Had a review with Dr Penny yesterday. No obvious side-effects from taking the statin for a couple of weeks, so I’ll be carrying on with that. She looked at my BP readings again and seemed torn between giving me another tablet or not. In the end she decided I probably did need something, so I now have 2mg of Lacidipine to add to my morning cocktail of meds. That’s a minimum of 9 different medications a day!
We also talked about my back, and what is happening there. Basically all our hopes are pinned on my review in London next week. I asked about options for the pain management, and whether she was going to proceed with referring me to the pain clinic, but her view is that I’m already doing the exercises, and they can’t offer me any other medication than what I’m already on, unless I want to go down the opiate route again – which I’m not exactly a fan of given that a) it wasn’t doing anything at the dose I was on, so would presumably need to go on a moderately high dose; and b) I really don’t want the side effects back. She sad to keep trying to do as many of the exercises as I can, but understands it’s difficult trying to motivate myself to do something that is likely to hurt when I’m already in pain. She has given me some additional gabapentin to top-up my regular dose when things get particularly bad. Had to laugh at the pharmacist when I went to get them. It was a new guy, and as he gave me a box of 100mg tablets, he asked if the GP had explained the effects of them to me, in particular that they might make me drowsy. I just smiled and asked if they were any more likely to make me drowsy than the 1800mg I’m already on!