Thank God I'm done with the Bridge - it was supposed to be the bridge, the pathway to physical well being, but let me say I was far - very far from prepared for my return home. I didn't know what to expect or how to handle coming off so much methadonea & oxy and have been a physical flop...exhausted, achey, tired beyond words but mentally alert and frustrated.
I spent my first week at home with this great little bridge world between reality and fantasy - and let me say that I preferred my fantasy world...it was so much easier, well, probably because it was just an hallucinatory dream world, of course.
I know I never want to return to that world - and here's the hard part. My body is screaming at me to give it something to feel good - I've been on massive - truly massive, the Utah Doc wouldn't refill my Rx cause it was dangerous in his opinion - amounts of methadone and a ton of other drugs, and now I'm on nothing, nothing at all, and all these empty neurotramsitter cell spots are begging - give me something good, something yummy, exciting, thrilling, dangerous, enticing, erotic, illegal, or overload - we need to offset the emptiness with a new high...and I hear them calling and it feels so true and yet I refrain from engaging in conversation as that is one quick path down the road to misery and pain.
Done it. I don't want my physical recovery process to lead me to some sort of addiction issue - and the pull is so strong, and the chemical confusion inside is exactly what turns former legit Rx patients in to hardcore illegal addicts....no thanks.
This internal battle is pretty tiresome too.
And I find I need new things upon which to focus, as I'm still not working.
So - here are a few:
I am returning to school on a full time basis.
I am experiencing and rejoicing in my discovery of Watsu - and considering training if I can figure out how to afford it.
I am applying to school in another country. - OH YEAH - forgot, my super cool mini super genius has decided to applying to boarding school and so will no longer be around for me to mother after this summer...which allows me to move and make choices based solely upon my desires.
And there you have it for today.
Peace.
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
First sign of life from my time in physical rehab, aka physical HELL!
Hello you lovely luscious ladies -
I started to write you last night but oviously I was as high as a cat
as you willl see from my attempt I was higher than a kite...but at
least I got the first two words out right!!
The place is beautiful, the food is great, the people who work here
are wonderful, most of the "guests" here are pretty cool, and my
roommates are both the youngest person and the oldest person at this
place - 23 and I think 72 or 78. More on that another day - we're
still trying to find our groove here, not that it's uncomfortable, but
still not quite groovin just yet. I had 4 medical or physical
appointments and a massage yesterday. I think I have 4 more today and
another massage, and we're going hiking in a ghost town just down the
road.
I forgot to tell you - we are in the middle of no where, down obscured
road with warning signs about fire arms, and then down a few more dirt
roads - I couldn't escape if I wanted to...but I don't so that's ok -
there is zero light interference out here and the sky is AMAZING!!
OK I'm going to eat and then get doped up again, but I hope you three
have a lovely day and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
Jen
Hey there firk-================afc
QQQ\\]ss
friendly c==at gift bag
I started to write you last night but oviously I was as high as a cat
as you willl see from my attempt I was higher than a kite...but at
least I got the first two words out right!!
The place is beautiful, the food is great, the people who work here
are wonderful, most of the "guests" here are pretty cool, and my
roommates are both the youngest person and the oldest person at this
place - 23 and I think 72 or 78. More on that another day - we're
still trying to find our groove here, not that it's uncomfortable, but
still not quite groovin just yet. I had 4 medical or physical
appointments and a massage yesterday. I think I have 4 more today and
another massage, and we're going hiking in a ghost town just down the
road.
I forgot to tell you - we are in the middle of no where, down obscured
road with warning signs about fire arms, and then down a few more dirt
roads - I couldn't escape if I wanted to...but I don't so that's ok -
there is zero light interference out here and the sky is AMAZING!!
OK I'm going to eat and then get doped up again, but I hope you three
have a lovely day and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
Jen
Hey there firk-================afc
QQQ\\]ss
friendly c==at gift bag
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Pain Rehab???
Yes, my Mom and my therapist met and my Mom returned with a steatement - she was sending me to rehab. SENDING ME!! An adult - decades in to that status, with my own teenage daughter, and my Mom is SENDING ME!!
Well, I thought a bout it and returned to my therapist and asked...WTF why are you in collusion with my Mom?? I thought you were MY therapist and was not expecting you to throw out something brand new that we've never even discussed!!!
She stated, it was the first time it had occurred to her and she believed it would be a great experience. We talked some more and I came to see her point of view...some in-patient place that specializes in chronic pain woud be good for me, and allow me some space to feel and be myself without the stress and crush of my daily dreary life and parental oversight (or rather, maternal oversight).
