Worst day ever. I hate everyone, I'm dropping everything I touch, everything sucks. At least I got a shower without incident, but it took full concentrated focus.
~~~~~~~~
Later.
Even tiny doses of opioids make me mean when they wear off. I did 3 half pills spread out yesterday, just enough to get thru the hard parts, and today I was everything evil until I finally took another half.
Now my world is soft and warm and everything looks like a magazine life, and I know now it was the drug and not me. I love again. I'm at peace again.
I clearly cannot do this to my family. Next dose will have to be a quarter. I've got to dose down as quickly as I possibly can and still keep just enough warm fuzzy to get thru the hardest parts.
One of the red flags is how wasted I feel on so little. I used to live on handfuls of pills around the clock for years before research finally caught up with experience and agreed that just doesn't work.
The worst part of any pain syndrome is the addiction/withdrawal cycles. The hardest part of living spoonie is the crippling depression and self loathing that comes with watching myself be mean to people I love.
More incentive to get healthier.
And along the way I figured out how to solve my FB problem. You know how you can custom share? They suggest making custom share groups like for family, friends, close friends, etc. I tried making common interest groups for awhile. Nothing really works without some level of frustration. I decided today that's the wrong approach. If some of my people are topic, issue, or content sensitive, I can make custom share lists based on things like fun, thinky, mood, nerdy, etc. I think taking an extra step or two will make me easier to take for some. I mean, I handle people that way in real life, right?
Bout fried my phone on this next one hiding the glow under the covers and falling asleep. The upload is viral. I wrote a tweet and a FB status about it earlier, and I pinned it. Is it coincidence it came out the day after the anniversary being talked about in the above video?
My hand hurts like hell, but my typing is already getting better. Also, my throat really hurts to swallow and I finally looked in there and found a small area that looks weird, wondering if I got a small sore or scratch when I swallowed the little airway hose under anesthesia.
So I got back up out of bed after sleeping an hour and a half and I'm eating Italian nachos so I can get vicoprofen down. For my hand, not my throat. The hand thing is an ongoing problem from the last Pinky blog, if you're new.
Proof that FB is uber intrustive. The other day I bounced on a post from a publisher and next thing you know they are calling my cell phone. I don't put my cell phone out for view, even for friends, and I didn't friend that publisher page. I checked my settings, and sure enough, my phone number was viewable by friends, so I had to reset that to only me. Check your privacy settings, guys. They had another big update rollout, so just check everything. Also, really creepy that a nonfriend was able to hack that and then leave a recording on my phone. Once is bad enough, but still another publisher calling and leaving a message out of the blue within that time frame, and both of these repeat calling really ticked me off. Real publishers don't solicit by phone. Don't worry, I didn't pick up.
So the blocking begins. Again. I wanted to report for harrassment, but FB doesn't allow me to describe what happened, so how would they even know it's going on outside of FB?
Bunny got a cast change on the same day in the same building at the same time as my carpal tunnel surgery. I thought that was cool. 😎
My knee still doesn't hurt. I had to rewrap the compression bandage, definitely swollen and apparently a bit bloody under all that cotton wrap, but I keep it up a lot and use a cane 90% of the time so I'm doing ok. I have felt it squish in there a couple of times, kinda slide a couple more, and click a few times, no pain at all with any of it, even though the pictures the surgeon gave me look pretty impressive.
The best part is the vicoprofen. I hadn't had hydrocodone in any form since 2014 until my gall bladder removal last fall, and that was overwhelming because I'm like a permanent protracted withdrawal person, clenched muscles and mild hallucinations when I have to take it nowadays because I was on low dose vicodin for nearly 30 years. Today has been lovely, though. I asked for a lower dose since I tolerate pain so well, and I'm feeling wrapped in beautiful fuzzy blanket kind of love. Going to suck stopping it again, so I'm already alternating breaking pills in half. So far I'm needing every 4 hours on the dot for the hand pain, but dang it, I keep forgetting and automatically doing stuff. Every little grasp and tug is horrible and barely functioning, or like using that hand for leverage getting into bed earlier, yowza that sucked.
I spent pre surgery eating plenty of vegetables, alternating salads with cabbage soup, pan roasted brussels sprouts, microwaved sweet potato, crockpot corn on the cob, and I'm focusing on more proteins and yogurt while I'm healing. They gave me precautionary ancef (cephalasporin antibiotic) in my IV during sugery. Also got decadron (corticosteroid, precautionary for inflammation, allergic reactions, and edema), fentanyl (narcotic), lactated ringers (aggressive fluid replacement during fluid and blood loss), lidocaine (numbing agent), midazolam (benzo that induces drowsiness and acts like a roofie so you don't remember), zophran (for nausea, I'm a documented puker during and after surgeries), phenylephrine (antihistamine, also raises blood pressure), and propofol (" a short-acting medication that results in a decreased level of consciousness and lack of memory for events").
