It's been a few months since I started this here blog, and I've blogged on anything and everything ranging from computers to my battle with chronic non-cancer pain to the impressive array (for an 18-year-old) of prescription bottles lined up on my bed head.
What I've intentionally refrained from blogging about, however, are the problems with my head. I don't mean headaches or tooth pain, either. It seems that, historically, ever since the arrival of modern medicine, there has always been much more of an emphasis on the organs below the neckline. Since the arrival of Dr Freud (and if anyone doesn't remember the name somewhere---go sign yourself into the nearest psych ward, pun intended) and the science of psychiatry, mental health care has improved, but those suffering from mental issues are either marginalised by society, or their problems are shrugged off as minor.
If someone has a broken arm, they're given morphine and aspirin and they get their arm put in a splint, which is then signed by their friends and family. If someone has a broken leg, they're given Dilaudid IV and get their leg put in a splint, which is then signed by friends and family.
But God help someone who suffers from constant stress, or can't see any reason for continuing to live and is too chicken to pull the trigger. I know---it's happened to me. And those days are getting more and more frequent. There are the days when everything seems like it's in a black-and-white movie, and then there's the days when I feel like I've gone into bullet time, complete with audible heart thumping and time stopping.
I used to carry around a few (like four to six) oxies for the former, and some Serax, Valium, or Nembutal for the latter. I still carry around the Valium, but I've come to have a love-hate relationship with the oxy. Oxy helps me---it turns the storm clouds to sunshine. It really does. Within five minutes. Try explaining that to my psychiatrist. Oh, yeah, and after the last dose is taken and I sober up, I feel fine. No hangover. Trouble with oxy is (in addition to the addiction, which I haven't developed) you soon start feeling that the happiness, the calm, that it's actually normal.
Which is fine if your life actually feels happy and calm most days. Mine doesn't. I get the black-and-white thing once or twice a week, and it would be tolerable if people simply co-operated and figured that maybe I wasn't feeling my very best, etc. etc. But people, especially at school, tend to think I'm their personal punching bag.
For instance, the vice principal, whom I'll call Sandy Drof on this blog, is widely known to be an alcoholic. She berates me for something I didn't do, or overblows something I did do to almost comical proportion, and even worse---in public. Or a friend of some of my friends. She's a heavy drug abuser (mostly hallucinogens) and abuses alcohol as well. Piercings all over her body, goes to raves, lesbian because it's the new thing nowadays, the works. Not that going to raves and drinking is bad.
I go to socialise with cultured, intelligent people. Most are occasional drug users, some go to raves, about half are model students, and I can discuss practically anything from alcoholism to the nutritional benefits of zinc, so I enjoy this group. What I don't enjoy is, after a discussion on whether Stephen Harper runs the country poorly or well, or a discussion on the benefits of marijuana v. oxycodone for the psychobehavioural aspect, I hear, "SHUT UP, NOBODY CARES." Maybe you're too stupid to care. That doesn't mean everybody else is.
The family isn't the most understanding, either. And I include my mother in this, who deals with the same problems. I've often said, "You know how you feel on your black days?" "Yeah, I know, sweetie." "Well, I'm sorta feeling it. I've just about had it." "Do you want an oxy and a Serax?" (My mum hates pills!) "Yeah, I'll take an oxy and a Serax, but I also need some peace and quiet." She goes on to criticise me about some matter or other, knowing that I feel like crap just sitting up.
My grandmother is worse. She thinks that you can't be stressed as a teen ager. Yes, God damn it, you can. "So don't be stressed." That's like telling a madman to be sane. Or telling the sky to turn green. I got injured in a road accident. That means that I can't operate modes of transportation without either going into bullet time or taking a Serax or a Valium (those work similarly). Serax makes me sleepy. So does Valium. So those aren't options if I haven't had a lot of sleep. So what I do is I take breaks driving or flying. My grandmother now blames me that instead of the fifteen minute drive to the doctors' it took twenty. Big fucking deal. You could have arrived feet first if I didn't take that five-minute break.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
On Pain Management
(This was written in March. I now have 300 mg Lyrica pills, which are MASSIVE and damn near impossible to swallow for some people. My GP lowered my oxy yet again---I am now on 15 mg/day. Fuck.)
I'm a chronic pain patient, blah, blah, blah. Because of my GP's irrational fear of opioids, I was given tramadol as a replacement for oxycodone while I'm away in Europe. However, I was unable to pick up my prescription at the chemist's back in Canada before I flew, and so I came to Europe with only Celebrex and Lyrica (Neurontin on steroids). The Lyrica does wonders for nerve pain, but nothing else (plus it makes me incredibly sleepy and doubles as a sedative). The Celebrex is about as useful as a leather jacket on a nudist beach.
