DRUGS TAKEN VARIOUS WAYS!:

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swallowed, morning
-2mg Klonopin
-300mg Lyrica
-40mg Prozac
-18.7mg Effexor
-50mg Topamax

At the doctor’s office!:
swallowed
anti-emitic cocktail (no alcohol. How can something be called a cocktail if there is no booze in it? Especially if it tastes like charcoal, then leaves your tongue, mouth and throat numb?)

dissolved on tongue, swished around mouth and then swallowed
Maxalt, unknown dosage
Maxalt, unknown dosage (second time, charm — headache mostly gone — 4/10)

injected, trigger points
-back, right side spine, marcaine
-back, left side spine, marcaine

injected, intramuscularly
-depo-medrol, right “hip” (ass-cheek)

swallowed, mid-day
-2mg Klonopin

going to be swallowed, night
-.5mg Mirapex
-18.7mg Effexor
-50mg Topamax

(I’m sure I’m leaving something out… I just don’t feel up to checking my night-time med-sched. [sorry for the rhyme.] It’s been a long day… Blowing snow, ice everywhere,… Driving — being driven about 100 miles from clinic to shrink to psychologist… I hate Wednesdays… But I love my psychologist. He has a bumper sticker on his Jeep: “When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.” HST)

[Pain: I have that.

Anxiety: I have that too.]
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MY DRUG DIET, STARRING THE INJECTABLES!:

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MONDAY!:
swallowed, morning
-2mg Klonopin
-300mg Lyrica
-40mg Prozac
-18.7mg Effexor
-50mg Topamax

injected, trigger points
-shoulder, right, X2, marcaine
-shoulder, left, marcaine

swallowed, mid-day
-2mg Klonopin

swallowed, night
-.5mg Mirapex
-18.7mg Effexor
-50mg Topamax

Tuesday!:
swallowed, morning
-2mg Klonopin
-300mg Lyrica
-40mg Prozac
-18.7mg Effexor
-50mg Topamax

injected, trigger points
-shoulder, right, marcaine
-shoulder, left, marcaine
-skull, base, right, marcaine
-skull, base, left, marcaine

injected, intramuscularly
-Toradol, left “hip” (ass-cheek)
-some anti-emetic, right “hip” (ass-cheek)
-eventually a drug that sounded like “new-caine.” Described as “like Demerol, but without the unpleasant side-effects.”

swallowed, mid-day
-2mg Klonopin

swallowed, night
-.5mg Mirapex
-18.7mg Effexor
-50mg Topamax

I was at the clinic for three hours this morning (from nine to twelve, and exactly. I mean spot-on), with a headache I knew would take a lot of work. Also I was incredibly nauseated. So much so that I couldn’t eat my cereal this morning. It’s always a struggle to get food down in the morning, but today… nothing doing. Disgustingly, the Honey-Nut Cheerios actually slid down my tongue and back into the bowl. That nauseated me all the more.

Anyway, I don’t feel like writing because of the “new-caine.” I feel like napping — only eight hours of sleep between the last two nights.

I should say that, with all the needlepoint Dr. 9 and 1 did for me today, Humpty is put back together fairly well…

[Pain, anxiety, overall: 4/10.

…Until tomorrow. I fall of the wall in my sleep.

And jesus christ, at times just how self-absorbed an activity this is hits me like we imagine olde-time doctors slapped newborn babies’ asses…

Publish!]
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THIS GUY IS VERY FUNNY (OR, WELCOME BACK VICODIN)!

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This Brit living in Australia reviews video games in a very gonzo way and it’s fall-on-your-funny bone hilarious even if you’re not a nerd:

link:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2048-Zero-Punctuation-Manhunt

Huzzah and kudos, Yahtzee!

[Pain, overall: 7/10. Was given Vicodin to tide me over until Monday, when I can once again become my doctor’s pin cushion. And that’s not a complaint, that’s a statement of fact. And the fact is one that makes me overjoyed.

And I used to be afraid of needles. Very afraid. Ever since I was about eight and a douchebag doctor tried to give me a spinal tap. He didn’t use any anesthetic — not even local — simply had me tuck forward as I sat on the paper on the half-table-bed-thing and then there was JAB and SEARCH under my skin and through my vertebrae. I recall my hand going completely numb at one point, and wondering if I had become partially paralyzed at that point.

And, being a kid, I was crying, howling from the pain and the terror I was feeling while the doctor tried and tried again before giving up.

The procedure eventually was finished after my parents calmed me down and I was sedated. My mom held me as I cried for a half-hour, as I was still feeling the needle crawl everywhere under my skin, mechanical, lifeless steel, foreign, an intruder, no business among my living blood and through my bone and against my spine oh my god he almost paralyzed me!