And that was on top of a serious lack of coffee and calories, so the first 48 hours are my body cleaning all that out on top of serious healing from intrusion. I'm cautiously already following slow withdrawal guidelines on the vicoprofen. Part of the jolt for a lot of people recovering from surgery is not understanding the meds going on.
Sorry no click to merch, I think it was a short-lived flash sale. The back has the wizards rules.
Wo, stood up to do something and I'm so wasted I barely made it across the room. Funny how sensitive I am now to small dose anything after decades of handfuls of meds that I spent over 2 years cleaning off of. I felt like I had a little tiny bug crawling in my shirt nipping me, usually a protracted benzo symptom for me, but turned out to be petechaie. Every time I have something done I get new ones. I have a petechia for every spinal tap I've had, stuff like that. Some of them never go away.
I had some super cool dreams this afternoon dozing off and on. Going to try some stuff on Mo Creatures (minecraft server) when I can log back on. I'm generally not a very creative builder, even though I have huge claims with builds on them. The stuff in my dreams was like TIME TO REMODEL. I'm very excited but really can't do that till I start the therapies.
I've gotta get back to bed while the pain level is back down. See ya.
I've had a little time to think today about how intense the last 8 days got, especially after another brief breakout last night that has me in another 2-day holter. This is old hat, I've done overnight, 2-day, 7-day, and month fairly regularly over the last 2 1/2 decades, and every time it happens there is a settling into new med dose period where I have little minor breakout burps after an initial big one. Except this last big one took 2 days to wrestle back down out of emergency status range. Kinda like with diabetes, there is a set of ranges they consider imminent even if the patient isn't aware it is, blood pressure has its own ranges of 'anything could happen without warning' when you get above or below a certain range.
Over the years I've heard it all about panic response (out of a dead sleep, that's hilarious), acute anxiety (without warning while I'm having a good day?), pain response (we do watch that, and it's not logically consistent or predictable), and of course they check for anything physical going on, too. My blood work is pretty great for someone my age, I pass all kinds of tests with flying colors, and still I get these outrageous break out blood pressure binges after months of good control.
But. I do have to look at what I've been doing lately. I have been deeper tissue restructuring on top of finally dealing with one of the biggest PTSD trauma events in my life, which basically boils down to medically condoned self harm during a mental crisis, and it dawned on me during another ER run last night this is what it really looks like. Is it much of a stretch to connect that to the worst uncontrollable blood pressure break out I've ever had? The timing is exquisite.
Something to talk about with my primary doctor during follow up tomorrow and my psychologist next week.
I grew up self medicating, but it wasn't alcohol because we never had any. I didn't know that a lot of kids were doing that all around me in school, getting into medications and liquor cabinets. Did they start at three years old? I OD'd when I was around 3. No one even knows what to say to that. I was on phenobarbital since babyhood, found the love of my life in codeine around 12, and graduated into round the clock drinking and chain smoking after a divorce. I rarely bring up the brandy bongs because people get the wrong picture. I was a workaholic without a real emotional connection to anyone, and I moved along from one addiction to another to another to another, and part of that migration has included pain addiction. I am very, very good at pain addiction. I have literally used it to get off med addictions. I have used therapies as a coping mechanism because they focus pain. I get high while I heal, the more bruising, the better. I noticed this last week that I was craving the needles. I had so many people putting needles in me. My left hand is half black and blue, my stomach has a very bright purple circle as big as a silver dollar. My arms are tracked up and bruised in half a dozen places. Not one needle was used to administer a pain med or muscle relaxer or anything relieving like that.
I love pain. They started noticing this in physical therapy about 3 years ago. It's become a topic of interest with my psychologist. Lately I can't help noticing that the more emotional pain I feel, the more physical pain I crave. Funny I never noticed that before. I can look back on my life and see years of it now.
I have no idea if that dynamic can trigger such a horrible blood pressure breakout. I spent the last two months rolling out scheduled blog posts about dealing with some horrible stuff in my life, creating a survival narrative, and right as the last of it was ending, and my mind finally started feeling more free than it has ever felt, my blood pressure exploded and my life diverted into more than a dozen needles and a lot of tests. During that time, the deep tissue area we've been working on in physical therapy for 6 weeks also exploded into searing pain along nerve pathways and referred into muscle strings and bundles. The pain was severe, and I laid there loving that I was feeling it and feeling lots of needles all over and mandatory fasting for almost 24 hours, and I never once felt sorry for myself.