Needless to say, I was able to obtain a prescription for tramadol and the British version of Fiorinal (essentially Nembutal and Aspirin) for migraines, and I supplemented this with healthy amounts of over-the-counter kaolin and morphine syrup. However, as I've come to realise, tramadol for chronic pain like this is absolutely ridiculous. For me, it's about half the strength by weight of morphine. The British version of Tramadol, which is called Mabron, comes in 50mg capsules. To get a complete reduction in pain, I've had to take approximately 500-600 mg of tramadol a day. The good news: Tramadol, for an instant-release medication, is incredibly long-lasting. A single dose lasting 12 hours is usual for me. However, it takes 3-4 hours to register an effect.
There are a couple non-obvious downsides to tramadol therapy, though. First of all, with taking huge doses like that, the histamine itch becomes unbearable. So, I take a Zyrtec or two (that's Reactin to you Americans) for the itch. As if that weren't enough, what I consider to be the most important organ in my body becomes completely non-operational. I've asked my doctor here for Viagra and have been flatly turned down. To top it all off, tramadol (like pethidine) becomes seizurogenic at doses above 200mg, and if I weren't taking Lyrica I'd probably be having eppies all over the place. For this reason, although it may be addictive, I got morphine and promptly discontinued the tramadol.
When I come back to Canada, I'm seeing my pain management doctor, and I am already scared. I have a good knowledge of medical terms, and I am afraid that if I use such terms to accurately describe where the pain is and its nature, I would be thought of by a doctor that does not know me as a drug-seeker, which I am not. I am in urgent need of oxycodone---it is the one drug that helps completely at the right dosage. I have found that twenty milligrammes of oxycodone twice a day provides relief from pain and anxiety during my waking hours; however, my doctor has seen fit to prescribe only enough to last me a third of the day --- twenty milligrammes, with a strong possibility that this will be reduced the next time I see her.
I'm a chronic pain patient, blah, blah, blah. Because of my GP's irrational fear of opioids, I was given tramadol as a replacement for oxycodone while I'm away in Europe. However, I was unable to pick up my prescription at the chemist's back in Canada before I flew, and so I came to Europe with only Celebrex and Lyrica (Neurontin on steroids). The Lyrica does wonders for nerve pain, but nothing else (plus it makes me incredibly sleepy and doubles as a sedative). The Celebrex is about as useful as a leather jacket on a nudist beach.
Needless to say, I was able to obtain a prescription for tramadol and the British version of Fiorinal (essentially Nembutal and Aspirin) for migraines, and I supplemented this with healthy amounts of over-the-counter kaolin and morphine syrup. However, as I've come to realise, tramadol for chronic pain like this is absolutely ridiculous. For me, it's about half the strength by weight of morphine. The British version of Tramadol, which is called Mabron, comes in 50mg capsules. To get a complete reduction in pain, I've had to take approximately 500-600 mg of tramadol a day. The good news: Tramadol, for an instant-release medication, is incredibly long-lasting. A single dose lasting 12 hours is usual for me. However, it takes 3-4 hours to register an effect.
There are a couple non-obvious downsides to tramadol therapy, though. First of all, with taking huge doses like that, the histamine itch becomes unbearable. So, I take a Zyrtec or two (that's Reactin to you Americans) for the itch. As if that weren't enough, what I consider to be the most important organ in my body becomes completely non-operational. I've asked my doctor here for Viagra and have been flatly turned down. To top it all off, tramadol (like pethidine) becomes seizurogenic at doses above 200mg, and if I weren't taking Lyrica I'd probably be having eppies all over the place. For this reason, although it may be addictive, I got morphine and promptly discontinued the tramadol.
When I come back to Canada, I'm seeing my pain management doctor, and I am already scared. I have a good knowledge of medical terms, and I am afraid that if I use such terms to accurately describe where the pain is and its nature, I would be thought of by a doctor that does not know me as a drug-seeker, which I am not. I am in urgent need of oxycodone---it is the one drug that helps completely at the right dosage. I have found that twenty milligrammes of oxycodone twice a day provides relief from pain and anxiety during my waking hours; however, my doctor has seen fit to prescribe only enough to last me a third of the day --- twenty milligrammes, with a strong possibility that this will be reduced the next time I see her.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Suicide Note
If I were to write a suicide note, which seems more and more likely as the days go on, I'd write something like this.
My dear friends and family:
My sincere thanks go out to you for attempting to put some form of joy into my life; I have enjoyed my stay on this planet very much. My life has been packed with enriching activities: swimming, watching the latest blockbusters at the cinema, drinking at the bar. Therefore, I put no blame on you for causing me to go on this, my last journey. However, I now feel that my life has no meaning or purpose whatever, and it is time for me to go to the land from which nobody returns, and everyone goes alone, no matter how close his fellow men walk behind him. Why was I born? What is the purpose of humanity on the planet? Where are we headed in this crap-shoot called life? I used to know, with high confidence, the answer to all of these questions; now, I fear I have forgotten them. Every morning, I try my damnedest to get up out of bed, and I have failed miserably on multiple occasions. School, nowadays, seems to be hardly an excuse. Why should I burden my friends---if I can call them that---with my presence? Same goes for my family. Having spent most of the past year pondering this question, I find that the answer is decidedly no. I had once been in love with the very idea of life---I felt that it seemed to have had an almost magical quality to it. Boy, was I an idealistic, naive fool. I have now seen the reality of life, and the truth is that it's a game with no rules and no way to win; a dead-end job with no promotion in sight and no wages either; a race with no finish line and no medals given out---a rat race, in other words. In the words of the dolphins of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, "So long, so long, and thanks for all the fish!"
