Vicodin Fantasies and Percoset Dreams
Wednesday, Jul. 19, 2006 at 10:19 a.m.
Conversation with Hubster:
Valkyrie: *BUU-UURRR-PP!*
Hubster: *BEE-EELL-LLCH!* Marco!
Valkyrie: Polo!
pause
Hubster: Just �polo�?
Valkryie: There was something else but it didn�t make noise.
Hubster: What do you . . . OH MY GOD. *yurgh!*
Did you miss me, kids?
Where has the time gone? Well, when you spend a total of 13 hours in an ER, 3 hours in a doctor�s office, and 5 days hipped up on Vicodin �, you tend to kind of lose track of where and who you are.
Just what happened last week? Let�s see. Here�s a blow-by-blow.
Monday and Tuesday (of last week) my lower back was hurting. Really hurting. It was reaching the kinds of pain where I wanted to either stab myself repeatedly in the pine with an icepick, or simply kill someone else. By the time Wednesday rolled around, the pain had traveled to my lower left abdomen and into the groin. So I went to see the good old chiropractor on Wednesday. Why the chiropractor? Well, I had had this kind of pain before, and he was able to adjust it out. So I figured that my spine had torqued itself up again, as it is wont to do. The good doc did fix everything, and I actually had relief for a couple of hours. By the time Thursday rolled around, I was in a plane of misery that exceeded anything I had had before. I was in tears. I had taken half of a medicine cabinet of OTC anti-inflammatories, etc. I HAD TO LEAVE WORK.
Leaving work is actually a big deal for me. I have one of those �work ethics� that make me show up unless I am actually contagious, and sometimes even then if I�m swathed in a clean suit and mask. I also have a VERY HIGH TOLERANCE FOR PAIN. I blame this on the years I spent dancing. Not hip-hopping, but ballet and jazz and tap and pointe, with bleeding feet and pulled muscles and wrenched ankles but I have to go on stage and dance my role and then collapse as I reach the wings . . .
Phhhhtttttt.
Anyhoo, coupled with the fact that at work, we are about, oh, 6 people short, I have a really hard time leaving the job even shorter-staffed than before. So you can see what kind of limit I had actually reached. So I went back to the good chiropractor, and he said after a few minutes, �Nothing is out of alignment.�
Nothing is out of alignment??? I�m not even capable of taking a full breath at this point! I went home and got on WebMD, a wonderful website that, and got a list of vague possibilities for the cause of the pain, which included kidney stones.
Hell, I�ve never had kidney stones before, but it pretty much fit the bill: extreme back and abdominal pain that comes on suddenly with nausea and near-vomiting and frequest urination. Hmm. So I decided to hie myself to the ER. I packed two books and my latest knitting project and went, going not to the ER where they ignored me for four hours while I was pooping nothing but blood, but the one where I had my most recent surgery, hoping against hope that because it was only 12:30 in the afternoon that the entire uninsured population of the Valley would not be in line ahead of me.
Guess what? Hope springs eternal! I actually was processed and triaged and thrown into the labs and tests queue PDQ. I had actually made it into the second round of tests before 4 pm, when the Hubster usually gets home. I finished one book and began the other (this is no big feat for me, as I read at the speed of sound and that book was a piece of V.C. Andrews trash anyway) and actually got analgesics when I asked for them! Very quickly too!
I was so impressed by this that I really didn�t even care when everything slowed to a crawl because the entire uninsured population did in fact show up, right on time. So I�m in a curtain area, sitting fairly comfortably on a very hard bed, wearing a gown that I couldn�t close because all the ties had been cut off, knitting peacefully, when the good ER doc shows up with some results. I tell you, there should be a rule that all ER docs should be major hotbuns because it really makes the stay that much more pleasant. This guy could have been Sayid�s cousin from Lost. Rooowwwwrr!
Conversation with hottie ER Doc:
ER Doc: You appear to have a rather large ovarian mass.
Valkyrie: That might make sense, except for the fact that I have no ovaries.
ER Doc: flipping furiously through chart Say what??
Valkyrie: I had a total hysterectomy in February. Both ovaries are gone.
ER Doc: Um . . .um. . . Okay. Weird. Are you sure??
Valkyrie: Well, I was asleep at the time, but I�m pretty sure all the plumbing�s been removed, Doc.
ER Doc: I�ll be right back.
So a couple of calls were placed to the dude who removed all my plumbing (who did the surgery out of the same hospital where I was) and I got sent home with a weekend full of Vicodin and the instructions to call Dr. Plumbing Removal (henceforth Dr. PR) immediately on the AM.
Now, I recognized a kind of urgency on Dr. Sayid�s Cousin�s part, so I was a bit frantic when I didn�t get an appointment to Dr. PR until Tuesday. Dr. PR�s office stated, however, that they would write me another script for Vicodin so I wouldn�t run out before Tuesday. But by the time Saturday rolled around, I was taking the equivalent of 1 Vicodin per hour, which seemed like quite a bit to me, since all the labels on all the bottles said take 1-2 tablets every 6-8 hours. I hadn�t actually slept except for snatches (I said snatch, heh heh) of sleep when the Vicodin actually worked, so I�m as loopy as a loon impersonating Katherine Hepburn. The good Hubster and I went back to the ER, looking for something, anything, and what I wanted was some Samaritan who would give me total sensory deprivation and back up drugs, saw me in half, and take out that softball-sized-ball-o-goo.
But NOOO-OOOO-OOO. (cue Saturday Night Live flashabacks, circa1975 now)
I got sent home with Percoset this time, after receiving a shot of some anti-inflammatory in my ass and the admonition that because I was actually able to GET an appointment with Dr. PR, that I should count my lucky stars.
So I pretty much lived in a recliner until Tuesday morning, having hot flash after hot flash in between bouts of sleep, and then the good Hubster accompanied me (read: dragged my sorry drugged-out ass) into the Dr. PR�s office, whereupon he told me that we were going to play the �watch and wait� game. For the next 3-6 months.
Excuse me?
Here are the facts:
1. I am in enough pain to have to be on strong prescription painkillers.
2. The current painkillers (i.e. Vicodin, as I haven�t broken into the Percoset stash yet) make it impossible for me to attend to normal activities, i.e. driving to work.
3. There is something the size of a softball where nothing is supposed to be.
4. Repeat 1-3 while throttling Dr. PR.
GAH. Here this cutter dude actually has a patient screaming, �Cut me open!� and he doesn�t wanna. In fact, I was told that I could return to work.
So now I�m on one Percoset every 8 hours, augmented by regular ibuprofen.
And I�m driving.
What the fuck?
This could be my Self-Portrait While Driving, except, well, that I�m not a man and I have hair:
