OK... So Methadone Knocked Me On My Ass For A Month

Did not see that one coming!

But now things seem to be better... And not in the way I said before. For example: Now I know that I cannot lay down for a second during the day or I will pass right the hell out. If my head hits a pillow, bam!, I'm asleep for at least thirty minutes. That's how things have been for about a month now.

Then I got an idea: To try sitting about my apartment instead of laying about it. It turns out that this simple act changed my sleeping habits. Now I don't go to sleep until my head hits my pillow at 1 a.m. Previously, I had thought I couldn't do anything to affect how much and when I slept, so I didn't bother modifying my actions. It's a good thing I did, because my life is much more pain- and fatigue-less.

So I believe I will stay on my current drug diet of 60 mg Methadone, 60 mg Oxycodone IR (immediate release), 6 mg Klonopin per day. This costs me $162 a month. My doctor wants to put me on Cymbalta, which would force me to get a Medicare Part D Plan -- or Medicare Prescription Drug Plan -- which would mean that I would end up paying much more out of pocket per year than I currently do.

Since I seem to be doing well -- and should continue to do better the more my system is exposed to Methadone and is able to become used to it -- I think I'm going to forego a Part D Plan for now.

Perhaps I'll post an explanation about Medicare Part D someday soon. Then again, maybe I won't, since it would be an unholy pain in the ass, just as dealing with it is.

...Anyway: Hopefully I'm back to blogging. And back to having a life!

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I Am So Very Tire...... huh? Wha? Oh. Right. I'm Tired.

I need to make this short because I don't have the mental energy to make it long.

Yesterday I began Methadone. This week I take five mg every eight hours, and use fifteen mg of Oxycodone for breakthrough pain, up to four oxys a day. Klonopin remains at six mg a day, which is where it will be the rest of my life.

Taking any opiate that is foreign to your system will make you tired. And so the Methadone has got my brain feeling like mush and the couch crying whispering: "Just lay down for a second... Maybe shit your eyes for just a second. Then you can go do the chores you need to take care of. ...And holy shit -- I just happen to have that super-comfy pillow right here!"

Goddam couch. It's talked me into a lot of naps. But for some reason that seems suspect, right now, I'm fighting them. I suppose I'm trying to avoid them mostly because I don't want to get out of my sleep schedule, which is bad on its own for a fibromyalgian, and because I don't want to be stuck wide awake in the wee hours, when only televangelists and infomercials are on. ...And since televangelists are always selling shit, why don't we call the programs they're on Evangemercials or some such thing?

Before I sign off and likely heed the siren song my couch is singing, it occurred to me that my last post wasn't clear on a very key item: Why Dr. N couldn't just keep prescribing me more oxycodone. Here's why: Oxycodone is a short-acting opiate, and if a doctor prescribes nothing but a hell of a lot of short-acting opiates, the feds are likely to come get him/her.

So I needed/need a long-acting opiate -- Methadone being the best choice -- with which to supplement my drug diet so my doctor is safe, and so I don't have to pop a pill every two-and-a-half hours, and have no "pain coverage" overnight and, therefore, wake every morning with the screaming withdrawals.

...I don't know if any of this made sense. I do know it sure doesn't make sense to me because I'm so tired I can't go back and read what I just wrote.

Anyway: I'm sure my level of tiredness will go down as I become accustomed to Methadone -- which I will take ten mg of after one week, and then see Dr. N for further instructions. And I'm sure we're taking the right course of action.

And my couch agrees!

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Methadone Treatment Begins Tomorrow

Yep. This is going to be a post, on a blog called The Fibromyalgian, about fibromyalgia. What can I say (write)? It's a crazy world.

As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm switching meds, most likely tomorrow, from Oxycodone to Methadone. Why tomorrow? Because I have an appointment with my pain management doctor tomorrow. Let's call her Dr. Not-Too-Damn-Bad, or Dr. NTDB for short. Or Dr. N for even shorter.