I can still feel where the steroid and Toradol (I think I mistook it for Tagretol in a past post — which I may have gone back and corrected…) needles went in my hips a week-and-a-half ago. The fucking needles.

But I love the feeling of my skin giving way — a small depression, a dimple forming around the needle’s odd tip that seems to swirl upward, the diameter of a sewing needle that would be impossible to thread — the instant of clear and bright pain as the needle goes through skin and into muscle, straight into a a ball of pain causing more, the skin behind my closed eyes becoming brighter and clearer, white and translucent and I can almost see the end of the rainbow as my head begins to clear and I can open my eyes and breathe and everything looks different and the world has changed because everything is softer, the hard edges are gone — everything doesn’t exist simply to injure me through the fact of its existence, the fact I have to see it or try to close my eyes to not see it or be somewhere else to not see it or have to deal with being that batshit insane crazy in pain because the world is kind now and soft and warm as the lighting on a Barbra Walters Special.

…That is to say, I am afraid of needles as a general rule, but I am less-than-afraid of trigger point injections.

Anxiety: 7/10. I am on Vicodin and Klonopin. On considerable amounts of Vicodin and Klonopin.]
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too happy to write

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various trigger points are being injected in my person on a daily basis. it’s been found that injecting the muscle around my temporomandibular joints results in headache pain reduction on a massive scale — from 10/10 to 3/10: demerol-quality (it’s improved since yesterday — the left side of my face was done).

so i can’t write because i’m not pissed.

but i don’t expect it to last…
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CHOKE ON MY ABRASIVE COMMENTARY!

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The following is what I wrote in response to another blogger’s post that referred readers to a book that boasted a “natural cure” for fibromyalgia. Goddam it I cannot fucking stand books that claim they have the cure.

Um… usually we know what causes something before we know how to fix it. And to date we do not know what causes fibro.

And, regardless, we simply do not have a cure for fibro!

Anyway, enjoy the below. With any luck I’ve pissed off more than a few people with it.:

I just scanned the site you pointed people to, and it looks like a total croc.

By definition, fibromyalgia has no cure. It’s lifelong, debilitating, and INcurable. So there certainly is no “natural cure” for it.

I’m sick of books saying they have cures for fibro. It gives people false hope, when they should be bugging the crap out of their doctors for effective treatments to MANAGE their pain.

My doctor does trigger-point injections (and my head is so much better), 300 of Lyrica, .5 of Mirapex for my jimmy legs (aka RLS), 4 mg Klonopin for anxiety and muscle spasms, working up to 60 mg Cymbalta for depression and possible pain relief, 40 mg Prozac for same, and steroid and pain-relieving intramuscular injections whenever I see him (daily to every other day).

So, you see, fibro is complex, and requires complex treatment.

And if your fibro can or has been cured, baby, you didn’t freaking have it and you’re harming those of us who really do. You’re the people with relatively minor aches and pains that call what you have fibro, and make people suspicious of those of us who truly are in agony.

If you have been cured, and genuinely had fibro, you must have found the fountain of youth. I’m sure it wasn’t in Florida, as many have thought it would be, since that’s where Americans go to die…

Please tell the rest of us where it is!

[Pain: 5/10, head. Today my doctor and I made the breakthrough that my temporomandibular joints are causing the lion’s share of my head pain. He only injected the right TMJ — or, rather, the knotted muscle surrounding it — because I already had had my 24 hours’ worth of marcaine injected into my shoulders’ trigger points. So he used lidocaine and depo-medrol on the right side of my face and my jaw relaxed and my headache (mostly) dissipated like London fog on a hot afternoon.

I’m going in tomorrow, too. My doc is injecting both sides, and I could not be more excited to get stabbed in the face repeatedly. It is going to be the best thing to happen to me in years. How fucking odd!

But it is going to be just fucking fantastic…

[Pain, body: 8/10.

Anxiety: 7/10. (The shots helped my anxiety, too! And made my dick bigger!)]

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DEMEROL!

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Well, I’ve reached the point where I feel compelled to post regularly. Which is too bad because earlier today I was given a 100 mgIM injection of Demerol, and so I am sluggish and apathetic.

But a 3/10 on the pain scale!

My pain was intolerable over the weekend. To get to sleep Saturday I had to hit myself on my thigh with my cane as hard as I could a few times. I experienced a rush of endorphins, and the pain in my head was outdone long enough for me to get to sleep.

Then I suffered through Sunday, basically counting down the minutes until today, staring at every clock in the house, my head swelled as big as the Hindenburg. I made it… After having to knock myself out at two o’clock in the morning with 400 mg Trazodone, 10 mg Sonata, 8mg Remeron. I was awakened at seven thirty, with my head about to ignite and the rest of me as stiff as a two-by-four. I walked by swinging my legs in arcs, unable to bend my knees.

But I am lucky in many ways. The primary one being that my mother works at the clinic I go to. She was able to get me an appointment with my doctor, who I saw at about nine thirty.

I was given trigger-point injections in my shoulders, which is routine. Normally they relieve my headache substantially — if only for one to two days. This time they only relaxed my shoulders.

I was then injected with Tegretol (I believe it was) in my left hip, which was supposed to reduce my pain. Still nothing.

Then I was given a quick-dissolve tab of Maxalt, which I gathered is a migraine-killer. It made mine worse.

Finally, about one-and-a-half hours after I was brought into the office, I was asked if I drove myself to the clinic — no — and if I was allergic to any medication, including Demerol. Definitely not.

And so I was injected with 100 mg of Demerol, intramuscular into my right hip. My Dad drove me home, I played Mario on our Wii for an hour, then fell asleep while watching Inland Empire (David Lynch). I awoke just in time for dinner, then felt compelled to post this.

And I realize this is as dry and flavorless as a plastic-spoonful of desert air on a windless day. But I felt I should use this space to pledge my undying love to whoever discovered/first synthesized Demerol. I can stand being alive today.

And it’s unfortunate that that’s the best that can be done for me at this point… But I suppose I must have patience.

Actually, I should have written that it would be to my benefit if I could have patience. I seem to be hard-wired in such a way that does not allow me to suffer waiting. For anything. Especially relief from pain that makes me wish I could die from it.

And so ug. I’ll end this post here. Give it a nice, big shot of Demerol to put it to sleep…

Stay tuned for something worth reading!

[Pain and anxiety: 3/10. Demerol is magic.]
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MARCAINE! MARCAINE! MARCAINE!

No more talk of Percocet: The taste of a new generation is Marcaine injections!

I saw my new GP two days ago (I’ll be staying with this guy at least until I start up my usual drug-seeking), and he gave me Marcaine injections into one trigger point per shoulder. I don’t know how he found what were, apparently, the exact places he needed to inject, since my shoulders are (were? I think I get to use past tense about this for once) knotted as a forest of oak trees. (Ugh. What a horrible metaphor. Grade-school shit. And I apologize…. I feel decent right now and don’t want to write. If I’m not in withdrawal, pissing off doctors and shrinks or being a general douchebag, where’s the drama? What’s the pull?… Please see past posts while I work this out…)

But he did find these magical places and stabbed me with needles and injected the Marcaine solution. He then held the needle in my muscle until the headache I’ve had all my life lifted off my skull, from the injection site upward.

I then repeatedly threatened the doctor with various signs of affection, but didn’t follow through because the med student who was with the doctor didn’t seem like the voyeuristic type. And he didn’t give the shots, so he wasn’t about to get to join in.

But as I walked out of the clinic, I began to believe I was getting my headache back. However, it was just my inability to process the fact I was pain-free from the shoulders up. I didn’t feel achy or in pain, but… it felt like the shadow of a headache… Like it was a physical entity, a fog encompassing my head, trying to get back in — pushing inward from all sides.

As of this writing the relief has gone down my back… The day after the injections I could feel the rest of my body for the first time, without a headache. And it hurt like fucking hell. I took half a Percocet in the afternoon because I wanted to outrun my back, where most of the agony came from. I’ve seen dogs chase their tails, and the outcome is never very good or interesting. Today, though, is actually a good day.

Then again, I did take five pills a friend gave me yesterday. This Person described them as “better than Klonopin.” I thought if they were a lot better, she was giving me the cup of christ. But This Person seemed to give them up too easily for me to be receiving that artifact in dissolvable pill form…

However, the two I took in the morning knocked me out for a few hours, which is a tall feat for any drug, so I would have to say they might eclipse Klonopin. Naturally, further study is warranted… But, then, I wouldn’t want to get hooked on anything I can’t get my own Rx for…

Plus I’ve been smoking… cigarettes… constantly since the shots. Or this 5/10 day [the scale encroaches into the body text!] is brought to us by the increase in Lyrica and Prozac taking hold. It’s been about a month since the increase, and if the extra mgs are going to do anything, the starting gun should be going off about now.

Or the majority of what seems to be a miracle of science is not that at all, and is due to me being in a waning period. I’d hate it to be that, but know it must be a big part of me not being in so much pain.

