I Want A New Drug

Two days ago I was in absolute fucking misery. My entire body ached. I could barely move. I was groaning constantly. At one point I even needed help from my father to get off of the couch. I didn't feel like eating. I decided that there was no way I could tolerate this amount of pain any longer, so on Saturday morning I had my mother take me to the emergency room.

It was the first weekend of the summer, and the road to Cooperstown was starting to get trafficked. As I sat in the passenger seat, I wished that I felt good enough to be riding Rte. 28 on my bike. Instead, I was in agony, the thought of hopping on my Giant was just a dream. All I wanted was to get to the hospital, and have the doctor do something to make me feel better. But the baseball pilgrims had travelled from all over America, and in the midst of all the memorabillia shops and chintzy restaurants along thr roadside seemed to miss the sign that said the speed limit was 55 M.P.H. Nothing like making a long, painful trip even longer.

Now I know my body pretty well, and know how to react to the signals it sends me. This sometimes can lead to problems with doctors, especially new doctors like the one you might encounter in an ER. I had a sneaking suspicion that being on narcotics for almost a month, and the associated constipation, were probably causing some of the discomfort. Based on where I was feeling pain, I was almost certain of it. Of course the doctors need to prove this, so they made me get X-rayed a bunch of times, which will probably render me sterile. And after they looked at my insides, they confirmed what I knew all along- that I was literally full of shit.

But there is also a reason that these people go through 8 years of higher education. They thought that this was not enough of a reason for me to be experiencing the severe pain levels that I was. I was doing Rush Limbaugh-like doses of oxycontin, yet my body still felt like Joe Frazier after Muhammed Ali was done with him. They wrote me a perscrition for Fenatyl, and told me to supplement it with Advil. They also had me take it as a transdermal patch. Since my worst pain was the first thing in the morning, when I was several hours overdue for my pills, perhaps a constant supply of drugs would relieve some of that wake-up pain.

Of course, getting the stuff was another ordeal. The first two pharmacies I went to were out of stock. I experienced te same thing last week trying to get the oxycontin perscription filled. We had the pharmacist call around until they could locate a store that had it in stock. I picked up a 30 day supply, and s soon as I got home I put on a patch.

By this time I was pretty tired. So I popped a few advils, lay down on the couch, and took a nap.

When I woke up after an hour, I could not believe the change. I wasn't completely free of pain, but it felt as if I went from having my arm falling off to having a sore shoulder. I could move without aching all over. And I felt like eating. My mom went out for a pizza, and I devoured a slice, along with a bowl of fruit. I hadn't felt this good in almost a week.

Today was even better. Not only did I manage to get a decent night's sleep, but I didn't wake up in total agony. I had a huge lunch of Thai food, and for the most part didn't ache. A friend who saw me on Friday said I was completely different today. I started really to hurt when I started the oxycontin. And now that I'm off the hillbilly heroin, I feel a lot better. My doctor probably should have realized that an anti-authoritarian, Bush-hating, pro-choice liberal like me wouldn't react well to Rush's drug of choice.