Better Living Through Chemistry

I hurt myself on Monday. Quite badly. How doesn't matter, the real issue is that there has been some pain involved (if by 'some' you mean 'a whole lot'). However, the point of today's post is not whingeing on about the pain, it's about an experience directly resulting from the pain. To be specific, it's about being stoned out of your gourd on pain medication.

I have recently learned if I, when I injure myself, hit it with everything I have, the amount of time it takes to heal shortens. Sometimes. So I did. Monday, I took enough painkillers to stun a horse and was not at all amused to find out that they only took the edge off. Yesterday, however, was another thing entirely. I felt somewhat better when I woke up, but this is often a lie my body tells me and if I believe that, it then wallops me upside the head and I never catch up. So I threw a Tylenol #2 (that's "bigger medication" for me) at it just in case and spent the rest of the day being utterly looped. Even without taking anything else until the middle of the afternoon. Wheee!

The good thing about Enbrel is that I’m usually taking less of the big pain meds. The bad thing is that I therefore have no tolerance for them and thus am rendered a complete idiot when I have to take them. For your entertainment (and mine), I hereby present just how much.

For instance, I am writing this using Dragon NaturallySpeaking (my voice recognition software) and it’s taking a good deal longer than normal. Why? Because I have to keep correcting mistakes due to the poor thing not being quite sure of what I'm saying. I appear to not be speaking as... erm... crisply as I normally do. I don't sound drunk (I hope), but just blurred enough around the edges to confuse the software. It doesn't help that I'm having a little bit of trouble holding on to the thoughts, chasing them as they flutter away like butterflies and just when I think I’ve grabbed hold of them, whoops! they're gone. The odd time that I do succeed in grabbing an idea and holding onto it, there seems to be some sort of barrier to negotiate in order to get it out of my mouth. Often, the thought bounces off said barrier and then it's gone again. The combination of the - a-hem - “unclear” speech and the vexatiously escapist thoughts mean that most of the day, people have been looking at me funny, waiting for a beat while they try to translate what I'm saying, eventually giving up and saying 'huh?' an awful lot.

In addition, I have so many painkillers and muscle relaxants built up in my body that... Well, they seem to finally have worked. My body's so relaxed it takes focus to move. Which is difficult to achieve as I feel like I’m floating in a bubble, lolling about, looking at the world, which seems strangely otherworldly. It's as if I am in it, but not of it, everything a little distant, a little odd-looking. When I shift my gaze from one thing to another, the focus in my eyes doesn't follow and the back of my head feels empty and light. I'm getting a little tired of paying attention this much (in order to prevent further injury from barrelling into doorframes and the like), but at least I got a blog post out of it…

And speaking of which. I'm not exactly sure whether this turned out as funny as it is in my head (probably not), but due to aforementioned circumstances beyond my control, it appears that I'm incapable of correcting that. You'll just have to take my word for it. It's hysterical.

Loopily yrs,
Lene

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Farber’s Disease: Could Your Child’s Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Be Misdiagnosed?

Image
Joint inflammation or contractures. Nodules (small lumps under the skin or in other tissues). A weakened or hoarse voice. Children with these symptoms may have been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or other types of juvenile arthritis . But do they actually have JIA or do they have Farber’s disease? An equine digression When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. This is an adage in the medical world that encourages doctors to not wander off exploring rare and esoteric reasons for a patient’s symptoms. Because most of the time, that hoof beat of a rash likely isn’t the plague, the joint pain more likely a type of arthritis than the bends (especially if the person has never scuba dived) and you get the picture. But once in a while, it actually is a zebra. And even if it’s first identified as a horse, eventually, the stripes come through. It took five years of my parents running around to different doctors before one finally recognized that I had...
Read more

13 Things to Know for Rheumatoid Arthritis Newbies + Facebook Live

Image
Getting a diagnosis of any type of chronic illness can throw you for loop. There is so much to know and you have so little energy. My new slideshow for HealthCentral collects 13 things you need to know as an RA newbie : "Receiving a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a moment of strange duality. On one hand, you may be relieved to finally have answers for the symptoms you’ve been experiencing. On the other, it can be incredibly overwhelming to find out you have a chronic illness. Wrapping your head around all the new factors RA brings into your life is a long-term process. Here are some of the things you need to know." See the slideshow on HealthCentral . And in case you missed it, here is the Facebook Live I did yesterday talking about this topic:   
Read more