…Mustn’t it?

[I’m going to cause massive civil unrest by ending this post here, lamely. It’s boring as hell anyway.

Anxiety: 5/10

Willingness to crank out crap: Apparent.]

EVERY DAY IS LIKE SUNDAY!

http://www.morrisseymusic.com/

All ow ow ow ow ow goddam it, ow!s today in every category (including sleaziness, if you’ve been playing along at home). And all I can, or will, do — and feel awful for… But hey, it’s time for a little Old Testament-style justice! —

I should just start that over… I realize my parethetical and other tangents make it hard to follow along. Joseph Heller was the master of these… I need to read more of his books.

OK, so I am an awful enough person (but hey, the Judeo-Christian god would sanction it, so 75 percent of you pretty much have to believe in its fairness… Fuck, another parenthetical… I’m trying to set up this awful thing I want in a way that makes it impossible for most people to challenge it… Unfortunately, today people substitute church for the Bible… God’s an asshole — look it up. And so am I, made in his image…)…

OK, so I wish my doctor’s and shrink’s children get fibro that is as bad as mine. I think only then will they understand that sometimes you follow the goddam motherfucking protocol and give someone who doesn’t respond to ANY other therapies fucking opioids! My head is going to explode and my body feels like the tin man’s.

If only I didn’t have a brain…

Last night I dreamed of getting electroshock therapy… My insane asshole doctors would prefer this to putting me on opioids, I’m sure… Give the man anything but the foundation of modern medicine!

Then again, chances are 80 percent, I think (I just don’t feel up to looking it up. Seriously. …But I feel up to typing this… The world is a many-splendored thing), that a person will get cancer. If anyone in my doc or shrink’s family (or — please please!) themselves has to get surgery for it, let them be offered strong drink and maybe ether.

Let’s hope no one needs an organ removed!

Shit. The things pain turns you into. I don’t wish the above… Except maybe for the first couple hours after I wake up. The images get me out of bed…

And how sick is that?

VIVA HATE!

Hi all. Today I write you from the second story of my parents’ house, as was my original intent. Heretofore I had been sneaking in my posts — guarding them from everyone’s eyes by switching to different Web sites whenever I was interrupted in the office/computer room. Today I’m using AbiWord on my Mac — the computer downstairs is a PC (yuck!) — because I can’t get NeoOffice to work out. Abi isn’t showing my apostrophes, and I would be incredibly worried about this except:

IT’S FINALLY REAL, NASTY, WANNA DRINK A BOTTLE OF GRAIN ALCOHOL TO (maybe possibly) DULL THE PAIN WITHDRAWAL TIME!

I’m out of Percocet. Well, not completely out — I’m saving some for when I have to or want to be around other people, which I can’t do unless I take high doses of strong painkillers… No, the SSRIs SNRIs NSRIs antispasmodics psychotherapy et cetera et cetera et cetera in any combination simply aren’t enough for this little black duck. I’m special that way.

Which brings us to why I’m writing upstairs, finally, in what used to be my older brother’s bedroom but is now mine for some reason (the change happened when I moved south): It’s Time To Talk Shit About the Parents! Plus, I’d rather they think I’m jerking off or… well, pretty much anything but writing. Why? Because I’m writing, but haven’t sold anything… So I’m a non-writer who is writing. …And I don’t like the term blogger, but I couldn’t say why. Probably because most blogs give opinions or useful information or infotainment or when twins are going to be of legal age, and I’m pretty sure this blog (or whatever it is) does none of those.

Anyway, wanted to write that I am in the full-on hell of full-on withdrawal. It was a lot easier the first two times. I should look up a real blog to figure out why. So it’s too bad there is no InterWeb connection in this room.

Oh well… At least people feel like they should knock on a bedroom door. Even if someone is typing like mad, they still may be rubbing one out. Guys can jerk off standing on their heads. We’re special that way.

Do women use euphemisms for masterbating, too? Do they have about 100 different ways to describe it? What do you (women) call it? America wants to know…

Now to end transmission… I can’t take any more of this because my skin is crawling and I have to keep up with it. Also, I may vomit. Or just dry heave for a while.

Sorry I haven’t talked shit about the parents. I’ll do a lot of that in the future. In fact, I’ll do a lot of talking shit about everyone I know because I’m a jackass who hates everyone. Or maybe I just can’t understand them…

Let me end with this warning: If you grew up in a small town, don’t leave a city and go back, for whatever reason. Even for your own funeral. My migraines are made worse by the light shimmering off the foot of snow tht covers everything, and my overall person is made worse by the attitudes of my parents and hick-ass doctors. Why didn’t they go to U of M (and I write that as an MSU alum) and come out knowing something about fibro? About anything?