So I started looking, and I discovered that the clinics in the US are meant for addicts and amputees - there aren't any out there just for people in pain - AND they charge TENS of THOUSANDS of dollars! I found some that were about $60K! I thought that was freakin ridiculous...Then I started finding clinics but they only did highly invasive things that required constant and continued medical care - I wanted to be DONE with the Docs and the meds and the pain.
And then I started to look outside the US where the medical system is not focused on profit but on recovery and immediately I found places that were ridiculously low and focused on you leaving without pain and low meds or no meds - the systems that were not based on profits were the ones that dealt in HEALING TREATMENT rather than continued treatment.
I found one I liked and was ready to go, but then my Mom found this one pretty cool place in Utah - it's called The Bridge. They had all the alternative stuff I am interested in and are focused on healing rather than invasive and continued medical care - a nice mix of eastern and western medicine. And it sounded great - Soutern Utah, near Mt. Zion, great weather, beautiful scenery, and the treatments I want...I'm leaving Oct 29.
Well, I thought a bout it and returned to my therapist and asked...WTF why are you in collusion with my Mom?? I thought you were MY therapist and was not expecting you to throw out something brand new that we've never even discussed!!!
She stated, it was the first time it had occurred to her and she believed it would be a great experience. We talked some more and I came to see her point of view...some in-patient place that specializes in chronic pain woud be good for me, and allow me some space to feel and be myself without the stress and crush of my daily dreary life and parental oversight (or rather, maternal oversight).
So I started looking, and I discovered that the clinics in the US are meant for addicts and amputees - there aren't any out there just for people in pain - AND they charge TENS of THOUSANDS of dollars! I found some that were about $60K! I thought that was freakin ridiculous...Then I started finding clinics but they only did highly invasive things that required constant and continued medical care - I wanted to be DONE with the Docs and the meds and the pain.
And then I started to look outside the US where the medical system is not focused on profit but on recovery and immediately I found places that were ridiculously low and focused on you leaving without pain and low meds or no meds - the systems that were not based on profits were the ones that dealt in HEALING TREATMENT rather than continued treatment.
I found one I liked and was ready to go, but then my Mom found this one pretty cool place in Utah - it's called The Bridge. They had all the alternative stuff I am interested in and are focused on healing rather than invasive and continued medical care - a nice mix of eastern and western medicine. And it sounded great - Soutern Utah, near Mt. Zion, great weather, beautiful scenery, and the treatments I want...I'm leaving Oct 29.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Bad New and No News - Sometimes it's Good News
While today was not a fountain of joyous and calming news, it was a certainly much more of a fount of news than days we've spent at the doctor's in the last few months.
And even though it may have been bad news and then no news, all in all the news and lack thereof resulted in it being a good news day.
Finally we had the exciting drive to the big city to see the big city doc who would fix my small town baby's severe post concussive syndrom. We got to skip the hospital teacher and everything - so I made it a special day!! I introduced my soon to be high school age daughter to the wonder of...SEPHORA. Yes, we left our backwards town at the crack of dawn, hitched the mules to the cart and rode on in to the paved road where we hitched a ride to the bus stop.
Actually I picked up coffee, filled up on gas, which was fortunate, cause then I passed the exit. We made it to Sephora, then SF, found the right Kaiser building, grabbed some burgers, and then met the most wonderful neurologist I've come across in my ten years of neurology visits - which probably number more than the teeth left in your Great-Uncle Jeb's mouth - with his dentures in!
Unfortunately he extended the "return to school date" for my daughter - it was first set in February, two dates offered in March, we went down thinking no later than April 16 (with a secret hope that he might say sooner), and I believe we were both shattered when he said it would be best if she stayed home through the end of the year. Kidlet had already canceled the big school trip to DC and NCY but was shattered when he said no school at all for Jr. High.
That was the bad news. He did redeem himself, and here is the good news that followed the bad news (we'll get to the no news that led to the good news in a sec). This Dr. Raja is one cool dude and def not too old to forget what it's like to be a teen. He suggested it might help her healing if she were allowed to have a presence - no work, no grades, just a social presence on campus - on a regular if not daily basis. The isolation from her friends and classes could slow her recovery even more, and her prolonged absence could have serious ramification on her social and emotional growth if steps are not taken to ensure her place in her social scene in the last semester before high school.
