Common Sense

That’s a total misnomer because the reason I haven’t written anything in like a week was because I was depressed and in a lot of pain. If I was still feeling that way, I wouldn’t be writing right now.

Between you and me, I found one of the 10 mg Lortab that I was prescribed after surgery, so now I’m in a great mood. My leg doesn’t hurt as much and I’m actually feeling happy for once. That is only going to last very long and I’m all out of pills, except for the two tramadol that I have sitting in a bottle on my dresser. Frankly, they wouldn’t work if I took them, so it seems kind of stupid to keep them around like an emergency supply.

The Lortab was my secret, secret, secret, secret stash. So secret that I had forgotten about it. I knew the tramadol wasn’t going to get me through everything I was going to have to deal with, so I squirrelled away a few of the extra strong hydrocodone pills just in case. I took one almost immediately after I had run out, and I took another one sometime around Halloween. I thought I was completely out. I guess Christmas came early this year!

I should be making some progress, but it doesn’t seem that way. It only hurts more it seems. Fewer days with low pain, and the low pain isn’t quite so low anymore. There was a time when it was 4-5 all day long on the pain scale with just a little breathrough pain every once in a while. Of course, that on the prescription ceiling with the tramadol. Now it never goes below a 6 and most of the time it is much higher than that. This week, I was literally frowning so hard from the pain that I triggered a migraine that lasted for two days. Last week, my knee nearly locked in the leg extensions at PT and I hit what I would absolutely describe as a 10 on the pain scale. It was like the wind got knocked out of me, I couldn’t breathe, my leg went wild with sharp pain all around my knee and some muscle contractures in my thigh and quads. Oh yeah, I almost threw up on my PT guy Frodo and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking for hours. I just lay in bed, awake, for hours and hours, got a few hours sleep then woke up at 2:30 Friday morning.

Frodo talked with my doctor and the impression I got was he didn’t know why it hurt so much, therefore it couldn’t hurt that much. Also, it seems like my doctor is pissed at me. WTF? I’m the one in pain and crippled, I’ll be the pissed off person thank you. He can be pissed on his own time. All of this has brought me to a few conclusions:

1. I hate my doctor. You probably shouldn’t hate your doctor, and I know my doctor has a great reputation as an excellent surgeon. Still, I call him Dr. Dickhead.
2. No matter what he said, narcotics are a Godsend. The incidence of actual addiction in long-term opiate analgesia is surprisingly low. When you look at the literature, which I have now, if you have a good doctor who can stay on top of things and will take the time to follow up with his patients, most of the trouble signs can be seen and those people can be helped in other ways.
3. If I ever get back on pain killers, I’m totally going to have bigger stashes. Now I know I have a reason to be paranoid about getting cut off. I’m not a drug addict. If I was, I would have already gone to the emergency room with a mysteriously broken hand and gotten a Vicodin script. Or better yet, I could have called one of the 10 people I know who deal drugs and bought some illegal drugs off of them. But I haven’t. Instead, I’m smacking myself in the forehead with my cane at night or trying to prolong the flu because the crappy feeling from that lessened the pain in my leg. Or telling a co-worker that I missed my migraine when she gave me something for it because it was a distraction from my leg.
4. I’m really tired of dealing with this. It’s exhausting. I get maybe 4 hours of sleep during the afternoon, then I spend an hour and a half massaging my thigh to get it to loosen up so I can get out of bed and go to work late, like everyday. Everything is a big, depressing obstacle to normalcy. Washing my clothes, getting up for work, getting to sleep, getting something to eat… everything is a fucking ordeal to be overcome just so I don’t feel totally worthless.

I need to find some doctor somewhere who can at least comprehend what I’m going through. I don’t need someone minimizing how crappy my life has become or calling me pathetic when he sees me hobbling on my cane on my doctor visits. If he can’t understand why it would hurt so much, then he obviously doesn’t know what’s wrong. And if my leg isn’t going to get better, then I want to do something to limit the amount of pain I have to deal with all day every day.

