Pacing and Pain

I’ve been busy, again, hence no posts. Insanely busy, in fact, and I let something get away from me: Pain Management. I know, I’ve said plenty of times here and on my other blog that PM is a lifestyle, a way of living to allow you to live. But I had a whole host of mini-handbooks to write, some mini-supplements to write and edit, a players pack to finish, and some playtesting, an inquest and its rather stressy fallout…

You get the picture.  Basically I forgot two of the major tenets of PM: pacing and distraction. And probably exercise, too, if I’m honest, but that’s not been too bad.  As a result, extreme pain, opioids, sleepless nights, breakthrough pain, the bust scenario  – if you’re into PM, you’ll know it.

So I bought a book to remind me of it, to place on my desk in front of my eyes: The Pocket Book of Pacing by Hannah Ensor.

Garments and Pregabelin

A week with no blog entry?  Forgive me.  I’ve been adjusting to my medication and, whilst it has stepped up slowly to the maximum dose, I have effectively doubled it in a week and, at times, I am as high as a kite.

That said, though, I have had a few pain-free hours. Completely. No “But there is a little bit…” or anything else, but pain free.

Bliss.

There were some curiously intense pains later but the few hours of relief were wonderful.  Control is still a big issue, and I seem to be more clumsy than normal, but to not have that pain and then have to worry just about the normal aches and pains of lack of muscle use is brilliant.  If I could drink, I’d celebrate with champagne.

Tools of the Trade

Over the past few months I’ve been setting things up so I can work properly on books, scripts, articles and such.  A major issue with scriptwriting is the very strict formatting, whether writing for radio or screen.  Course advice was extremely strong: use screenwriting software to ensure formatting compliance.  I’ve had a look at a number of tools recommended by the BCU screenwriting lecturer, Andy Conway, but the major issue was compatibility with Dragon’s NaturallySpeaking (Dragon). It’s not that there was a problem with Dragon, just that change of formatting options were all in special mouse-operated pop-ups that it was impossible to control with normal voice commands.  The only way to rectify it is via Dragon macros that were unsupported in my SFE-standard version of Dragon (SFE:Student Finance England through which I receive my Disabled Student Allowance (DSA)) (too many brackets!).

We’ll come back to that later.