Dr. N is not too damn bad because she hasn't been afraid to prescribe me the dosages of painkillers I have required. She also came around on my Klonopin, and I'm on my necessary six mg per day, instead of the four mg she was previously stuck on. This is to her credit because every doctor is wary about prescribing a patient two central-nervous-system (CNS) depressants, which can result in the patient ceasing to breathe. And the vast majority of doctors like to keep their patients breathing.

The only problem I have with Dr. N is that she prescribes me Provigil for my chronic fatigue disorder. Before I came to Portland and began being treated by Dr. N, I had been taking Ritalin, which worked extremely well and, which is very important to someone who relies solely on Social Security Disability for his income, dirt cheap.

But Dr. N wasn't comfortable with prescribing speed to a fibromyalgian. It seems to her that speed and opiates and Klonopin are at odds with one another.

And I suppose I agree. But agreement doesn't make Provigil affordable. And so my chronic fatigue is left untreated.

On the first of October I will have Medicare. But Medicare doesn't help one out with prescription drug costs, and getting private insurance to help with my drug costs may actually be antithetical, since the cost of my monthly drug copays and drug insurance are likely to cost more than just buying my meds outright.

...Unless I start filling my Provigil, which costs something like four hundred and fifty dollars a month. Yeah. No typo: four hundred and fifty dollars a month.

Which reminds me to beg: Please help me get the treatment I need by donating. Please please please PUH-leeze! The button is right there... Right there on the right... And any amount helps! Any amount at all!

OK. begging done. On to the Methadone.

It's a tricky bastard of a drug because its half-life is longer than its active life. That is to say (write), that Methadone provides pain relief for a shorter time than it stays in one's system, in which it depresses breathing. So one has to be very OCD about one's Methadone schedule: If you're having a bad day and in a lot of pain and take more some Methadone to help you out, then take more... and maybe later some more, one can find oneself with enough Methadone in one's system to make their breathing cease before one's pain does.

Anyway, it's likely to be a good thing for me to be on Methadone. I'm currently taking so much Oxycodone that Dr. N doesn't feel comfortable prescribing a higher daily dose. For a patient to be taking one hundred and thirty mg of immediate-release Oxycodone per day could attract unwanted attention from the feds. But I can't take Oxycodone together with OxyContin (long-lasting oxycodone) because -- got a guess? -- OxyContin costs too much. That, and OxyContin is scarce because the feds are so overly concerned with the drug being diverted and under-concerned with the needs of people who are in constant pain -- which includes people who have terminal cancer, multiple sclerosis, and a bevy of conditions besides fibromyalgia.

The government is more concerned with keeping people from having fun by taking pills than it is with the quality of life of tens of thousands of people. And we're talking about pills that keep people from killing themselves or wanting to.

So tomorrow Methadone begins. I'll follow up tomorrow with the plan for how my transition from oxy to 'done is going to play out.

("'Done" work for you as shorthand for Methadone? ...Yeah. Didn't think so. And I agree.)

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Dear USA: You Embarrass Yourself (and, Worse, Me)

I was watching OPB -- Oregon Public Broadcasting -- yesterday. Specifically, "Rick Steves' Europe."

The show was a treatise on how they make the show, which I'm a fan of, in large part because Steves is such a dork and does a lot of walking around a lot of beautiful places, which I'm unlikely to be able to do -- the "lot of walking" being the sticking point.


To paraphrase something Steves said during the show: "When we're shooting all this art, which people have enjoyed for centuries, we have to take into account whether it can be shown in the States." He went on to say that he meant breasts and genitals and/or the depiction of people using or enjoying same can't be filmed because America is in denial of the fact that all humans have sex organs and use them. (Even Catholic priests; hence the Vatican's rapist-defense fund. Which reminds me: If you go to Catholic Church on Sundays and contribute to the collection plate, you're helping sick-ass rapists get away with their crimes and you're complicit in them. ...Perhaps Church isn't the best place to cleanse your soul...)

OK, so I editorialized the slightest bit toward the end of that last sentence. (The one before the one in parentheses... But that goes without saying, because we all know that putting a sentence in parentheses makes it a weird kind of sentence-that-isn't. So you're reading this sentence, here, and not-reading it at the same time. ...Yowzah!)

