Nightmare on Elm street - No, A living Central pain nightmare
for one member of the Browne family.
By
Andrew Browne (a UK journeyman)

My journey begins:

There was a time when I felt like most other people -my whole body responded to normal stimuli and behaved and felt the same as I always remembered since childhood. The sensitivities and pleasure of touch. What simple unrecognised pleasures.

But this was before POW!!!. One Saturday morning in October 1997 my head explodes with blood flooding in the entire right side of my brain. I did not see or feel it but immeasurable damage was being done silently within my head like a submarine which has just fired its missile. Over the course of the next few hours my body and particularly the left side of me began to shut down with some sight leaving me first.

The emergency doc arrives at about 1430h after much effort by my wife and he asks if I've ever suffered with Palsy because I've lost my face. I think a good chance then to come out of this better than I went in. No, to be honest I was virtually in the land of oblivion by that time.

After being admitted to hospital I had the sizable bloodclot, that was pressing on my brain, removed via a cute little trapdoor in my skull - why could they not put this trap on decorative brass hinges then I wouldn't have to wait for over a year to have an alien plate replace my skull. To cut a long story short when I woke in the intensive care unit I felt the most peculiar cold burning pain feeling I've ever imagined coursing through the entire left side of my body and as for my leg this felt like it was being crushed by a vice like piece of apparatus effectively squeezing the lifeblood out of me.

A weekday:

From a waking point of view, arising from my slumber with the sun shining through the window for all intent and purpose the world seems a better place but NO!!! screams the burning pain that wracks through every inch of the left side of me. You think I'm going to let you concentrate on anything other than me today, yesterday or any day/night no way Jose - think again it burns. The crushing/tightness in my left leg comes out in sympathy, possibly believing that the burning is not doing it's worse, and grips even tighter until I can
barely move. But I have to move to get to the train station and go to work. I can not drive now or ever again so I walk slowly to the station and join the other commuters who I have to avoid like the plague so as not to get even slightly touched by the jossle of the rush hour or the burning will simply create havoc for me.

Arriving at my office is of great relief as I have survived yet another journey from hell with the pain. Throughout the day I fight the continual distraction Central pain causes and force myself into concentrating on my work as no work means no money - end of story. All day I know that the return journey of continually avoiding human touch (very very difficult on a busy commuter train) is going to be sheer torture. But I do realise that I am very lucky to be in work.

A Sunday:

You think going to church is as harmless as it can get - think again. When you attend a fairly huggy type of church, where everyone appears to forget what I am going through all day every day, things get interesting as, for example, in the case of one 6ft tall and 6ft wide friendly member. Now, this chap is a very tactile type of person and thinks nothing of hugging you from behind. I will leave the rest to your imagination but needless to say climbing the ceiling is obligatory.

The daily agony goes on:

Much of what I say here may seem pretty tame but remember that for every single second of every hour of every day in my life the whole left side of my body burns like being constantly submersed in bubbling boiling water over an open fire that never goes out and my left leg feels crushed beyond belief. There is no known medication that will give me definitive relief. I fight back the tears as I remember that I used to have a pain free life. I and others pray - God please give some relief. I search daily for any innovative medications that come on the market but to no avail. Ho Hum, life goes on as does the horror of Central pain.