Six Months Explained

My recovery from my last two surgeries has gone pretty well. My pain has gone down quite a bit to where I am weaning off my short acting pain meds already. It's the long acting pain meds, my morphine, that I am having a hard time getting off of. Morphine is a viscous pain medication to get off of, in my experience. I've gone through a couple episodes of withdrawal when my dose was decreased only slightly and it was absolutely awful. I can't even describe to you what I went through with those withdrawal symptoms. But if in my next doctor appointment, my doctor still wants to take this 6 month break, then I've got major work to get off the morphine. That's one of the reasons for his wanting to take a 6 month break - to give me time to get off all pain medication. And the reason for that is because I've been on some kind of pain med cocktail for over 3 years now that when I am in the hospital after a surgery, it's nearly impossible to control my pain because I'm tolerant to it all. And they can't just up my dosage or give me more because there is the danger of my breathing slowing and ultimately stopping and putting me in cardiac arrest. So, if he is still insistent on this 6 months break, that is one of the goals I have got to meet and I'm not looking forward to it.

He also gave another reason for this 6 month break and that is for me to get my life in perspective and really start thinking about and taking action on what I want to do with my life. This is a reason that I understand because I don't quite think he understands. He says that I don't have to everything fixed and reconstructed before I begin my life but that's actually almost kind of the case. See, I'm bound by insurance requirements and I can't really start my life like moving into some kind of housing for disabled persons as a step in the direction of living on my own again. However, I still have to have a caretaker and I know for a fact, from the information given to me by my social worker, that a caretaker is unbelievably EXPENSIVE! It's crazy how expensive a caretaker is. So, also take into consideration other things like paying for rent and a caretaker as well as all those things needed to live, like groceries, hygiene products, transportation costs, etc, there is no way I can move out on my fixed disability income. So that's out. And if that's out, really the first step of starting my life again, how can I get onto the second and third steps and so on that are needed to take to starting a new life? Not to mention those damn insurance restrictions I mentioned earlier. So, really, I DO have to have most of my problems from the burn fixed and the reconstruction done before I can start anew. This part really frustrates me because I just don't think he quite gets all that.

All those reasons are why taking this 6 month break is crazy to me, not to mention agonizing to play this waiting game another 6 months, which means NEXT YEAR!!! This is why I do not want to take this 6 month break because I need to keep moving on and moving forward so that I can get more and more reconstruction done that is needed for me to start my life again, like he is wanting me to do.

So, I'm going to spend the next 6 months still living in my parent's home, still living in La Grande and spending my days like I am today, doing shit. And I fear this will spiral me back down into a deep, dark depression like I was in earlier this year. The only thing I can do in this 6 months is work on getting off all pain medication and getting back into shape I guess. Oh man, I'M SO FRUSTRATED!! How could my life have gotten so messed up in a split second?!

I couldn't agree more with Ralph Waldo Emerson when he said, "How much of human life is wasted in waiting." That is exactly how I feel, like I'm wasting my life with all this waiting and there really isn't anything I can do about it when so much of my life revolves around doctors' decisions and schedules.