...Back to the main: Sex is the best part -- or always should be, anyway -- of the human experience. And that's coming from someone who takes 130 mg of Oxycodone and 6 mg of Klonopin a day. That boobs carved in marble can't be shown on TV -- or television fit for people of all ages, anyway -- is just fucking mortifying.

Jesus, America, I'd say grow the fuck up, but kids know they have genitals and how to use them and run around naked without shame Until their parents' religion gives them the gift of being ashamed of what god created in his own image.Which makes sense in some parallel fucking universe. ...If we're to be ashamed of our very selves -- our naked selves -- made in god's image, then when we all meet god are we supposed to feel boundless shame for god's appearance?

So: Jesus, America, get the Jesus outta my goddam teevee! Some of us can appreciate The Birth of Venus without getting a sinful erection from a marble statue!

Apropos of nothing: Take a listen to Starfucker. One of the best bands that, due to it's name, may never be allowed on television. Good thing we have the Internets. ...Where most people in America are checking out porn which they would, presumably, enjoy having on TV but won't let themselves have on TV.

Great. Now I have a mammoth headache from thinking about how goddam silly and twisted about itself this country of ours is. Dancing at architecture ain't easy.

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COMING SOON: ANOTHER EXAM SO THE SSA CAN ENSURE I'M DISABLED!

My lawyer called me yesterday to let me know that, now that a psych picked by the Social Security admin. has examined me (what? three weeks ago?), the SSA is going to have me see an MD of their choosing. Hopefully soon...

I'll have to be sure to list all the stuff I have -- you can't say "I have fibro" to a doctor and expect them to know that that means you have a disorder that is comprised of various other diseases/disorders, plus the pain everyone knows it causes, I've discovered. I also need to list all the medications I've taken and treatments I've been through, too.

...With all that, plus the doc's personal findings, I can't imagine he/she reporting to the SSA that I should be put to work in a coal mine immediately... Or saying I could be hired by any company for anything. Like my personal doc said -- "I hope your book works out [I'm writing a book... Seems important to note that, here], because once you fill this you'll never get hired by anyone for liability reasons" (then he wrote me my first Oxy script).

"Hi! -- Calvin Bandini, here for the interview..."

...

"So what you're saying, Mr Bandini, is that you're pretty much on something like heroin, plus uppers and tranquilizers twenty-four/seven?"

"I guess, yeah. But, I can't get high from the stuff. I take it out of medical necessity."

"...Yeah... Huh...

"Um -- Do you think your medications would affect your ability to do you job?"

"Only in that they would allow me to do my job. --Provided I can get a one- or two-hour-long nap in sometime during the day, don't have to remember anything said to me five minutes after it's been said, don't have to walk, stand nor sit for more than thirty minutes at a time, and can have anywhere from four to ten days off per month, depending on what treatments I need at any given time.

"...You know, pretty average stuff.

"--Oh! I can bring in my own hammock! It's one of those you can set up anywhere you have the space! So the nap-thing is really a non-issue!

"...And you guys have a three-day workweek, right? Because I need to rest four days out of the week or I just get completely messed up."

"...Huh.. Well... Yeah.

"...Thanks for coming in...

(This is the next thing the person would say if he/she were able to be honest:) "We'll call to tell you we can't hire you as soon as our lawyers come up with sufficient grounds on which to deny your application that also preclude you from suing us under the Americans with Disabilities Act."

--And, Scene!--

...Moving on in my staccato fashion: I should tell you why/how the hell I'm up at eight in the morning (so unnatural... It never felt right for me to be up at this hour even when I had to be for work): Every time my Oxy dose is upped my bags pack themselves and I'm sent on an unplanned vacation to Snoozeville for about a week until I become used to the increase. (Thankfully, the sleepiness wanes but the pain relief doesn't)... Which is why it's eight a.m. and I've been up since eleven p.m. ...Last evening I passed out right after taking my second, 20mg, dose of Ritalin. ...If that doesn't illustrate my exhaustion, it's impossible to.

