I had to go back to the podiatrist today.  Let me preface this by saying that I have the coolest podiatrist in the world.  He is Vietnamese, but has great English language skills.  He is friendly and polite, but a little sassy too.   My favorite thing about him is that he never denies me pain medication.  As a person blessed with rheumatoid arthritis,  fibromyalgia, and all kinds of immuno-suppresant illnesses, I have never met a pain med I didn’t like. 

Today I asked him about prescribing muscle relaxers for me again, and  he didn’t even hesitate to pull out his Rx pad.  “Do you need more pain medication as well?”  Which caused me to wonder if anyone has ever said no to that question.  Now I am generally in pain, and with all of these blisters on my feet (and new ones appearing all the time) I teeter on the edge of agony…so of course I said yes.  Here’s the thing though…I take maybe one or two of the capsules on a bad day.  I don’t abuse the pain meds I have.  I have a running prescription for pain meds for my fibromyalgia and RA and that usually is enough to keep the pain at bay.  Even with this prescription for something stronger, I always fear the possibility of addiction and take as little as necessary to relieve the pain.  Still, I wonder if his other patients are as responsible with their medication.  I truly believe that he probably isn’t as free with the codeine with other patients as he is with me.  He knows that I have worked for a surgeon and an optometrist in the past and that I have a true fear of becoming addicted to pain pills.  He knows that I am not going to get in any trouble with this prescription.  In my mind though, I see a granny in a surgical boot slugging back some Oxycontin with a Ripple chaser. 

The other thing that cracks me up is when they ask you on a scale of 1 to 10 (one being very little pain and ten being the worst pain that you could imagine) what is your pain level?  What possible good does that really do?  First of all, I could lie.  Secondly my one might be anothers five.  Basically all pain is relative and all relatives are pains.  I think the worst pain I have ever had was when they set my broken ankle without giving me any pain medication at all.  I would definitely classify that as a ten.  A one might be a deep splinter.  Boppy, on the other hand, shrieks at the thought of having a wart frozen off his foot.  He was gritting his teeth and clenching his butt like you wouldn’t believe. If I had had a lump of coal that day, he could have produced a diamond.   He told me he almost thought he wasn’t going to be able to stand it.  A wart?  Really?  My point being…if anyone had asked him at that point if he would like a prescription for pain medication his response would have been an emphatic “Yes!”  When The Precious was being born we hurried to the hospital to await his arrival.  Upon entering the hospital room I saw my non-vag. daughter curled into a fetal position, eyes closed, holding the hand of my son.  We had brought him lunch so he pried his hand loose to go eat and upon telling him that the smell of his lunch was making her nauseated and would he please get away from her, she clamped onto mine.  If you had asked her then she would have told you that her pain level was a ten.  That is, if you could have gotten her to speak at all.  Twenty minutes later she was sitting up in bed, talking and laughing.  All the pain lines and frown creases were gone and she was writing sonnets to the anesthetist who had given her the epidural that was responsible for her incredible mood swing.  My hand, however,  has never been the same.

I used to think I wanted to be a doctor.  I still love all the medical ins and outs.  I love anatomy and physiology.  I love researching the symptoms of an illness and trying to see if I can diagnose it before the doctor does.  I’m right about 75% of the time.  I can do CPR.  I can give shots.  I feel certain that if I had to I could deliver a baby, but the one thing that I would never want to do is to determine how much pain someone is in.  It would be so easy to prescribe narcotics to a junkie without even realizing it.  I think one of the most important things that doctors do is to read their patients.  All of my doctors are great at what they do, and when I say “all” that is an extensive list.  Everyone from my GP to my podiatrist is very sympathetic to all of my aches and pains, and I think that is because they know that I have this very real fear of becoming dependent on pain medication.  I tend to under take them rather than abuse them.  My hubby loves to tell me to stay ahead of the pain, but that is impossible when your pain is chronic…you just learn to deal.

Anyway, back to today…my doctor used a syringe to withdraw fluid from the largest of the new blisters and sent the sample in to the lab to make sure that it is normal fluid.  He bandaged all of my many blisters and sent me to have blood drawn to see if the previous medications were doing anything to bring down my RA count and told me to come back in two weeks.  That is an improvement.  I have been being seen once weekly.  In two weeks we will be able to tell if the Methotrexate is bringing my numbers down.  Of course, if something happens or if I need to have more blisters drained, I will go back earlier.  I am still just thankful that it is summer (so I can go barefoot or wear sandals) and that all of the blisters are on the tops of my feet.

Until then it is back to what passes for normal around here.  Which basically means I am just waiting to see what new hell my body will put me through next.  There is a reason that I get along so well with all my doctors…I see them more often than I see my family.  I am the only person I know whose doctors hug them when they come into the exam room.   Building a relationship like that is necessary when your very existence depends on them…trust me.  I should know.  I’ve been to three doctors in the last three days!

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