That’s a total misnomer because the reason I haven’t written anything in like a week was because I was depressed and in a lot of pain. If I was still feeling that way, I wouldn’t be writing right now.

Between you and me, I found one of the 10 mg Lortab that I was prescribed after surgery, so now I’m in a great mood. My leg doesn’t hurt as much and I’m actually feeling happy for once. That is only going to last very long and I’m all out of pills, except for the two tramadol that I have sitting in a bottle on my dresser. Frankly, they wouldn’t work if I took them, so it seems kind of stupid to keep them around like an emergency supply.

The Lortab was my secret, secret, secret, secret stash. So secret that I had forgotten about it. I knew the tramadol wasn’t going to get me through everything I was going to have to deal with, so I squirrelled away a few of the extra strong hydrocodone pills just in case. I took one almost immediately after I had run out, and I took another one sometime around Halloween. I thought I was completely out. I guess Christmas came early this year!

I should be making some progress, but it doesn’t seem that way. It only hurts more it seems. Fewer days with low pain, and the low pain isn’t quite so low anymore. There was a time when it was 4-5 all day long on the pain scale with just a little breathrough pain every once in a while. Of course, that on the prescription ceiling with the tramadol. Now it never goes below a 6 and most of the time it is much higher than that. This week, I was literally frowning so hard from the pain that I triggered a migraine that lasted for two days. Last week, my knee nearly locked in the leg extensions at PT and I hit what I would absolutely describe as a 10 on the pain scale. It was like the wind got knocked out of me, I couldn’t breathe, my leg went wild with sharp pain all around my knee and some muscle contractures in my thigh and quads. Oh yeah, I almost threw up on my PT guy Frodo and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking for hours. I just lay in bed, awake, for hours and hours, got a few hours sleep then woke up at 2:30 Friday morning.

Frodo talked with my doctor and the impression I got was he didn’t know why it hurt so much, therefore it couldn’t hurt that much. Also, it seems like my doctor is pissed at me. WTF? I’m the one in pain and crippled, I’ll be the pissed off person thank you. He can be pissed on his own time. All of this has brought me to a few conclusions:

1. I hate my doctor. You probably shouldn’t hate your doctor, and I know my doctor has a great reputation as an excellent surgeon. Still, I call him Dr. Dickhead.
2. No matter what he said, narcotics are a Godsend. The incidence of actual addiction in long-term opiate analgesia is surprisingly low. When you look at the literature, which I have now, if you have a good doctor who can stay on top of things and will take the time to follow up with his patients, most of the trouble signs can be seen and those people can be helped in other ways.
3. If I ever get back on pain killers, I’m totally going to have bigger stashes. Now I know I have a reason to be paranoid about getting cut off. I’m not a drug addict. If I was, I would have already gone to the emergency room with a mysteriously broken hand and gotten a Vicodin script. Or better yet, I could have called one of the 10 people I know who deal drugs and bought some illegal drugs off of them. But I haven’t. Instead, I’m smacking myself in the forehead with my cane at night or trying to prolong the flu because the crappy feeling from that lessened the pain in my leg. Or telling a co-worker that I missed my migraine when she gave me something for it because it was a distraction from my leg.
4. I’m really tired of dealing with this. It’s exhausting. I get maybe 4 hours of sleep during the afternoon, then I spend an hour and a half massaging my thigh to get it to loosen up so I can get out of bed and go to work late, like everyday. Everything is a big, depressing obstacle to normalcy. Washing my clothes, getting up for work, getting to sleep, getting something to eat… everything is a fucking ordeal to be overcome just so I don’t feel totally worthless.

I need to find some doctor somewhere who can at least comprehend what I’m going through. I don’t need someone minimizing how crappy my life has become or calling me pathetic when he sees me hobbling on my cane on my doctor visits. If he can’t understand why it would hurt so much, then he obviously doesn’t know what’s wrong. And if my leg isn’t going to get better, then I want to do something to limit the amount of pain I have to deal with all day every day.