My body has pretty much matched my mind, now, in weirdness...

...So I guess I'll be getting something from the SSA in the mail, hopefully soon, re when I get the pleasure of being probed by a doctor. ...And let's hope the doc has some experience -- or at least knowledge of -- fibro beyond having seen those whiny, demeaning commercials for Lyrica.

...It now has been a year since I applied for disability. Wow.

...And I remember reading that the SSA was making it a priority to expedite disability decisions this year. I'm actually glad that isn't the case (or doesn't seem to be, anyway). The Bush administration's idea of expediting disability claims, I'm sure, would have been to throw all of them out as baseless.

Remember when "compassionate conservatism" was all the rage? ...If the phrase "compassionate conservatism" was on the SAT, it's analogue would be "humane death penalty."

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MOTIVATION!

History has taught us that pain can make anyone do anything...

I was walking the two miles home from J’s at, what I found out when I arrived home, was about eight a.m. on a Thursday.

I kept to the side of the road, freezing...

I woke up at J’s half-covered in a blanket, the XBox controller still in my hand. I must have passed out while navigating some goddam menu the console makes players go through. Leave it to Microsoft to make accessing a game as fun and easy as typing in a proper MS-DOS command.

The first thing I noticed, before opening my eyes and realizing where I was, was the extreme pain in my head. ...The same pain that's there every morning. I soon found that I was sitting upright... Still locked in the position I likely had been in when I first went to sleep.

Then the anxiety hit. And then I noticed I was shivering, and that J must have moved from the couch he had passed out on to his bedroom. For a minute I surrounded myself in the blanket I had -- made a cocoon out of it -- and laid on the couch he had occupied. I learned that leather likes to maintain its temperature, and that if it was going to warm up, it was going to have to steal from me heat I wasn’t producing.

My morning panic attack forced me into action. I don’t know why I thought it would be possible for me to go back to sleep under any circumstances. My drugs were back home; my pill-box was empty. I hadn’t planned on staying the night, and so I hadn’t brought my morning pills.

I needed ten milligrams of OxyContin and two or three milligrams of Klonopin immediately.

I searched J’s entire first floor for a phone. All I found were chargers for cordless devices I couldn't locate. ...I couldn’t be rude and wake J up so he could drive me home, so I decided to check to see if the weather was nice enough for me to walk home in.

...I had lied to myself, because I began walking down his driveway and up the road as fast as I could as soon as I stepped outside. I had known I was going to walk home even before I stepped out the door.

At least it wasn’t raining. However, whatever the temperature was, I felt if it was a few degrees lower I would have been able to see my breath.

...I tightened the ankle straps on my sandals to try to avoid getting blisters. ...This also locked in the gravel that already had crept beneath my feet. ...I couldn't make myself stop to shake out the pebbles because I couldn't suffer a drug-free moment I could avoid.

The sun was a murderer. It focused all of its rays on my right eye, where my daily migraines emanate from. I zipped up my jacket to my chin, put on the winter hat I had worn the night before, even though it had been about sixty degrees the day before. I wondered why I was so cold, both that morning and the night before, when the the level of magnesium in small tubes indicated I had no reason to be.

It passed the time as I walked up the big hill.

A car passed and I realized I was on the Walk of Shame, and I hadn’t even gotten laid the night before. And for the first time in my life I actually found it shameful to be walking home early in the morning in the same clothes I had worn the day before, freezing and disheveled. On all previous walks like this one I had been coming back from having sex, which I could never understand anyone being ashamed of.

My thoughts occupied me as I walked as fast as I could, head down against that bastard in the center of our solar system. The pain blared in my head like bad music trying to get Noriega out of a church and into an American prison... My panic attack forced me on.

Eventually, finally, I could see my house.

I pictured the two brown bottles... My Oxy and Klonopin, waiting for me on the coffee table next to my bed and its four blankets and comforter. Not close enough...

The sun hit my eye and I grabbed my head as though it had been pierced with an arrow... A person driving by in an SUV at the same moment probably thought a wheel had kicked a pebble in my face. Whoever it was didn't stop.

