain.  I've lived with a pain on the 1-10 scale at about a 4 as my low level since I was diagnosed, and I could definitively say that my pain was at a 0 once the medication kicked in. The relief was extraordinary!  But then.....

About an hour after the procedure I headed to the restroom to relieve myself and experienced vertigo like I'd ever felt before. The room was spinning so much that I couldn't see straight. I don't remember how I made it back to the room, but as soon as I got back I began vomiting because of the dizziness. The nurses felt that it was basically the result of too much medication and tried to calm me down, explaining that I won't get nearly that amount of dosage if a pump is implanted. They were scared that because of this reaction, I would give up and not want to go through with the actual surgery. I told them to go ahead and schedule it - I wanted the surgery. I wanted the pump because that was the only way I could get the medication that allowed me to be pain free. I needed to get my life back and this was the first sign I'd had in a long time that would lead me in that direction. My dear husband took me home shortly after the vomiting stopped and I slept for the rest of the day in dreamland....