Please bare with me whist I learn how to format and change settings here!
Everything, like me, is bit of a mess
Well. It’s been a minute!
I don’t really know where to start, I don’t know if I should try and catch you up on the last 6? Months or just let you know what’s going on now.
HOW ARE YOU THOUGH?
Okay I’ll quit stalling. So as you can imagine I had my baby, her name is Rosie and she is the best thing in the world (she’s also now 18 months old!!) but as you can also imagine because it is my life we are talking about here, we had a very rough start to life.
Let’s call this chapter ‘Rosie’
Rosie was diagnosed at 10 weeks with CMPI (Cows milk protein intolerance) severe reflux and food intolerances. She screamed endlessly and we had two stays in the mother baby unit (psych ward) for both of us where she was medicated, I had to stop breastfeeding so she could start a prescription formula and things got a lot better.
I was lucky enough to cop both PND and PNA and although I had two mother stays I didn’t get the best treatment from the Psych that everyone loved as he firmly believed ‘my mood would improve once my pain did’
Fast forward to August and we made the decision that Melbourne wasn’t the best place for Rosie and I, I needed support for me and for Rosie and Josh selflessly suggested we move back to Tasmania knowing he wouldn’t be able to follow quickly, cue COVID and we haven’t seen each other since January.
I’m not going to bore you with Rosie’s continued feeding issues so I’ll scoot back into what you’re here for - my broken brain and my broken brain.
I tried a ketamine infusion - it didn’t work and I didn’t even get to hallucinate or anything fun. The pain specialist I saw was a dickwad and discharged me and said ‘she will just have to continue’ to my GP when I had told him I didn’t want to continue living like I was (in hellish pain always) he also said that he believed my pain would improve once my mental health did so basically specialists were just hand balling me to each other. C O O O O L
So now I’m back in tassie, I’m back with my old GP and on Targin and somedays it takes the edge off but I’m slowly getting worse and my mental health is seriously deteriorating.
The pharmaceutical board are on my arse again and trying to get me off pain medication with no help and I eventually end up on a bucketload of benzos and I basically spend over two months in bed (literally) with totally debilitating anxiety topped with pain.
I found myself a female GP as I don’t have the sort of relationship with my male GP where mental health feels like a comfortable subject and she suggests I get into a psych unit for an inpatient stay ASAP and that’s what happened.
I spent three and half weeks in St Helens private hospital while mum looked after Rosie. This was at the peak of COVID in tassie which meant they had stopped visitors and you weren’t allowed to leave so my only contact with Rosie was waving through a kitchen window on the phone when mum would bring me supplies. It was hard as hell but I came off all benzos and started olanzapine which is an antipsychotic but in low doses it helps with anxiety, along with clonidine - a blood pressure medication which also helps with anxiety. I tried two antidepressants and had shitty side effects and ended up going back on Pristiq (surely I’ve previously mentioned my hatred for this drug because it is so hard to get off) but we needed something and it has helped.
I have had another inpatient stay at St Helens since and started a treatment called TMS (trans-cranial magnetic stimulation) which basically uses magnet is to make your serotonin do good things and I’ll be going back in for a couple of days a month for maintenance doses.
After all of this I am doing so so much better with my mental health but SURPRISINGLY my pain hasn’t changed (could have told them that)
I found a new neurologist who has recommenced Botox and I also have it in my jaw now which provides some relief from my TMJ and I have just recently started a new medication called Emgality which is a self injection Anti- CGRP inhibitor.... I have no idea what it means or does but they’re new on the market and have helped a lot of people - they are also $300 a month, im a couple of weeks in and haven’t seen any changes yet.
I also have to have a lumbar puncture to rule out idiopathic intracranial hypertension/CSF leak - yay can’t wait!
Luckily this new neurologist has agreed that being on daily Targin doesn’t help manage my pain and I am now back on instant release oxycodone like I used to be and the last two days have been infinitely more manageable.
I think that’s us kinda caught up. I’m sorry if this is a mess. I’m sure I’ll think of more things to add in my next post if you want to stick around.
Love from your friendly mommy blogger (lol kill me)
Oh and of course, a huge shoutout to my mum. The superhuman who has been caring for not only me but Rosie full time while all this shit has been going down, if I end up half the mum you are then Rosie is the luckiest girl in the world