...Down the driveway, through doors, my pills were on their way to my stomach. I buried myself beneath my blankets and began to feel warm as I waited for them to kick in. As I did I thought of the fact that a large percent of the population in the Eastern time zone was beginning its workday. If the person in the SUV though he/she may have blinded or otherwise injured me, he/she couldn't stop because he/she was late for work... But the person likely didn't notice me at all because his/her mind already was there.

I envied whoever it was as I lay in the dark, twisted up in my blankets.

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RITALIN: IT'S NOT JUST FOR KIDS ANYMORE!

I feel like I'm beginning to live a childhood I never had, having just been prescribed Ritalin, since I never had ADD/ADHD/whatever the hell kids who won't sit at their desks and shut the hell up are "diagnosed" with these days. (The real problem: The kids don't function at all well in a stupidly structured environment and parents and teachers don't have so much as the inclination to deal with them on their wavelength. Thank you DSM-IV for letting bad parents and teachers off the hook... And I swear this is the only swipe I'll take at you.)

...Now, with any luck, I'll be able to reverse the cycle I've been in, and sleep for about eight hours a night and be awake for about sixteen during the day! I'm sure I won't know what to do with myself... But fear excessive masturbation may be involved.

...I took my first extended-release Rit about a half-hour ago, and drugs take one-and-one-half-hours to kick in for me. So I'll see if I can stay awake today.

Until it does kick in: Still so very, very tired...

UPDATE!: Here are the drugs I now take for fibro, generalized anxiety and chronic fatigue disorder:

OxyContin, 40mg daily
Klonopin, 6mg daily
Prozac, 30mg daily
Ritalin, extended release, 20mg daily

With any luck the Ritalin will help me take another pained step toward the shadow of my former self...

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WEDNESDAY I GET EXAMINED BY A SOCIAL SECURITY DOCTOR!

It seems the long wait may finally be nearing an end... And what I call my early retirement near its beginning.

I am to be examined by a doctor who will then report my status to the Social Security Disability Administration. I'm sure to be diagnosed with cognitive memory disorder, which fibromyalgians lovingly call fibro fog, because I've been diagnosed with it twice. Said disorder is the reason someone I know was awarded disability, so I feel pretty good about my newfound idiocy being just cause for "awarding" me benefits.

(This is a snip of a conversation I had with the first psychologist who diagnosed me with cognitive memory disorder:

"So basically I'm a moron now."

"That depends on what your IQ was before you got fibro."

At the time -- and this one -- I'm still intelligent enough to find the above hilarious.)

Also, there's the fact that no one will hire someone who has to eat OxyCodone and Klonopin like candy and that, for months at a time -- times like now -- I have to sleep for sixteen hours of every day.

I would be a total liability to anyone who would hire me... Whacked on Oxy and Klonopin (most people think of these two as incredibly debilitating in and of themselves... However, they allow me to function. Still, no one would put me at the helm of a steamroller... I'd be a lawsuit waiting to happen), unable to remember what happened or what I was told to do any given five minutes ago...

I'm unemployable.

I feel reasonably certain that will be the finding of the doctor I see Wednesday.

...It's an odd thing, to hope that this will be his conclusion.

But there is no other to draw.

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FIBROMYALGIA TREATMENTS: WHAT WORKS!

I'm posting this so, hopefully, readers who have fibromyalgia can get to this post quickly to find out what works and what doesn't. Here's what works:

1) NARCOTICS.

OxyContin, tailored to the dose you, personally, need, for instance. But different people in chronic pain need different narcotics. Which is to write, as I have before, that some fibromyalgians will benefit most from hydrocodone, some from morphine, and so on.

The take-away from this being that the only thing that will reduce your pain by an appreciable level is a narcotic analgesic. Fuck anyone and anything that touts a "natural" cure.

Well, I got ahead of myself: Fuck anything that says it's a "cure." By definition, fibro is incurable. If you thought you had fibro but it went away through one or another action(s), you didn't have fibro and please shut the fuck up because the people who actually have it are being hoist with your petard by the thousands.