My sincere thanks, again, and see you in a few years.
My dear friends and family:
My sincere thanks go out to you for attempting to put some form of joy into my life; I have enjoyed my stay on this planet very much. My life has been packed with enriching activities: swimming, watching the latest blockbusters at the cinema, drinking at the bar. Therefore, I put no blame on you for causing me to go on this, my last journey. However, I now feel that my life has no meaning or purpose whatever, and it is time for me to go to the land from which nobody returns, and everyone goes alone, no matter how close his fellow men walk behind him. Why was I born? What is the purpose of humanity on the planet? Where are we headed in this crap-shoot called life? I used to know, with high confidence, the answer to all of these questions; now, I fear I have forgotten them. Every morning, I try my damnedest to get up out of bed, and I have failed miserably on multiple occasions. School, nowadays, seems to be hardly an excuse. Why should I burden my friends---if I can call them that---with my presence? Same goes for my family. Having spent most of the past year pondering this question, I find that the answer is decidedly no. I had once been in love with the very idea of life---I felt that it seemed to have had an almost magical quality to it. Boy, was I an idealistic, naive fool. I have now seen the reality of life, and the truth is that it's a game with no rules and no way to win; a dead-end job with no promotion in sight and no wages either; a race with no finish line and no medals given out---a rat race, in other words. In the words of the dolphins of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, "So long, so long, and thanks for all the fish!"
My sincere thanks, again, and see you in a few years.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Kick 'em when they're down...
A couple days ago, I was at school, and went out for a smoke in-between classes. This doesn't make me too late, and it allows me three minutes to de-stress. I slip and fall on the mud, caking my whole side with earth. After enduring ten or so people mocking me, I go to the office and ask for the key to the handicap bathroom so that I can clean myself up in a civilised manner. Of course, as my shitty luck would have it, the only person in the office is the vice principal, whom I will call Chevrolet (or Mrs C for short); she happens to be an alcoholic and also one of the most disagreeable women I know.
She refuses---of course. I go to the regular washroom---fortunately, nobody's there, and I can wash up without letting my dignity run out the door. No sooner do I get out than I get told by a teacher that Mrs C is looking for me. Instantly, of course, I get stiff as a board. I get into her office, and she accuses me of smoking marijuana. Of course, I reply that it was a cigarette. I'm no stoner---pillhead yes, stoner no. I show her my pack of Camel to prove it---she says that of course I wouldn't have weed on me, because I just smoked it.
She seems to ever-so-slowly cotton on to the fact that the only thing I reek of is Turkish tobacco. Then, to add insult to injury, she swipes my smokes saying that they're illegal for me to own as I'm under 19, and she'd call the cops on whoever sold them to me. Why would she seize them now, and not the million other times she caught me smoking? Of course, the rest of the day, I have to buy fags for $1 apiece to feel anything close to relaxed.
The problem really wasn't even losing my ciggies, it was the verbal abuse that I was forced to listen to. I was accused completely unfairly. It's one thing when you have a witness or two, or when someone obviously stinks of cannabis. Also, *right after* I hurt myself and lose most of my dignity? This is why I can't stand life.
I give up. Seems like this sort of thing happens every day. No wonder I'm losing my stamina and have to take four or five different pills every day just to keep myself halfway functioning.
She refuses---of course. I go to the regular washroom---fortunately, nobody's there, and I can wash up without letting my dignity run out the door. No sooner do I get out than I get told by a teacher that Mrs C is looking for me. Instantly, of course, I get stiff as a board. I get into her office, and she accuses me of smoking marijuana. Of course, I reply that it was a cigarette. I'm no stoner---pillhead yes, stoner no. I show her my pack of Camel to prove it---she says that of course I wouldn't have weed on me, because I just smoked it.
She seems to ever-so-slowly cotton on to the fact that the only thing I reek of is Turkish tobacco. Then, to add insult to injury, she swipes my smokes saying that they're illegal for me to own as I'm under 19, and she'd call the cops on whoever sold them to me. Why would she seize them now, and not the million other times she caught me smoking? Of course, the rest of the day, I have to buy fags for $1 apiece to feel anything close to relaxed.
The problem really wasn't even losing my ciggies, it was the verbal abuse that I was forced to listen to. I was accused completely unfairly. It's one thing when you have a witness or two, or when someone obviously stinks of cannabis. Also, *right after* I hurt myself and lose most of my dignity? This is why I can't stand life.
I give up. Seems like this sort of thing happens every day. No wonder I'm losing my stamina and have to take four or five different pills every day just to keep myself halfway functioning.
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