M357
Some of the shit I used to take and will never take again.Except for those white ones. They go everywhere with me.
To Vicodin or not to Vicodin, that is the question. Tonight I got this familar feeling in my mid-back, one that I used to think was general soreness or intestinal stuff. It's grown into a full-blown I-feel-like-my-lungs-are-collapsing hours-long muscle-contraction-spasm-thing enough times now that I start looking for the Vicodin immediately.
Found it!
If I take it now, it will kick in just before the pain radiates and starts to become unbearable. If I wait too long, it won't be enough and while the pain will be cut quite a bit, it will still make labor contractions seem like a indigestion by comparison.
Seriously. Take a labor contraction, the worst one, and make it last 2 hours with no break. Have it wrap entirely around your torso - front, back and sides - from your armpits to the bottom of your ribcage - and squeeze the living shit out of you like some nightmarish hufuckingmungous blood pressure cuff torture device, so that when you are writhing on the floor in constant pain and moaning and panting and feel like your internal organs are about to be crushed to death by your own muscles, you know that it can still get worse. It's worse when you can no longer moan and writhe. Which is scary shit, because the only thing left to no longer do is pant, and that's kinda a breathing thing, ya know?
But maybe it won't happen, and it's a false alarm, and I can save those one or two pills to further delay going back to the doctor for a refill. Which I don't wanna do. Because while I love that the doc gave me something that takes the pain away, he irritates the shit out of me when he spends 20 minutes on his laptop trying to figure out what the heck my deal is (which is, like, 16 more minutes more than he usually spends with a patient), only to arrive at the miraculous conclusion: "I'm stumped."
He's done this twice now.
The second time he was all stumped as he perused pubmed or google or whattheheckever it was he was doing, he sent me to a spine doc. Who listened to my description. And without prodding a thing, said it sounds like a bulging disk, and come back if it happens again.
Which would be fine, but I'd kinda like it if it didn't happen again ifyoudontmind. Damn MRIs. I've had a bulging disk in my neck already, which at the time had my doc probably googling "spine doc" and referring me for a diagnosis from a freaking spine surgeon who said basically "why the heck are you here?" and slapped a collar on me that only made my neck sore and stiff. So when I asked about chiro and doc said chiropractors were quacks and would break my back, I of course dropped his arrogant scare-tactic ass and got a doc who would refer me to the chiropractor who, of course, made everything all right and dandy and I haven't had a problem there since.
Besides, I have this feeling that the torso contraction from hell is just the morping of anxiety shit as I age, as the first time it happened was the day after Bush was "re"-"elected". Who wouldn't end up in the ER after that?
So, at this moment, that weird, "warm" soreness in my mid-back has subsided, and hopefully I've dodged another freakout wherein kids think I am dying and spouse calls 911 so the EMTs can yell at me, yes yell at me, because I was not able to immediately answer my name and age through pants of excrutiating pain in the ambulance. Asshats.
No thanks.
Just waiting it out in a relaxing, hyper-aware sort of way.
for the NNAF
3 comments:
(shudders) Just reading this raised my blood pressure. I hope, so very much hope, that you caught this one in time. And I really wish the jackasses would figure out what's wrong. At the very least, even if you couldn't prevent the attacks, maybe you could catch them even earlier than you do now, if you knew what was going wrong.
I'm so sorry Manxome. Crushing pain is impossible. When I was younger and foolisher, I thought that there was some way to get through truly horrific pain. I now understand that it's a matter of suffering through it and hoping you get the right drugs to help.
No one should have to go through that kind of pain. The doc surfing the web as you sit there? *&^%! Would this be something that a super-specialist place like the Mayo Clinic could help? I don't know if that's even practical for you, but I'm just trying to think of something.
~gentle hugs~
SE :)
Looks like it subsided, but my shoulders muscles are tight! I haven't yet figured out what might trigger it, but identifying that warm sore spot in the same area of my back every time is about the earliest I can catch it.
I did do real good last time, so to speak, when I took the Vicodin but not quite soon enough for it to kick in before the major pain did. I sat in a recliner-type position and focused on breathing like nobody's business, and after perhaps an hour it subsided. It was kind of a success for me, as it was the worst episode I had that didn't end in calling 911. I suppose, as opposed to the earlier ones, I had a tiny bit of knowledge (as opposed to none) and a small sense of control (the Vicodin and a muscle relaxer) along with knowing how long it would take to kick in. That bit of control, I think, is what got me through it.
So, I hope that it just gets better each time, I figure a tiny bit more out, and in turn that helps me get through it a bit easier.
He wasn't surfing the web. :) Although, I did ask him that snarkily. He has everything on a laptop he brings in with him - the records, taking notes, and I guess some handy-dandy cliffs notes for docs loaded on there or something. He'd ask a question and spend 5 minutes on that thing clicking and scrolling without saying anything before he asked another question.
I just don't want it to happen again. If things were to go they way they do most often, I'd see spine doc, and maybe get an MRI, and then some suggestion that makes no sense, or a bad referral, or bad treatment - rarely do these things seem to go smooth, you know? And at some point you just say look, I'll find a way to get through this for now because all this runaround crap is in its own way making it all worse.
Very ouch.
"So, at this moment, that weird, "warm" soreness in my mid-back has subsided, and hopefully I've dodged another freakout wherein kids think I am dying and spouse calls 911"
My new policy, as a freakoutish kind of worry person, is that 911 happens in 3 situations. Request of injured person, bleeding of the type most often cleaned up after with a mop, or passing out in a manner suggesting death and/or twitching. Or any combination therof.
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