My own mother told me about someone she knows who has fibro, but who does not experience daily, constant pain. I had to refer her to the exact diagnostic criteria to show her she had a hypochondriac (or wicked asshole) on her hands (and wasn't told the name of the person because I wanted to track her down and give her a taste of the pain she, despite "having fibro," wasn't in. ...Such is the insanity induced by my pain.)

Fibro is coming to encompass too many things that it is not because of inept doctors and moronic patients.

Anyone who knows anything about fibro is a pain specialist, pure, simple. And knows: Fibro is pain. Treat it with painkillers.

There are diets you can read about that claim they can cure you. If the diet cures you, you have Celiac's Disease, not fibro. Both cause quite similar symptoms.

Please, everyone who does not have fibro, shut the fuck up so fibromyalgians can be treated properly, so the disorder can get some goddam respect -- stop keeping us in the limbo of having been diagnosed with a pseudo-disorder, while you can simply cut gluten out of your diet and live pain-free, but unable to eat pizza.

...Trust me: Fibromyalgians feel your pain, douchebag.

2) NOTHING ELSE.

Only narcotic analgesics help people with fibro.

Sure, Lyrica may bring your pain down one number on the pain scale, but the extra fifty pounds you gain that it puts on your joints and vertebra are going to put your pain right back where it was.

Cymbalta: Doctors will be happy to give you this, along with thirty-or-so pills/injections that will do nothing or next to it, instead of prescribing you narcotics. (Pain relief from an NSRI. ...If I could laugh at that I wouldn't be able to catch my breath and drop dead, blue as a Smurf...)

However it is, by its weak ability to increase the amount of dopamine in one's brain (not by increasing norepinephrine, as most docs will say) also capable of bringing your pain down maybe one point on the scale.

But you'll still feel suicidally painful if you actually have fibro.

In short: Narcotics are the answer. Narcotics are the only treatment that works for fibromyalgia.

This must be accepted by doctors, and narcotic analgesic treatment must be insisted upon by patients (please see previous posts for all the crap I had to go through to finally get chronic opioid analgesic therapy).

If your pain isn't enough to make you cry your lungs out every day for a dose of morphine or oxycodone, chances are you don't have fibro and you're harming everyone who actually has the disorder. Find out what you really have, and don't let your doctor diagnose you as a fibromyalgian despite the fact you don't have a single trigger/tender point.

If your pain hasn't made you wish you were dead since it started, please get the correct diagnosis and shut the fuck up about fibromyalgia.

Please, as this disease becomes understood, let doctors and patients realize, together, the only effective treatment for it: narcs.

To anyone who can be helped with anything else enough to matter: You don't have fibro. You're not helping yourself by being misdiagnosed with fibromyalgia, and you're hurting everyone who has fibromyalgia by going with whatever bullshit treatment you're being given (I could go into cortisol here) and finding that it helps your so-called fibromyalgia...

I understand that fibro is irresistable to hypochondriacs... Fibro is quite an easy disorder to pretend you have if you do your homework.

The problems is that you fuckers are helped with placebos, with Lyrica, with Cymbalta -- you're in studies yourselves and keeping out true fibromyalgians and making sure that our treatment stays bullshit.

To all fibro-pretenders: Just let me press down with my thumb on a certain place in your lower back for about thirty seconds, and we'll know what you have and do not have.

[Jesus, did the ire rise today. And I've been happy all day, too. ...I never know what's in my head until I sneeze it out.

Pain: 4/5. Debilitating, the best it will get... though I may want to think about upping to 50mg Oxy next month... Still too soon to say for sure -- I need to see exactly what 40mg can do, and it's been only a week now.

Anxiety: 4/10. Debilitating, the best it will get.

I would not dare complain that my conditions are managed as well as they are... I believe I feel the best I possibly can.

Still, I do miss being able to lift more than ten pounds...]

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IF I HAD SKATED YESTERDAY!:

Yesterday I walked around the local skate park because the outdoor section just opened for the year. Then I walked around the local college's campus to see what I am missing now that I can't skate.

