Last year, it was the flu that I had for nearly a month. This year, it's the sinus infection seems to have settled into my gums for the holidays. It never specified which holidays. A few years ago, I expressed envy at people who got sick with normal things, got over them and moved on with their lives. I should have known better. I have a functionally suppressed immune system as one of those secondary things. Being around people other than Melissa is very difficult and painful. Avoiding people meant that I wasn't exposed to those exceptionally mild cases of whatever is going around so my immune system got rusty.
Chances are that those of you reading this know where I'm coming from even if you lack my exotic medical history. Chronic pain takes the social urges out of you unless you work at staying involved. The fact is that other people are painful to be around. There is the crowd sort of painful environment where someone might bump into you. I try to avoid crowds where I'm not known but. every once in a while, Pearl Jam is playing in Philly. That last show I saw was a tough one. Never had so much fun before while trying to dodge elbows from the guy next to me who was chair dancing. He did apologize after each time he connected solidly so I managed to avoid whacking him with my cane. In fact, I've never whacked anyone with my cane despite the jokes about it. Chances are that the vibrations would hurt me like a shot to the funny bone or a foul tip right off the end of a metal bat. Worse yet, the cane would probably bend in half and end up as evidence against me in court.
My real problem with that couple was the pot that both the man and the woman were smoking. Several friends informed me later that it must have been terrible pot for it to smell that much like someone hit a skunk with their car and deposited it under his seat. That leads me to my only real problem with crowds and that is the fact that a certain percentage of human beings are assholes so there will always be a few in a crowd. The pot smoking was bigger potential trouble. The uninitiated might ask why not breathe deep and take the pain relief. The first reason why pot is wrong for me is that it is as likely to cause cancer as cigarettes. We already had one cancer scare in the family over the last 12 months and it was at its scariest for about ten days with the concert in the middle.
Secondly, I get drug tested on a random basis by my pain doc. I trust the docs there to disclose the unwilling secondhand pot even after they passed on testing me that month. They said it wouldn't have shown up in a test anyway under those circumstances but I don't trust any testing where so much is at stake. If I were to lose my reputation as an upstanding citizen of my pain doc's practice, he would wean me off my meds over 28 days and leave me to scream myself insane. I know the arguments in favor of drug testing and I can even agree with some of them under certain circumstances.
The problem is that the stakes are just too high. They are high enough to ensure, assure or insure complete compliance from me whichever is the proper word there. I know better than to try concentrating against the brain fog. Avoidable pain lies along that road and I do my best to avoid such pain. I do not understand why a society believes that someone who endures pain like mine would do anything to risk his access to that which helps it stay tolerable most of the time. I do not know why society believes that the slight chance I could be lying about my pain and selling my medication is worth the inevitable result where someone gets the wrong false positive from the wrong doctor and is sentenced to a life of torture.
That wasn't supposed to end up as a rant. It's just that this sinus thing on top of my regularly scheduled episodes of extreme pain scares the hell out of me. I trust my doctors. If my doctors turn up a false positive on me (and it has happened), they double check the result and schedule me for a repeated test sooner than usual. A few weeks ago, my face was on fire along with the bone structure beneath the skin. The back of my head hurt as badly as it might on a normal sort of bad day so I needed my cold pack in order to lean back in my recliner. I needed that on the back of my head and nothing seemed to help the front of my head. Even falling asleep with my meds and some herbal tea left me feeling worse.
Thank God for Melissa. I call her my beloved for reasons that would be obvious if you knew her and I call her my pain coach because she has a good head for these things. She came home from work with cold and sinus pills that the pharmacist declared safe with my other medicines. It turns out that those pills in combination with my meds and enough sleep is sufficient for me to feel better. The most difficult part of this is getting enough sleep. The last time something even close to this happened to me, I left for a beach vacation where I slept almost eight hours each night with an afternoon nap. The pain crisis just disappeared.
Therefore, I should be sleeping right now and I'm not due to circumstances (a little) beyond my control. Why am I in a good mood? (This is a good mood? Yes. Considering the pain that's just settling in for the day, this is a great mood.) I'm in such a good mood because an unexpected message from an old friend contained unintended wisdom. Her words work in or out of context and either quoted or paraphrased. Let's try out of context paraphrasing so she keeps in touch. Others have told me similar things but wisdom can be all about the timing.
Dealing with a lifetime of pain requires taking it day by day and working at it. I have my high energy days (well, nights mostly) and my low energy days. The same thing applies to pain levels. Each day will throw a set of circumstances beyond my control at me. All I can do is take it day by day working with each set of circumstances and using them. I couldn't sleep overnight because I was knocked out all day yesterday so the exhaustion is kicking in now with the pain. I need to take the sinus medication and deal with the massive amount of water required to take them and work at shaking this infection despite the fact that I'd rather be working on fiction writing. I must sleep and deal with the nightmares so that I can feel better enough to work on my other dreams also known as aspirations. Aspirations are not the result of aspirating which is nowhere near as much fun.
If I'm willing to make that joke, sleep must be coming soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment