Unwilling Drug Dependence

I got out of Rehab on last Saturday (the day before Easter) and I've been home less than a week (today is Tuesday). I really feel like I am losing rather than gaining ground. My pain has escalated to the "unbearable level" and my mobility is severely limited. I don't know why it is that it seemed that I was doing so much better at rehab. I really am concerned about my level of pain. Is there an infection brewing? I do have an infection in my jaw....is that the tip of the iceberg? Maybe it's just because of the proximity from one surgery to another.

And to top it all off, yesterday I felt awful. Depressed beyond words. I wrote two emails or facebook messages yesterday that were so black that they were suicidal. I was in tears most of the day. I went to see my psychiatrist...And as I fought tears in her office, tugging off my sweatshirt because of the sudden flood of perspiration I felt, she asked me if I was sweating. Then she asked me if I'd had stomach cramps that day. Surprised I answered in the affirmative. She told me, "you are going through withdrawal....you've become dependent on the pain medicine." I was shocked. Appalled. Angry.

When I'd gotten ready to leave the rehab, the nurse was unable to locate my medicine prescriptions....So I went home without the narcotics I'd been taking regularly due to the extreme degrees of pain I was experiencing. When I learned that I now NEED those medicines, I was very upset. For the 25 years that I'd suffered extreme pain, I'd carefully and stubbornly refused to take the meds on the regular schedule that all of the pain management doctors insisted was the most effective. I did NOT want to subject myself to bigotry, stigma and the holier than thou attitude of the doctors and nurses who felt a divine calling to singlehandedly wipe out drug abuse by removing and reducing the medicines of every legitimate chronic pain sufferer they treated.

I did not want to hand over the control of my own body to allow some ignoramus medical professional to punish ME for the sins of junkies. I did not want to allow anyone else the power to make me suffer withdrawal. I did not want every do-gooder ambulance technician to see the scars on my arms from self injuries inflicted many. many years ago, label me "junkie" and then pump me full of Narcan to make me as sick as a dog every time I became unresponsive for one reason or another.

And now. Here I am. Wide open to the world of panic at the thought of missing a pain management appointment. Ready to have to incessantly explain or hide my frequent pill popping to acquaintances and to face their tsk-tsking at my "drug addiction." Never mind any attempts to explain the difference between medical dependency and drug addiction. The stubborn response of biased listeners will be to "yeah- yeah" it and continue their condemnation.

And all of this because pain was too big for me to handle for too long a period of time this time. Wish I could undo it.
So now have decided to try to give it a whirl....all the dependency. Just to see how well my pain is managed. If I find that I quickly become accustomed to the meds and they become ineffective, I will have to go through a supervised detox. Who'd ever have thought it?

The State of Mind Address

It's been another week since my transfer to this rehab from the medical hospital. I have improved to the point of being able to now traverse a short hallway to get to my meals using a walker instead of a wheelchair. However today I made that "one false move" that the cops warn bad guys against and have paid a painful price. No, I didn't dislocate the hip, but it does hurt like the dickens and has been doing so all day. I pretty much took it easy in therapy times, had a hasty lunch and hurried to my bed...where I dozed and read for the rest of the afternoon. And then, to test myself prior to dinner to see if I can use the walker again, I walked across the room with it and really regretted doing that. It hurts a LOT...so it looks like dinner will be eaten in my wheelchair once more.

They have found that my hip once more has contracted a staph infection and although the antibiotics they gave me are NOT ones that are effective against this particular bacteria, they have decided not to start a new course but to watch it and hope that it gets better on its own. This, I can tell you quite surely, is a bad move. I know my body. I KNOW its affinity for major infection...and I also know that there is bad pain, deep into the joint area which should have, by now, cleared up....and which has not done so, and in fact, especially today, seems to be worse. I've told them over and over that it is hurting way too much. More than it should be by now. And they keep repeating over and over, "but the incision looks good, isn't too red anymore and has stopped draining." OK, fine. But what if the infection has just moved deeper into the joint and what if the incision has just temporarily improved due to the initial course of antibiotics?

Any way, I'm sure that none of your are very interested in my medical history past or present.
So I'll move on.

