I hate the fact that I require chemicals ingested into my body on a daily basis to live a pain-free, comfortable life. I have this fantasy (a goal, actually) that I can get off of the meds in 10 years. That may or may not happen, but it is nice to think about.
I have been on some sort of medication every day to control either migraines, depression, fibro or autoimmune disease for nearly 20 years. That’s a lot of medication.
My record for consecutive days without medication was 10 weeks when I was pregnant. By the end I was so anxious, so wound up, couldn’t sleep, etc that they wanted me on something.
I hate being beholden to something like this. The thought that my body would go completely haywire if I didn’t take my meds. I have tried, unsuccessfully, plenty of times to wean off, but it is usually ends in disaster.
I’m not going to go into details on what I currently take or what I have taken, but I will say that Lyrica does work for me. I have been on it for 6 years and after I got over the initial 6 weeks of adjustment hell, it is well worth it. It was like I woke up one morning and the pain was turned down. It is not like I don’t have fibro pain, I do, but I am able to function better with it.
I was on methotrexate for almost a year. That was a horrific year. I blogged about it plenty in this forum. Yes, it was a low dose chemo. But I am so damn drug sensitive that it completely depleted me. I felt like the tin man. I could feel it seeping into my cells. It was awful, and I will do anything to stay off of that med and off of steroids.
I absolutely refuse to take the heavy hitting narcotics for my pain. When I was first diagnosed with fibro in 2005, all I knew about it was the few patients I had in the ICU with it and their uncontrollable pain. These poor ladies would come in and have med lists as long as my arm. They would be in a flare and they were so drug tolerant that nothing would touch them. I was terrified when I was diagnosed, and I decided that I would never look to opioid narcotics for daily pain relief.
I do have a script for tramadol that I use very, very sparingly. Probably less than twice a week. But I refuse to ask for a script for hydrocodone, percocet, etc. I feel that those sorts of meds are best for acute pain, not chronic pain.
I have nothing against people who do use those meds, but I do feel that there are better ways to manage chronic pain, and that chronic pain is woefully treated in this country. I do feel that chronic pain can be treated better if certain substances were taken off of the schedule I list. I also feel that other non-pharmaceutical treatments can be used for pain, and I do use them myself.
Just because there is a pill for that, doesn’t mean we have to take it….
true life is stranger than fiction.. 
You know you are chronically ill when:
You say, “Yes, it was a low dose chemo” and that is not the explanation in and of itself of why the experience was horrific.
I initially read the sentence with emphasis on “chemo” but after I read the next sentence, I realized the emphasis was probably intended to be read on the word “low”. Anyways, you’re tough as hell!
Thank you Jackie. I try to show the difference between low dose chemo and cancer chemo. Low dose is a fraction of the cancer chemo dose. My husband once explained that chemo was all heavy metals and the molecules are like bowling balls destroying everything in their path. That is a pretty accurate analogy. I just don’t want people to think that I was at THAT dose. But either way, it was awful. I hope to never, ever experience those meds at a full dosage.
Ah, I see. It sounds awful, low dose or not. I hope things keep going how they are for you!