In excruciating pain

You are never going to believe this but I am writing you from an awkward position in my husband’s swivel chair. I don’t know what happened but I am sometimes in very serious pain. When I get up from bed I cannot help but make sounds because the pain is so unbearable. It has gotten so I need my husband’s cane and a small chair to help me up. The pain is intense and lasts maybe one terrible, horrible minute. But it is unbearable. It hurts so bad.

But I can walk well; I don’t need a cane to walk. I can sit well in a high hard chair. I can rise, sit, get up, walk almost painlessly but I cannot get out of bed without excruciating pain. I don’t know when this began. I suspect it began last Friday and got progressively worse every day.

Initially it felt like a lower back pain. In my 30s, I was hypnotized and regressed to the night when the Japanese took my father away. My mother, who was carrying me, was crying. She was pressing down hard on my lower back causing six-month-old me a lot of pain. That pain made me cry very hard and made her press harder. I concluded that pain was the result of trauma; that’s why it seemed to recur every time I got stressed. It would last a few days. I would put liniment on it and, one day, it would be gone.

But this pain is different. When we went to church, I could kneel down painlessly. But when I had to get up in the middle of the night, I felt it would kill me. My husband Loy is a lawyer and like all lawyers he sometimes gets his fees in kind. He has been receiving injections from a client. On Sunday the nurse came. Loy decided to give his injection to me. The nurse took my blood pressure (BP). I think it was 154/101. Too high, but I got the shot anyway. The next day my pain was reduced by 50 percent. But I conversed with their doctor who prescribed painkillers and something for constipation. That afternoon the big boss came and delivered my dosage for the week but warned that I shouldn’t be injected if my BP was higher than 150. Well, it has been always higher than 150.  So those injections are on hold. And I have more pain.

I reduced my pain through medicine I bought at a drugstore. It was simple but it worked. The new painkiller doubled my pain when I got up from bed. Tuesday we went to see a doctor at a Medical City clinic in Hypermart on Shaw Boulevard. That’s where we met Dr. Jether Roque, M.D. A nurse had taken my BP. He said it was too high. He made me lie down on the high examining table and examined me. When he told me to get up they had to help me. It took three men — the doctor, an assistant and my husband — to get me off. That doubly excruciating pain again. I think they all went deaf from my screams.

He asked me to do a urinalysis then immediately prescribed a painkiller that made me woozy but seemed to immediately ease my pain. He also gave me antibiotics that I have to take every six hours, something for constipation and maintenance medicine to get my blood pressure down. He gave me a label for my BP. He said it could be White Coat pressure. It escalates every time you see a doctor. I told him, “That’s me.” I do not like doctors, hospitals or medical care. But I have to say I liked Dr. Jether Roque very much. He was strict but also endearing.

He did not let me get away with my usual evasions. I had a horrible night, yes. My pain doubled, yes. The painkillers just make me sleepy and make the pain worse. I asked him through text for permission to revert to my drugstore painkillers because they worked better on me. He agreed. Tomorrow I’m having all the tests he asked for. I am being very obedient. But he told me to have ECGs and several liver exams so now there is a part of me that is filled with panic.

Please, God, let this just be a convoluted muscle spasm. Please don’t make it the Big C. Please take the pain and the fear out of me.

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On top of all the pain my supplier advised me that the United States has just imposed a 12-percent dollar tax on exports. She gets StemEnhace Ultra from there. So, thank you, President Trump. And the exchange rate has gone from bad to worse so the new price tag for StemEnhance Ultra is P4,700. Thank you too, President Duterte. I’m sorry but I’m printing this so everyone who buys from me will share the bad news with me.

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