And why are my parents treating me worse as I feel worse for your god’s sake? I know I’m acting like an asshole… How am I supposed to act when I have to stay in unlighted rooms because of my migraines (read: the basement.)? And how am I supposed to act when I feel like I’m in Arizona for 15 minutes and the Yukon the next? And why why why and how how how…

Goddam it, it took me ten minutes to get up two flights of fucking stairs! Should I be happy-go-lucky about that one?

OK, there’s the talking shit part after all. I know, far too little.

Anyway, now to put this in my jump drive and put it where you’re reading it.

[PS: If you can find me, and if you can afford it, maybe you can give me… OXYCONTIN! (Bullet holes spell “OxyContin” as the shots ring…)

PPS: Wrote this yesterday, but didn’t get to upload it until today. I’m lazy. Or my every living moment is torture due to opiate withdrawal and fibro. If this that doesn’t tug at your every heartstring, remember that even the Devil himself deserves some sympathy…]

I KNOW IT’S GONNA HAPPEN SOME DAY!

I begin my New Year with a mammoth migraine, which three Percocet 10/325s didn’t touch. (The “10/325” refers to the pills consisting of 10mg oxycodone, which is what god eats for breakfast, and 325mg APAP, aka Tylenol, aka just about the best way to ruin your liver.)

But enough of that, for now… There will definitely be more complaining later. At the moment, here are some resolutions (you’ll notice all are contingent on Number One…):

1, sorta.: To get on Social Security Disability finally finally finally (my first decision is due before May. …That is, the first go-round in which People of Authority say whether I’m fucked up enough to qualify for SSD. I think about 1/3 of people are successful here. What I’ll call the second pass is an administrative hearing.

You stand in front of a judge, who has seen all the evidence and made up her/his mind (read it in chambers, which is why s/he was an hour late opening the courtroom door and getting things started, even though you saw a person with a face just like her/his drinking deeply from a flask in their car in the parking lot… But it was the public lot, so it couldn’t have been her/him… Or could it? People who are drinking at 7:00 usually are keeping things going from the night before, and certainly not rational). I’ll be wearing a suit and sporting a cane, grunting with every move and, when I have to stand before her/hizzoner — if I have the grapes — I’ll tell the maybe-lush that “It’s a bad day, and if your honor doesn’t mind, I believe I should sit for this.”

In other words, I’ll be standing. But, to prove I’m not a complete wuss (and if my case even goes to The Hearing…), I’ll lean on my cane until it breaks. Or at least bends…

AND SO YOU MUST STAY TUNED BLOGFRIENDS!

OK, finally 2. To pay my parents back for room and board with the back-pay from the above. SSD pays you for some of the time you had to have a suck-ass life waiting for your benefits to come through.

Still, comparatively, mine waiting peroid is likely better than most people’s. My parents have a big house, a Wii, and the basement I call home is about 1,000 square feet. Plus I can TiVo Twin Peaks episodes… Though my daily watching of it is making me believe everyone in my town is a killer, and that strange forces exist in our woods…).

3. To move to Portland, Oregon with the rest of the weirdos.

4. To get and grow medicinal marijuana. (Legally, contingent on number five, Michigan cops!) All the Web forums and more and more medical literature is showing that it’s one of the best things for pain. I read one where it topped everything but Kadian. And that’s extended-release morphine, kids.

5. To buy a scooter! I imagine a great number of people in this country will say or think that doing so is “gay.” However, the act of purchasing something cannot have a sexual orientation. And if you think you’re insulting something by calling it “gay,” don’t make it a monetary transaction… Where’s the fun in it?

Anyway, I’d like to think that going 60 mph on a seat cushion should earn someone some respect.

…My insecurities aside, if I have a scooter, I’ll already be in Portland where, I hear, the scooter scene thives. So riding a scooter won’t be “gay,” it will be a way to conform to my surroundings.

6. Enjoy my retirement by writing books about writing books and losing weight on the food stamp diet.

7. Buy a big-ass teevee and a Wii! …Because I’ll have a lot of spare money for expensive items on SSD. Why do you think people refer to it as being awarded benefits?

OK, that’s seven, and seven is enough for this morning, as I wait for my Klonopin and Percocet to take affect. But, since I could only take about 1/4 my normal dose of each because I’m being forced off them (see other ranting posts) I’ll probably still get 3/4 the pain, migraine, spasms, etc.

Consarn it.

[Overall disposition: bubbly as champagne!]