Urinary Depression

OkeyDokey people... I am allergic to morphine and sadly 95% of narcotics are based on morphine.. Wow does that suck!
When I was at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center last month (where I had my heart catheter)and I was taking the dilaudid every couple of hours I got to a point where I could no urinate. I was able to go at first then it got harder to go and then I wasnt able to go anymore. After about 20 hours of not urinating the docs/nurses finally became concerned and gave into my begging for a urinary catheter. However when I asked if it could be because of the medication they all said no.
This morning when I got up and went to pee like I do every morning I was unable to go with out a lot of effort. Because i had just started the morphine yesterday I figured I should bring it to the doctors attention. Everyone was quite shocked as they had never heard of someone having this problem before. Dr. Browder looked up the effects and say that urinary depression was a side effect and I needed to go off it ASAP. He told me that if I get to a point where I need to urinate and can not go to go to the closest ER and have my bladder catheterized so that it doesn't explode.
Then came the part where he had to decide what he could put me on. There is a pain patch that is fentynal but it takes 24-28 hours to start working and if i had a reaction to it and had to stop it would have taken up to 24 hours to get out of my system. Given that we are leaving tomorrow that would not work. We discussed Vicadin but in the end he decided to put me on methadone. Methadone is best known for weening heroin addicts off of heroin, but is also used for pain. It is a twice a day medication just like the morphine pills were. The only condition I had to agree to with taking it is to wait until I was able to pee normally again to make sure that if I have the same reaction we know it is from the methadone and not lagging from the morphine.

This whole thing has been soo fun and I am almost out of options so lets hope this works!!

So I packed my clothes so that we can leave tomorrow! I am such an over packer but there are things I needed to take and then I took some extra "comfort" clothes. Things that are an emotional comfort to help get me through all of this.
Tomorrow we will leave when Dan gets off work. He told me earlier that Chief was going to try to let him go early. Originally we were going to stop at my dads tomorrow but Dan wanted to drive a little further. Then we learned that Dan's grandma isnt doing well and is in a hospital in Pittsburgh because of a couple mild strokes that she had and her doctors wanting to put stents in her head. Therefore we have decided that we are going to stop in Pittsburhg tomorrow and see Grandma Bigelow saturday morning. From there we will go to Jean and Marks and will stay there until Monday. Monday we will get back on the road for a few hours and then finish the drive on Tuesday. We will be in Rochester Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night leaving on Friday morning to drive home (if they send me home). We will definitly be stopping at Jean and Marks as we will be leaving Chip there while we are gone. If Grandma B is still in the hospital we may stop there again on our way home. Our expected arrive home day is..... MY BIRTHDAY!! wahoo!!


That is all for tonight, remember if it doesnt make sense I am drugged up and can't help it!