Facts are so Boring!

Funny how this morning's blog and perspective prepared me for today. If you've been following, I've been looking for "gems" in every "room". I ended up in many rooms today. I had to look harder in some situations than others, but spent much concentrated effort trying to find little things God left for my encouragement.

Paramedics showed up this morning and took Kass to a Pain Management Clinic for diagnostic treatment. If the nerve block treatment works, then we will know the pain is originating in her neck. She was a champ. The doctor said she needed to give lessons on the proper way to receive (what I imagine is painful) injections to his adult patients. He was impressed by her high tolerance for pain. Of course, I saw it as pitiful; she is so used to pain, she didn't flinch.

After we got back, they carted her off to a cervical MRI. They are looking for a neck injury from The Hug Incident. Still waiting on the results of that.

They have her on a migraine regimen. She is getting her 4th dose as I type. She has 4 left. If it's migraines, this medication will help diagnose. If it's not migraines, this med will rule that out, too.The pain med doc's also have her on too many nerve drugs to mention.

The biggest change, is that they've taken her off all pain killers except a suped up Motrin (and Tylenol if I ask for it.) The doctor doesn't want her on narcotics - especially since they aren't solving the pain. I can see her point. Young, impressionable teen... feels pain, gets med that only fixes it for 30 minutes...then craves it for 3.5 hours. Also, she builds up a tolerance, so she needs more and more and more. Not a good direction to go.

So, all they're calling this is "chronic pain". There's no explanation of where it originated or why or what or when. They don't really seem too intrigued at this stage of the game- they just want to get the pain under control. I, on the other hand, keep scanning the parking lot for the Mystery Machine. There's just GOT to be a reasonable explanation behind this!

The lowest her pain gets is a 6. She usually labels it a 7 or 8. Once she hits the tear level, no one asks.

She wants to go home. That's all I can say about that. (Guess this mama has a tear level, too...)

The new trend is to try to get her to sleep through the pain. She is so tired, but just tossing and turning. She just got her "icky" meds, so I'm hoping that she won't wake up nauseated. Please, please, please sleep through that, too!

Kevin and Kim are at McHouse, and I get a night alone on the cat-dog bench. Looks like a long evening ahead. Feels like that point where you're picking up speed going down-hill; you can't tell whether to laugh and not worry, or scream and bail!

That's it for my fact-filled blah-g. Reads like a boring science report, but I know a lot of people were curious for the facts. I so much would have preferred to talk about all the "gems" and all the unexpected "rooms" I went to today. I guess that after three days of news, I was hoping to be able to report more positive progress for Kass or the doctor's discoveries. I won't think about that today; I'll think about that tomorrow....