Spasticity
Good morning. Hopefully it actually is good. It is finally fall weather outside. A lovely crisp 54 degrees. I still have a window open next to me. I am sure my aide thinks I’m insane. I love the chilly air especially when I workout. Eventually I shut them.
I’m surprised with this cooler air my spasticity is still really bad in my legs. It can be very difficult to get my leg to bend. It affects my right leg more than my left leg. However my right leg is the stronger leg. It is just so random. I don’t want to increase gabapentin because of its various side effects. I think I need to try to increase baclofen. My prescription is for up to 3 a day but I take 1. I keep it in my system as preventative. I know my doctor would tell me to take a second or even a the third pill. I hate increasing any medication because I don’t want to become more dependent on these things. It usually subsides within a week at most. This time it hasn’t.
The other morning I was trying to get out of bed and I had a fall. OK to me it’s a slide because I didn’t really fall I kind of slid down but to everybody it’s a fall so let’s just say it was a fall. Getting in and out of bed is the hardest thing when I’m spastic because I can’t bend my legs. When I’m getting out of bed I literally had to pull myself up onto straight legs. I get into my wheelchair and I’m able to get my left leg bent but my right leg sticks straight out. It takes a few minutes for the spasticity to go away. When I get up from my comfy chair it takes me a few minutes to get my right leg in a bent position so I could stand up. It has been frustrating.
The other morning I actually got caught in my blankets. I don’t know how but it was wrapped around my feet and I couldn’t pull the blanket away. Since I was spastic, I couldn’t bend my legs to pull them out. It resulted in a second “fall” from my bed. I literally had to roll myself out of the king size comforter that I now took down to the floor with me. It wasn’t easy and not the way I would prefer to wake up in the morning.
I can feel the spasticity start in the bottom of my back. It is so tight. Anyone that has this knows that no massage or heating pad makes it better. It is like your tendons are twisted in a fork like your eating spaghetti. I have had spasticity forever but it is usually just in the mornings. Sometimes I’ll have episodes where I’ll have issues throughout the day maybe I a few days but usually it does subside. Right now it has been weeks. My upper back spasticity I can have for weeks but that’s different. Anyway I think I need to try something because it is getting difficult. Ugh just another day in the life.
5 thoughts on “Spasticity”
Suggestion- To simmer what was going on in my leg, which seems to have been superficial peronial neuropothy (pardon spelling) which was debilitating, I tried many things including a compounded medicine which included gabapentin and baclofen among others. It was not cheap to have it professionally prepared. However, I did make my own compounded baclofen and another- ibuprophen. I crushed them into fine powder and added them (4 tablets at a time) to about 2 oz. of basic Aloe Vera. 2 oz lasts for 10-20 applications. I applied it 1-4 times a day. Aloe Vera is not the same stuff used used by professional compounders, but you could google it and find out which lotion is. Compounded might work, you’d have to assess for yourself. It’s a good way to avoid unpleasant side effects and to hit a focussed area. Just a thought!
Really!! Never even knew you could do something like that. I have to check it out. I finally called my doctor about it. I was going to blog about because of course there were issues. He was prescribing something I never used Tizanidine.
You can definitely have it professionally compounded, with sa prescription from a doc, to do so. Insurance doesn’t cover it, as compounding medicines are usually not scientifically separately validated. But it can done, you just have to pay for it. My combo ran $70 a month and even though my pain is resolved, i was doing other things with ice and massage and rest, so there is no definitive answer. I believe it helped de-inflame the nerve.
In any event, I also used my wife’s kitchen mortar and pestle, to pound pills into fine powder, and mixed them in a generic type aloe vera, and apply. Problem with that can be, it doesn’t use the aloe vera to penetrate deeper into the muscle. But I let it be, thinking that something must be getting in there nevertheless. I added it to my regimen.
If you wanted to know what ingrediant you can get, over the counter, that penetrates perhaps better than aloa vera, look at some over-the-counter rub on medications like Aspercreme or Bengay, read the stuff off the label and look it up on google. Then buy it and do your mixing. I went this route because 1) I didn’t want the side effects, and 2) the pain was awful. But once again, it’s a “see what happens kind of thing”; pretty safe I’d say; 2 or 3 times a day and see what happens and watch your skin.
Thought I’d share that because if I can help, then I should. Good luck.
Thank you for the advice. It isn’t pain it is the inability to bend my legs.
The professional compounded medicine I refer to contains Gabapentin, Baclofen, and Ibuprofen, all to reduce cramping, the cause of the pain; not the pain itself. Wasn’t interested in numbing myself out, I still needed to feel. The leg certainly does not cramp up life before, and its not a relapse that subsided. It was inflamation. A lot of my cramping was “silent”, that it is, it didn’t hurt, until I tried to walk on it repeatedly. So I suppose I was spastic, but not to the degree of stiffness you describe. But again- Good Luck.