Finty's World

Reports of my demise...

Santy says "Believe"

...have, as the fella said, been greatly exaggerated. That's not to say I'm hoppin' round the garden, but I'm still here. Still in the same spot, still trying to work out what's goin' on with my flippin' body. Still hangin' on, like Santy on our Christmas tree, to that simple yet difficult thing - belief.

Goin' Cold Turkey...

It had to happen I suppose, but a few weeks ago I finally reached the point where I'm thinkin' "y'know what? The side-effects from all the medication I'm on just aren't worth it." The slumps, the sweats, the dry-mouth, the tiredness, the sleepiness, the weight-gain, the insomnia, the aches, the shivers - I was gettin' em all, and for what? Precious little is what. So last week I sat down with my GP and began a "phased withdrawal" from my meds...

Stay Calm and Carry On...

It's been a really bad few months in terms of pain levels and so on. The miserable "summer" and the prospect of an equally squibby winter has exacerbated things. But I have at least had one positive result and I'm gonna be spending my time working on that...

Between a very hard rock and a very hard place...

I've not written about my spine and my constant companion for a good long while now, not really. I wrote about my 25th year of pain, wrote about the end of my relationship with St Vincent's Pain Management Program, but about what's going on now? No not really. It's like I don't want to bore anyone anymore. But I find myself caught once again between a very hard rock and a very hard place, and I need to talk it out...

25 Years in context...

Today is the 4th of June and even more so than usual on this date, I am hushed and contemplative. This year is different. It's now 25 years since I was knocked down on Summer Hill. That's quite a number. Especially when you think that, in my case, it's been 25 years living with the disease of Chronic Pain...

A Tale of Two Knees...

It's been a dramatic weeks in the life of yours truly. No sooner had I come down to earth after the highs of the recent Tchaikovsky concert than I realized that [gasp!] I'd not had surgery of any kind in nearly two years. Shocked at this careless state of play, there was nothing for it then only to take myself off to St Mary's orthopedic hospital on Cork's Northside to have both my knees "scoped" in a determined effort to make up for lost time...

The End of a Journey

I've been doing some pretty hardcore maintenance on my laptop the last few weeks to get rid of some bugs that had crept in so you might have noticed that I've not been posting with the regularity that I'd promised. But as well as that, there's been other things going on in the background too that have left me bewildered and feeling like I've been cast adrift. Principal amongst them is my recent trip to Dublin and the Pain Management clinic in St Vincent's Hospital...

For every action...

Jesus it's been a bad few days with The Back! I'm kinda laughin' now that the worst is over but you should've seen me on Sunday last, curled up like a child, writhing on the bed. When my appendics ruptured spectacularly in March '08 I reset my "1-10 Scale" for Pain. That morning, before the surgery, I felt pain levels I didn't believe possible. Well I reached them again last Sunday…

A Long Time Coming...

Things have been pretty tough of late, truth be known. I'm in the middle of a pretty vicious flare-up that has lasted an awfully long time. Of course, there have been days when things have calmed down, but on the whole the last six weeks have been pretty bad in pain terms. But, as you can tell from this picture here, it's not all been doom n gloom. Yes, finally, I've a new MacBook Pro, and a workspace to match...

Another month sans le Mac...

Another month's gone by and I've still not gotten my laptop back. The cold turkey's been unbearable. The nails've been chewed off, the hair's been pulled out and the shakes have made writing impossible. Jaysis, how did I manage before? But after a ton of mails and calls progress has finally been made, and hopefully a resolution is now in sight...