It amazes me at how much I can still accomplish with sleep deprivation. The past 3 weeks have been a whirlwind of go, go, go, go. I feel like I have spent more time in my car than anywhere else.
After joining the “Hearts of Valor” I have learned a lot of tips and tricks to be able to help my husband through his healing process and to help manage and monitor his medications vs. just doing whatever the drs say. I have started journaling his bad days and have become a better voice for him when dealing with dr’s
It started with the fact that my husbands headaches had become not only worse but more often. Usually his debilitating headaches average from about 2-3 times a week and about 3 weeks after his neurologist adjusted his meds his debilitating headaches started coming daily. It was like a never ending circle. We made as many changes as possible with trying to reduce all the triggers that we could think of and still had no improvement.
Then we went and had our appointment with the PTSD therapist and learned more about the relationship if increased stress triggering his PTSD and making his headaches worse. We tried reducing the stress in the house as best as one could with 6 kids but it was a daily struggle, and still no improvement.
Finally I had to make an executive decision, I was frustrated seeing my husband in so much more pain than usual. So the decision was to put him on a pain scale from 1-10, once his pain level hit a 6-7 we were loading up and going to the ER at the VA which is an hour away from us.
On the first trip we left home when he was at a 7 and by the time we got to the hospital he was at an 8-9, and we knew that once he hit a 10 he was most likely to pass out from the pain. After 3 hours of waiting and my husband being on an IV and him already receiving a lower level pain med there was still no improvement. I had to force my husband to stay for treatment cause all he could see was that he was still in pain and getting no help from anyone. Finally the ER Dr decided to give him a dose of Morphine.
It was amazing, within minutes my husband went from in extreme pain to a zero pain, or as my husband described it “a negative 2”. My husband has no memory of this event but I had recorded it and when I played it back for my husband he was in shock. After 8 years of living with pain every single day he finally saw that he could have complete relief..
We made 3 more trips to the ER within a one week period and then went back to his primary dr cause we couldn’t get into his neurologist soon enough. Seeing my husband go to the ER so much made the dr’s double check his med and changed his medication.
That was a week ago and we have not had to make a trip to the ER since. I see him feeling better somewhat, however I feel like we keep dodging a bullet. His headaches are still pretty bad but its now taking a combination of tylonol with codine and his other meds to keep him from getting bad enough to go to the ER.
Now its just waiting till we see his PTSD therapist this week and see where it takes us.
