Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
late at night
Guess what? I have a blog
I was just making sure that you remembered, too. I have so much to write about and my blog has been so neglected lately. I wrote every day in November, and then couldn’t manage to write more than one entry in the next few months? That’s pretty lame. So, what’s new? Seven new feline residents, some of them kind of scary, but in a “scary, but we’re hoping to tame them” kind of way. Of course, we just named one of them Pandora, so you can guess that they’re not instantly cuddling in bed with us. In fact, one of them can’t be touched at all…yet. Felines and disability. I finally have a court date for my disability case - May 19th. Such a relief, but so scary at the same time.
I have to get to bed now because we’re probably going to Vegas in the morning, and our Vegas/doctor trips are long, long, loooooong days. But, I wanted to let you know that I hadn’t forgotten about you and that I’ll soon have kitty info and pictures. You’ll get to meet our new three-legged pal, Willly. Three l’s in Willly. 
We think he very recently had his leg amputated because he’s not very good at getting around on three legs - he seems to get tired easily, plus he keeps trying to scratch his ear with the leg that’s missing. It’s sad to watch, so I try to scratch his ear for him, but I’m not sure if I’m doing a good job on it. I think you’ll like Willly - he’s a nice boy and has fascinating eyes that have pigment eyeliner all around the rims of his eyes. They’re cool and spooky at the same time.
Gotta go, but see you soon.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
evening
A Post I Wrote About Chronic Pain Recently
[According to my doctor, every person on opiates is addicted after a week or two.] - this is someone’s else line, to which I was responding.
That’s one of the problems right there. If our doctors don’t even know the difference between dependence and addiction, it’s no small wonder that the general public is so misinformed. Not only are people NOT addicted after a week or two of opiates, most people aren’t even DEPENDENT after that short a period of time. It’s not like anyone starts off with a dose of 60mg of Oxycodone. I started off with a 5mg Lortab and then moved to a 10mg Combunox, and then gradually increased my dose over years.
If we can get people to quit worrying about addiction with pain patients (I think the percentage is like 2-5% or something like that) and get them to treat the pain, everyone would be a whole lot better off. Frankly, even if people are addicted, wouldn’t it be better for them to pay for their meds and be seen by a doctor once a month than get cut off and go looking for street drugs to replace their pain meds. Also, many of the addicts are also pain patients, so I’d rather their pain was managed and then when they decided their addiction was affecting their life, then they took it upon themselves to get help.
I’ve never had a single sign of addiction (never “lost” a prescription, never run out early, never look wasted, never driven while impaired, etc.), yet my stupid ******-**-*** accused me of being a drug addict, then got my ******** involved, and then I was accused of faking being ill and drug seeking. Yeah, I sure faked that herniated disk so well that the MRI had every single doctor who saw it exclaiming, “Wow, that’s big!” Yeah, I’m a big ol’ faker alright. Ugh. It turns out my ***-**-***l was arrested for drunk driving shortly after accusing ME of abusing drugs. So, yeah, I’m pretty sick of these addiction accusations…for all of us. Oh yeah, and I’ve never addressed this point publicly - Leigh-Ann and I were both accused of being “high” because someone said we had red-rimmed eyes. That’s not a sign of presciption medication use, red eyes. That would be a sign of maybe pot use (Leigh-Ann has never tried ANY illegal drugs…I’m not quite that innocent), allergies, or perhaps crying. I have never driven under the influence of anything (okay, ONCE, when I was 17…and I drove very slowly through side streets - it never happened again), so if someone ever sees me out somewhere and thinks I’m high, they’re tottally and utterly wrong. I take my safety and the safety of my passengers and fellow drivers seriously. I spent my twenties being horrified at friends driving drunk (one totalled multiple cars) and trying to stop them. More than once, our friends banded together to drive the drunk person’s car home for them, while one of us followed to give the sober driver a ride home. Now that I’m even older (and wiser, heh), there is no way I would be even more reckless than I was in my youth, when I didn’t, even then, drive impaired.
I think doctors need to treat our pain, while making sure our dosage is appropriate for us. For us, not for the DEA or our relatives or our friends. Some of us have a huge tolerance for meds, some of us don’t. There isn’t a pat answer for what will help each pain patient. We’re all different. For instance, I can’t take any morphine based meds. They do nothing for me. It’s like I’m taking water pills. MSContin, Dilaudid, et al., don’t work. I suppose it might be different if they were IV meds, but the pills don’t work at all for me. Other people, I know they’re knocked out by those meds. Flexeril is my Kryptonite - it puts me to sleep for days. One teeny little pill knocks me out. It works like a super powerful sleeping pill. I’ve only taken two or three in my whole life because the reaction was so awful.
P.S. I used asterisks to protect the “reputations” of the guilty. They know who they are, but I don’t need strangers coming across my blog to know who they are.
Sunday, November 07, 2010
late evening
Wow, Michelle Branch is Back
Geez, we saw her open for the Dixie Chicks when she was like 16, and she’s probably close to 30 now or something. Oh my, I was just joking, but she really is 27 now. Anyway, she’s finally released a new EP. I can’t recommend it highly yet, as I’ve just started listening to it with my free 25 listens on Rhapsody, but so far, so good. I’ve missed her, and I’m glad she’s back, even if she’s old now. I guess she was probably off living some sort of life while I was waiting for her to come back. Okay, not actively waiting, but passively. Two songs in now, I approve. Those of you with money, buy it and make Michelle feel loved.
