Not the best of weeks.

Sleep and Pain remain the predominant issues and they are becoming bigger as each week passes.
First of all, pain.

Karen has been having about 350ug of Fentanyl an hour. We normally apply 250 patches on the 1st day, and then on the 3rd day, we give her a 100 patch top up. This is the cycle we have been doing for about 2 weeks. We went to see the doctor this week to reflect this upp’ed dosage, but unfortunately, the maximum Fentanyl is supposed to be 300

Obviously, this is a concern, as the patch dosage has been on the up for the past 2 years, and we are kind of at the limit

The prescription now allows us to apply 300-strength patches every 3 days. Karen has the morphine tablets for top-up pain relief and we will just have to see how we go, but we are both concerned about where we will be heading over the months/years ahead.

The biggest issue to Karen at the moment is sleep, or lack of it.

Last night for example, she didn’t come to bed AT ALL. She is knackered now, and will be going to snooze shortly (4pm when I write this), but then she won’t sleep tonight. She was supposed to be going to see family in Marske tomorrow, but she has had to knock that on the head, because she knows she will be knackered. With that comes a lot of guilt for Karen, ‘cos she had to miss the recent family gathering as well.
Today, we went to Tesco and TK-Maxx to look for some suitcases, but no sooner had we arrived than we had to come home because she was having cold sweats and felt out of sorts.

So, kp not in a good place at the moment.
On top of all that, she has been trying to sleep by taking 3 Zopiclone on a night. It leaves a metal taste in her mouth and she hates it, but it’s the only way she can get some zzzzz’s. On friday of this week, she woke up and rang me and she was talking gobbledygook for the first 5 minutes. I was very concerned. I was having to tell her (over the phone) what to do to get ready for the shopping trip with Marie.

dp:- So, here’s what you need to do. Get in the shower, put your clothes on, dry your hair, and then wait for Alan (taxi-driver) to pick you up).

kp:- Are you not drying my hair ?

dp:- No, I am at work love. Remember, I sellotaped the hair dryer onto the mirror for you. (kp left the hair dryer stand on her recent hols).

Very sad. The good news is it all went to plan and she met up with Marie to go shopping.

Saturday (yesterday) wasn’t the best of days. I am pretty sure it is the Zopiclone or the lack of sleep, but Karen is so irritable at the moment. I say Black, she says White. Quite hard to live with (to say the least).

But, she apologised this morning which was nice. Roll on the Egypt holiday.