That's the good news - she gets to continue with the personal teacher every day - who adores her - and attend her favorite class and lunch, but not be responsible for classowork, school assigned homework, projects, or any tests - for the rest of the year. She is also to be allowed to participate in dances and things like that. Yeah for Kidlet!! Cheers for Doc Raja!!!
The no news - well, I'm not so hot myself. I have some sort of arterial issue - as in something's wrong with an artery that feeds my brain and so I've been losing my eye sight, falling over, forgetting stuff and not being able to follow directions, feeling like I can't move and my body is numb, and things like that - it seriously bites! The docs, a few of 'em, thought I might have MS but I don't. The neurologist I saw says there's nothing to be done but deal with it my not ever moving my head...hey your shoes untied - dude, that joke could kill me, or give me a stroke or something. Seriously.
So he was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing but I've spent the past few days freakin out. I have been referred down to the big city for another opinion - supposedly a second opinion, but this opinion of the artery thing is actually only the latest in a string of quacky docs so... Oh yeah, our facility doesn't have the ability to do ANY imaging of this sporadically shut down artery either - so no idea if there is anything paliative I could do - or should avoid - like if you rub my neck will you cut off the brain flow entirely or could it increase it???
I was expecting to hear from the SF Kaiser (yepp, the place I spent the day at today) but instead heard back from the nurse. SF is so impacted they cannot see me with the immediacy they believe my condition deserves so the had to return the referral for another facility of my doctor's choosing that could provide me care on a more urgent basis.
I was driving when I heard that and thought - should I turn around and head home?? Should I pull off the highway and find an ER and check in? Am I going to die while I wait for this referral to be completed??? OK, maybe those were dramatic, but the whole SF response and the nurse's version did not work to calm my nerves.
The day went on and a few hours later I heard I was being referred to Sacramento - while normally that would not be my first or second or third choice, I asked for the most appropriate place with the most advanced equipment that could be used for my condition - I trust my primary enough to believe she made an informed decision and will go from there. I was told to expect to hear from Sac to schedule. The hours continued to pass, and as I was in SF for Kidlet's appointment with the specialist I had only my cell - which did not ring, did not show a missed call, and never chimed through with a voicemail. So stuck in rush hour traffice I started to stress - what if Sac doesn't want me either? What if they never finished the referral? How much longer before someone gets a handle on this and I get some good or at least complete information?
Not a good place to be. Rush hour, stop and go, a motorcycle cop on my tail in the carpool lane, a complaining and extremely unhappy and pained teen in the front, overdue on meds, and a bottle of methadone waiting for me in my purse. For two hours. But we made it home alive.
I walked in and there were 6 messages on my home machine. One, only one, but at least one,was from the Sacramento Kaiser - they called to schedule me. My first thought was FUCK! I missed them - but after I called them back, after hours and unable to leave a message, I realized - hey, they have my cell too, they know this is the home number, if it were truly urgent, as urgent as I feared it could be, they would have called my cell to schedule and not given up leaving one message on my home number.
That is how no news can be good news.
Hope the world is here tomorrow so you can continue with what is now your today.
Night.
And even though it may have been bad news and then no news, all in all the news and lack thereof resulted in it being a good news day.
Finally we had the exciting drive to the big city to see the big city doc who would fix my small town baby's severe post concussive syndrom. We got to skip the hospital teacher and everything - so I made it a special day!! I introduced my soon to be high school age daughter to the wonder of...SEPHORA. Yes, we left our backwards town at the crack of dawn, hitched the mules to the cart and rode on in to the paved road where we hitched a ride to the bus stop.
Actually I picked up coffee, filled up on gas, which was fortunate, cause then I passed the exit. We made it to Sephora, then SF, found the right Kaiser building, grabbed some burgers, and then met the most wonderful neurologist I've come across in my ten years of neurology visits - which probably number more than the teeth left in your Great-Uncle Jeb's mouth - with his dentures in!
Unfortunately he extended the "return to school date" for my daughter - it was first set in February, two dates offered in March, we went down thinking no later than April 16 (with a secret hope that he might say sooner), and I believe we were both shattered when he said it would be best if she stayed home through the end of the year. Kidlet had already canceled the big school trip to DC and NCY but was shattered when he said no school at all for Jr. High.
That was the bad news. He did redeem himself, and here is the good news that followed the bad news (we'll get to the no news that led to the good news in a sec). This Dr. Raja is one cool dude and def not too old to forget what it's like to be a teen. He suggested it might help her healing if she were allowed to have a presence - no work, no grades, just a social presence on campus - on a regular if not daily basis. The isolation from her friends and classes could slow her recovery even more, and her prolonged absence could have serious ramification on her social and emotional growth if steps are not taken to ensure her place in her social scene in the last semester before high school.
That's the good news - she gets to continue with the personal teacher every day - who adores her - and attend her favorite class and lunch, but not be responsible for classowork, school assigned homework, projects, or any tests - for the rest of the year. She is also to be allowed to participate in dances and things like that. Yeah for Kidlet!! Cheers for Doc Raja!!!
The no news - well, I'm not so hot myself. I have some sort of arterial issue - as in something's wrong with an artery that feeds my brain and so I've been losing my eye sight, falling over, forgetting stuff and not being able to follow directions, feeling like I can't move and my body is numb, and things like that - it seriously bites! The docs, a few of 'em, thought I might have MS but I don't. The neurologist I saw says there's nothing to be done but deal with it my not ever moving my head...hey your shoes untied - dude, that joke could kill me, or give me a stroke or something. Seriously.
So he was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing but I've spent the past few days freakin out. I have been referred down to the big city for another opinion - supposedly a second opinion, but this opinion of the artery thing is actually only the latest in a string of quacky docs so... Oh yeah, our facility doesn't have the ability to do ANY imaging of this sporadically shut down artery either - so no idea if there is anything paliative I could do - or should avoid - like if you rub my neck will you cut off the brain flow entirely or could it increase it???
I was expecting to hear from the SF Kaiser (yepp, the place I spent the day at today) but instead heard back from the nurse. SF is so impacted they cannot see me with the immediacy they believe my condition deserves so the had to return the referral for another facility of my doctor's choosing that could provide me care on a more urgent basis.
I was driving when I heard that and thought - should I turn around and head home?? Should I pull off the highway and find an ER and check in? Am I going to die while I wait for this referral to be completed??? OK, maybe those were dramatic, but the whole SF response and the nurse's version did not work to calm my nerves.
The day went on and a few hours later I heard I was being referred to Sacramento - while normally that would not be my first or second or third choice, I asked for the most appropriate place with the most advanced equipment that could be used for my condition - I trust my primary enough to believe she made an informed decision and will go from there. I was told to expect to hear from Sac to schedule. The hours continued to pass, and as I was in SF for Kidlet's appointment with the specialist I had only my cell - which did not ring, did not show a missed call, and never chimed through with a voicemail. So stuck in rush hour traffice I started to stress - what if Sac doesn't want me either? What if they never finished the referral? How much longer before someone gets a handle on this and I get some good or at least complete information?
Not a good place to be. Rush hour, stop and go, a motorcycle cop on my tail in the carpool lane, a complaining and extremely unhappy and pained teen in the front, overdue on meds, and a bottle of methadone waiting for me in my purse. For two hours. But we made it home alive.
I walked in and there were 6 messages on my home machine. One, only one, but at least one,was from the Sacramento Kaiser - they called to schedule me. My first thought was FUCK! I missed them - but after I called them back, after hours and unable to leave a message, I realized - hey, they have my cell too, they know this is the home number, if it were truly urgent, as urgent as I feared it could be, they would have called my cell to schedule and not given up leaving one message on my home number.
That is how no news can be good news.
Hope the world is here tomorrow so you can continue with what is now your today.
Night.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Methadone is kickin my butt - and I'm ready to kick his!
Right now I guess I'm experience life as someone who is manic depressive would - but unlike a manic depressive it's due to the chemicals I am putting inside my body.
Yesterday was great, we both slept in a bit, but then we got up and out and ran errands and were incredibly productive, took a drive to visit out of town friends, and then caught my cousin's show last night (joeclopton.com - he freakin rocks man!). All and all is was a pretty excellent day - until I was ready for bed. Once again I lay there for hours and hours. Fortunately I fell asleep before 4, unfortunately, and unlike any other night, I slept until 11.
So once I got up today it was rushing around to shower and dress and clean the house before I have to leave for the doctor and the babysitter and teacher were coming. I made it to the docs, it was a first visit with a new specialist, and it went well but it took 2 hours. I came home and crashed. I slept till about 4:30. My poor kid. She was fine, worked on this new computerized home design thing she loves, napped, homework, the dog, but still, poor kid. I didn't have energy to string a sentence together until 6:30. Even then I was far from ways away from a spring in my step and sly grin on my face - try heavy lidded eyes and husky I'm sleeping voice with an irritable 'the phone woke me and now I can't get back to sleep' attitude.
