Drugs

My mind is feeling ambitious this evening, despite the fact that it is Monday, not usually the most energetic collection of post meridian hours of my week. I want to wash my bird-crapped car, go for a walk and enjoy the long spring evening outdoors, maybe pull a few weeds in the garden before the daylight's completely gone.

But every time I stand up from the couch, my body says bllllaaaahhhh and all the blood rushes to my head and I sit back down again to watch another episode of the Weeds Season 6 boxed set from the library.

It's the Maxalt -- while effective at halting a budding migraine in its tracks (as long as I take it soon enough) side effects include devastating fatigue, heaviness of the limbs and a slightly underwater feeling. But most of the day I fought a slight headache. I doubted it would achieve the status of the Real Deal, the Big M that most horrible of horrors, *migraine* (that is) mainly because I just had a two day killer-diller last week, and USUALLY that means I'm safe for at least a couple of weeks, for some reason. But because lately they've had a way of sneaking up on me, I finally caved in and took drugs just to be safe. I really don't think I could take another two days of blinding pain just yet.

I know I've mentioned my Christian Science upbringing, besides which having, in my middle age, become rather boringly puritanical about drugs and liquor and whores and such (just kidding -- I'm still into whores. No, REALLY kidding, I'm not actually into whores anymore -- I think it's the drugs talking) ANYWAY, what I am TRYING to say and having such a difficult time getting around to is my ambivalence about The Drugs.

Funny thing about that, too. Last year when I had this procedure they gave me a prescription for hydrocodone. I didn't really need it for the post surgical pain, which was kid stuff. Coupla ibuprophen do the trick for that. But I was happy to have it for those occasions upon which I didn't take the Maxalt fast enough and got nailed. The first few times I took it, it almost seemed miraculous, the way it dissolved the pain and sent me into a deep restfull sleep. In fact, it made me a little nervous. As I think I've said here before, strong narcotics and chronic pain seem like an inherently unstable combination.

As it's turned out, however, my aspiring addiction seems to have been squashed in the bud. Probably for the best, but I still have the whole horrible days of debilitating miserable pain thing to deal with, so I'm splitting the difference and calling it an ambiguous blessing.

So here's the deal. Although, as I said, the first few times it worked beautifully, very quickly I seemed to develop a tolerance -- at least insofar as the pain-killing properties of the stuff are concerned. When it came to the nausea, well that's a whole nother story (as we say here in Southeast Texas)!

The time before last when I waited to long to take Maxalt and resorted to hydrocodone in a futile attempt to outwit the migraine, after three hours in which it had yet to do much to blunt the pain, I suddenly was overcome by nausea and puked my guts out. So that was pretty much that for the narcotic pain relief and off I went into two days in migraine land. So this time, although I thought it was possibly a waste of perfectly good drugs, afraid of the pain and hoping for the best, I popped a pill anyway.

This time it was a rather large mistake. Oh, it killed the pain initially, okay. And I slid off into a grateful narcotically-induced blissful slumber. But when I woke up 10 hours later, the migraine was back -- and the nausea was waaaaay beyond anything I'd experienced before. I have NEVER puked so much in my life, and I know it was the hydrocodone and not the migraine, because the pain that first day wasn't even that bad. It was much worse the second day and I only threw up a couple of times. I'm pretty sure I puked 14 times the first day, and the only reason I'm able to make an estimate at all is because it seemed like I was on an hourly upchuck schedule -- and the puke-fest went from approximately 8 a.m. 'til 10 p.m.

So, I'm pretty much at "never again" with the hydrocodone.

Although, I have to admit -- I still didn't go so far as to throw the bottle in the trash. I compromised and tossed it into the back of a bathroom drawer. What can I say? Fear of pain is a powerful thing.