I apologize for the “weaning week”, as I was very, very, very grumpy. It was a pretty terrible week, even without my (LOL!) “addiction”. I really did think that I’d lost all semblance of a sense of humor, except every so often, the lines from “Airplane” kept popping into my head. You know, “I picked a bad day to quit sniffing glue”, et al? It always made me chuckle a bit to myself, so I knew that beneath the stress of the dogs getting out, having to empty our stuff out of storage, the unexpected rain (hello, what the heck does ZERO PERCENT chance of rain mean to you, Pahrump???) on our stuff in our side yard, getting my period unexpectedly (look, I’m NOT going to have kids, I’m 46 and know this, so please tell my body to quit bleeding randomly), on top of the weaning was just, well, to put it midly, kinda crappy.
Hey, I really like this Michelle Branch EP. I would totally buy it if I had any money. I’m sorry, Michelle, I’ll try to make up for my free listening by asking other people to buy it. If you liked old Michelle, The Wreckers Michelle, you’ll like the new EP just as much, I would think. Especially you hardcore Buffy fans. I mean, what’s Willow/Tara without Michelle Branch? It certainly doesn’t make you want to cry as much, does it? No sirree, Bob.
This part of my blog entry is for those of you on pain meds. Last night I had the weirdest dream - I dreamt about an Asian guy (why Asian?) wearing a bright pink t-shirt, and he was using a blender to mix up something he was calling “Master Bind”. Kinda funny, no? Seriously, is it common to dream about side effects when you’re weaning off meds? I know people talk about brain zaps from weaning off anti-depressants, but I’ve never really been on anti-depressants, except to try them for pain relief. Cymbalta helps lots of people with Fibromyalgia - it didn’t help me at all. I took it for a month, then quit cold turkey. When you’re able to quit lots of things cold turkey without weaning, you get kind of cocky. “Hey, I’m superhuman, I can quit any med and not feel a thing.” Well, silly me, I just kinda sorta expected a pain mgt doctor and his fee and the cost of the meds to appear out of thin air, so I didn’t plan my wean too well. Since my dosage is none of your business (actually, I’ll tell anyone who asks and cares, but not those people who thought they saved my life by trying to get me stop taking my pain meds…I didn’t stop then, and I wouldn’t have stopped now, if I could’ve afforded the very pricey first doctor’s fee plus the meds), let’s just leave it at, I develop a tolerance for meds very easily, so my dosage was fairly high. On the bright side, it also usually means that I don’t suffer from the same side effects that other people do, like being able to quit Cymbalta cold turkey without even noticing. Now, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, not planning my wean. I did great going from Oxycodone to Methadone, but Methadone’s half-life is a pretty crappy thing when you want to just be done with it. I’d never had any problems going back and forth and adjusting my dose on the fly, but quitting altogether was another thing apparently. Instead of doing it in itty bitty increments (like Leigh-Ann would have told me to do if I’d maybe consulted her - I admit it, she’s smarter than I am), I thought it would be as easy as dropping from, let’s just pick an outrageous number for the looky-loos (you know who you are…and so do I, with your repeated IPs) and say that my Oxycodone dose was 1000mg/day. It wasn’t, but it’s a nice round number that means nothing to people who don’t take pain meds. Anyway, let’s say it was 1000mg. So, I effectively went from 1000mg of Oxycodone plus 60 mg of Methadone to just 60mg of Methadone, then after a week, I went to 30mg, then 10mg, then nothing. That was dumb. Don’t do that with Methadone, unless you have enough to spare in case you start feeling really lousy. I thought it was super easy to drop my Oxycodone completely, and it was, it really was, and even though it wasn’t 1000mg, it also wasn’t like, uh, say 30mg. I still had pain, so I was huffing Advil, but that’s besides the point. Droppng the Oxycodone was nothing at all. I didn’t even notice it. No half-life, or very little if there is any. I’d never previously had any reason to really comprehend half-lives, but now they’re very very clear to me. Heh. Anyway, the FM pain sucks, but hey, now I’m a cheap Oxycodone date. Those of you “worried” about my “drug addiction”, no need to fear anything, my intention is to get back on my meds as soon as I can afford it. Now that I’m past the worst of the side effects (blech, upset stomach), I can honestly and sincerely STILL say that I need pain meds. It’ll be a little cheaper for a while, until my tolerance does what it does, I’m sure.
Second listen to the Michelle Branch EP. I really like it. See, isn’t it nice when everything comes back full circle?
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
evening
NaBloPoMo - It’s killing me this year
Between the dogs getting out, the weaning off my meds (uh, those of you with your stupid accusations and know-it-allness about meds - well, you’re wrong, I feel like total crap off my meds. It’s not withdrawal, it’s just plain ol’ pain and it sucks), and it being a surprise appearance of “that time of the month”, it’s combined to kick my butt. I can’t remember feeling so worn down, sore, and just useless in quite some time. I know that it’s the combo of both physical and mental stress, but it just doesn’t help me feel any better. Oh yeah, and for those of you who don’t want to read about my aches & pains, stop reading. This is my blog and I’ll whine about whatever I want to whine about. So there.
I hope that as the days goes on, I’ll start writing some more interesting and entertaining blog entries. For right now, I’m just trying to function, which is really the best I can do right now. I’m hoping that when/if we sell our dining room set/bed frame, that I’ll be able to afford to see a new doctor and get some meds. Or, I hope we’ll be able to join a medical study in Vegas and that doctor will do us a favor and write our prescriptions. The hard part is needing to rent a car to get into Vegas because the Aztek is falling apart bit by bit, and I’m afraid to drive it back and forth to Vegas through the hill climbing portion of the drive. I really think it would be too hard on the car.
Okay, I promise to try to find something amusing or educational for future entries.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
early evening
Uggghhh
Feeling cruddy, so I will finish this entry later. I picked a bad time to quit taking drugs. 
Oh yeah, but yay for Harry Reid. I couldn’t have stood living in a state represented by Crazypants Angle.