About 5 she called her Dad to remind him she was spending the night. As I was still pretty out of it she asked him to pick her up. He told her to call him about 7 or 7:30 for an answer. So she called at 7:15, he yelled at her for calling before 7:30 and told her to call back later. So she did - and he asked his roommate if they could pick up the kid (Brief explaination here - the guy chooses not to pay child support so the state has taken his drivers license. If he doesn't come up with $300 before May 1st, he'll finally go to jail - that may sound harsh BUT his current monthly support is ONLY $100 - I'm nice, really nice - and with the current amount in mind - he's over $28,000 behind. You have to struggle to get that far behind - I mean, you really have to work at it to be such a deadbeat.)
Unknownst to him, the kid heard both sides of his conversation and it went like this:
DAD to roommate: Hey, do you mind if we go get the kid?
ROOMMATE'S IMMEDIATE RESPONSE; Yeah, sure.
DAD into the phone: Are you sure? You sounded kinda hesitant like you're not feeling good or something.
ROOMMATE: Yeah, no, that's fine. How bout half an hour?
The kid got off the phone to tell me he would be here in half an hour but she had tears in her eyes - I asked what's wrong and she told me not to be mad or anything, and then relayed the conversation. She was pissed. She was pissed that she had to call him 3 times before he'd ask his roomate, and when the guy said yeah, immediately in a non-upset tone, that her dad tried to weasle out of it - she felt like he was lying, that he didn't want her there but was trying to blame it on the roommate being an asshole and not wanting to drive. Except she said jerk and not asshole.
She's right you know. But asshole is a more appropriate description than jerk. I'm sure there are even more appropriate descriptions out there and welcome your version - so come one, gimme your best shot!
Yesterday was great, we both slept in a bit, but then we got up and out and ran errands and were incredibly productive, took a drive to visit out of town friends, and then caught my cousin's show last night (joeclopton.com - he freakin rocks man!). All and all is was a pretty excellent day - until I was ready for bed. Once again I lay there for hours and hours. Fortunately I fell asleep before 4, unfortunately, and unlike any other night, I slept until 11.
So once I got up today it was rushing around to shower and dress and clean the house before I have to leave for the doctor and the babysitter and teacher were coming. I made it to the docs, it was a first visit with a new specialist, and it went well but it took 2 hours. I came home and crashed. I slept till about 4:30. My poor kid. She was fine, worked on this new computerized home design thing she loves, napped, homework, the dog, but still, poor kid. I didn't have energy to string a sentence together until 6:30. Even then I was far from ways away from a spring in my step and sly grin on my face - try heavy lidded eyes and husky I'm sleeping voice with an irritable 'the phone woke me and now I can't get back to sleep' attitude.
About 5 she called her Dad to remind him she was spending the night. As I was still pretty out of it she asked him to pick her up. He told her to call him about 7 or 7:30 for an answer. So she called at 7:15, he yelled at her for calling before 7:30 and told her to call back later. So she did - and he asked his roommate if they could pick up the kid (Brief explaination here - the guy chooses not to pay child support so the state has taken his drivers license. If he doesn't come up with $300 before May 1st, he'll finally go to jail - that may sound harsh BUT his current monthly support is ONLY $100 - I'm nice, really nice - and with the current amount in mind - he's over $28,000 behind. You have to struggle to get that far behind - I mean, you really have to work at it to be such a deadbeat.)
Unknownst to him, the kid heard both sides of his conversation and it went like this:
DAD to roommate: Hey, do you mind if we go get the kid?
ROOMMATE'S IMMEDIATE RESPONSE; Yeah, sure.
DAD into the phone: Are you sure? You sounded kinda hesitant like you're not feeling good or something.
ROOMMATE: Yeah, no, that's fine. How bout half an hour?
The kid got off the phone to tell me he would be here in half an hour but she had tears in her eyes - I asked what's wrong and she told me not to be mad or anything, and then relayed the conversation. She was pissed. She was pissed that she had to call him 3 times before he'd ask his roomate, and when the guy said yeah, immediately in a non-upset tone, that her dad tried to weasle out of it - she felt like he was lying, that he didn't want her there but was trying to blame it on the roommate being an asshole and not wanting to drive. Except she said jerk and not asshole.
She's right you know. But asshole is a more appropriate description than jerk. I'm sure there are even more appropriate descriptions out there and welcome your version - so come one, gimme your best shot!
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