Pain clinic referral

I started writing this yesterday morning but didn't get chance to finish it as I ended up going to bed yesterday afternoon around 4pm feeling totally shattered and sleeping for 12 hours straight. When I woke in the early hours I had sweats, felt sick and dizzy. I got up to fetch a drink but felt like my legs were made of lead so I went back to bed and that's where I've been all day. The only times I've been out of my pit are to go to the loo and to hook up because I didn't have any feed last night. The sicky feeling has died down but I have the aches all over and have woken up a couple of times with my pjs drenched from the sweats. Hoping it's a 24 hour bug as it's Bestie's baby's christening on Sunday and Hubby and I have the honour of being Godparents so I need to be well enough at least for the service. Anyway, back to my post...

I've been waiting to hear from University College Hospital in London after being referred there from the pain clinic at the QE2. So when I opened a letter this morning and saw it was from them I got all excited. But that was short lived when I started to read it.

I could cry. I waited months to be seen at the pain clinic at QE2 and now it looks like I will be waiting for months to be seen at UCH. I wonder what will come first- an appointment from UCH or another appointment for a PIP assessment as I should have been having that today.

My worry is that while I wait to be seen by a pain specialist the only person managing my pain is my GP. And because they're not a specialist their only answer is to keep increasing the doses of my painkillers. Which is exactly what happened when I went last week. The dose of my fentanyl patch has gone up again but I must be becoming tolerant because I haven't really noticed. I'm hoping that UCH will explore alternative methods of pain control like acupuncture because the thought of being on ever increasing doses of opiates for the rest of my life is a frightening prospect.

NB x

Comments

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