My thoughts today, as I read and di d a bit of thinking and praying...have led me to a conclusion which is NOT a comfortable one with which to live. And that is that I have slipped far away from the Lord , in fact, so far, that I'll bet that if you were to interview any person here at this rehab, after being here for close to two weeks, that NONE of them would identify me as a follower of Christ. A nice person maybe. The old ladies might call me a "sweetheart" but beyond mortal powers, I am just that. ... a mortal being. All sense of the supernatural, eternal life that I am supposedly living is well hidden. I haven't offered to pray with anyone. Haven't been moved to speak of my love for the Lord....you get the picture. And this is a highly distressing thing. And it is one that must be remedied...not only in the sense of doing some 'advertising' during this coming week, but in general.

My love for Jesus has dimmed. Been folded neatly and tucked into the back of a drawer....where it doesn't make anyone uncomfortable...firstly, me.
And I don't WANT it to be that way. I want to fall back into love with him. Powerfully. Passionately. In a way that makes me and everyone else a bit uncomfortable. I once had a relationship like that with him. And I think that that very fact is part of the problem. I keep comparing everything since that time, WITH that time. And nothing measures up or comes close. But maybe it's not supposed to. God, afterall, is multifaceted and is nothing if not unpredictable. Maybe the verse in Isaiah is especially true for me now, "See? I am doing a new thing now. Can't you see it?? I'm planting streams in the desert....."

I know that I need to learn to dance with the Spirit. Let HIM lead and set the pace. Avoid stepping on his toes and hampering his movements. Be an accompanist rather than a soloist. And maybe right now I need to examine my heart and take a long look at him and how he's been working or not working and ask him to show me what it is that he is trying to do and to show me how I've been cooperating or obstructing these plans of his. Maybe I need to examine my life to see what things are occupying the throne alongside of him which have no business being there.

And for tonight. I need to pray and seek his guidance because tomorrow I am setting up a living will. And I want it to say what HE wants and not what I want it to say. So I need to ask him for clarity and direction.

So, for now, I'm off. I've got some work to do....

My Past Week

Yesterday was a week a since my hip replacement surgery. It's been a week of confusion and pain as I struggled with issues of pain management in the hospital as my body chewed up pain meds and spit them out, leaving ME to deal with the remaining agony using my own resources. The confusion was the result of my body's response to anesthesia. It's a fog of forgetfulness that takes away my name; my recognition of my family; how to read a calendar or to recall the year; odd, completely random things come out of my mouth which I gather in the early days, went un edited and unchallenged by common sense and in the later days of this mind morass, these statements left me in cold fear because although I did not know with what to replace them, they JUST WEREN'T RIGHT SOMEHOW...and I knew that.

I recall hearing a nurse's voice giving a report to a doctor about me, kindly euphimizing and saying, 'She's still quite forgetful' in an effort to distinguish my mad verbiage from sense. I couldn't see her, but am quite sure the universal circle turning pointer finger to the temple accompanied this remark to let him know that his patient was as crazy as a loon. But at the time, non of this held much significance to me. I didn't know, nor did I care, that I couldn't even tell them my name. I just WAS--a puddle of ME in a swamp of pain.

Once I started showing slow signs of sanity, they shipped me off to a sub-acute rehab with which I was familiar because my mom had been "rehabilitated" from a hip replacement there as well. It is a luxurious hotel-like building with large private rooms reminiscent of the Hilton, even down tot the wide flat screen TV attached to the wall. And this is a step down in price range because here, I only receive two or three hours of therapy daily as opposed to the 6-8 I would have gotten in the rather dingy and depressing hospital unit which my insurance company forbade to me due to it's superior expense. Go figure. The change was absolutely perfect for me, because in my weak and very pained state; six hours of therapy would have been completely impossible.

So here I am in cheap , inferior luxury. Soaking up the waiter table service, and the niceties of newness in my sub-acute rehab center.

Pain is a complete steamroller. I can't bear to rise from my wheelchair except to lurch for short distances leaning heavily on my walker. Slowly insanity dissipates back to its normal levels...It does reappear in statements which are just "wrong." But from which people kindly look the other way and tell me sincerely, that I'm sounding MUCH better.

And that's where I am now.