...Why the masochism?...

And, since I can't skate, I made up this story on what happened yesterday. I made sure the experience sucked so I wouldn't hate the fact that I'm now lame and can only walk.

...Maybe I need Heelys...

Anyway: "Yesterday":

Skating sucked yesterday... In the outdoor section, all the (wooden) ramps at the skate park were warped from the winter, and dropping in was like picking my way through a minefield... "OK I'll drop in here, have to miss those nails and that indentation (on the vertical part of the ramp, no less), then deal with the crack right before the fun box (at some parks not-so-aptly named), then immediately get my feet together for a 180 -- but have to jump before the exposed screw at the top of the box -- then land and navigate fakie (backwards) between the water puddles."

After only two hours of dealing with the not-so-fun boxes and treacherous ramps I ended up going to Lummox University. The place is even more of a skate park now than it was when I was a teenager, learning everything I know now. I was totally blown away: the perfect street course. Rails of all lengths and gradations of steepness, a huge gap to 180 over that allowed you to choose, by picking your launch spot, how far you needed to jump and how far you wanted to drop, and on and on.

And all within an area the size of a football field.

Why did I even go to the park? I already had jammed my left shoulder by misjudging my speed when launching to a disaster soul... I had no idea I would be going as fast as I was, since I hadn't dropped in on the ramp I used until that trick, and so I seemed to hang in the air after my jump, waiting to come down to earth so my skates could catch the ledge. My back skate did, but by then my front foot didn't know what to do with itself. I had almost launched the entire fun box, and I was straightening my skate out to land on the flat just when it caught the last half-foot of the ledge.

This made my front foot wash over the top of the ledge. which led to my entire body spinning ninety degrees atop the ledge, then to me taking the two-foot drop (from ledge to ground -- five feet for my shoulder) on my shoulder. At speed.

Back to the university:

I decided to give it a go at my favorite rail of all time -- an aluminum tube made smooth by thousands of previous grinds, hundreds of them my own -- long enough to make you proud you could actually lock in and ride out your grind for that long, but not long enough that if you fell you would be going too fast and hurt yourself (the rail runs down eleven steps).

I had a porn star (grind -- my balance mostly on the soul of my front skate, my back skate on the rail between my second and third wheels) locked in on my fourth try, but was a little off balance when I came off the rail fakie, my preferred may to dismount rails (the best-looking), with my left wheels not quite level with the ground. My boot was almost sliding along the concrete -- and all my weight was on that skate. This caused me to bend my knees until my ass almost touched the ground and my arms to spin like windmill blades as I attempted to get my balance onto my right skate.

Suddenly my left foot gave out entirely. My left skate's ankle strap exploded which, I soon found out, carved scrapes into my lower leg as it buckled into the skate. The scrapes on my lower leg, together, look like a shark bite.

(From pseudo-landing the grind to buckle explosion took only about two seconds, in which I covered a distance of about five feet.)

Naturally, I immediately removed the broken skate and heaved it into a wall while yelling FUCK! as loud as I could. I had almost proved to myself that I was perhaps three-fourths as good a skater as I had been almost a decade ago.

...My behavior is not kid-friendly in that it is completely childish, I thought as some parents who walked by gave me reproachful looks, holding their kid's head between them as though trying to insulate his mind from the word I had yelled. They turned away from me the moment I looked at them, vehement, likely afraid that my anger at botching the landing could be turned on them...

I calmed down an iota as I thought the situation over, seething while examining my skate: that's what the ankle strap is for: to break in a situation that would otherwise break your ankle. So I suppose I can't complain too much.

I should definitely use the broken-skate-thing as a reason/excuse to finally quit skating... But my christ it's harder to give up than smoking...

[Lots of fiction lately. I apologize, but guarantee it's more interesting than any presentation I could give of my actual life.

In case you're curious:

Pain seems to be about 5/10 with 40mg OxyContin daily, but more experience at this dose is, of course, necessary.

Anxiety with 6mg Klonopin daily: 5/10. A friend and I agreed a few days ago that "If you're not freaked right the fuck out all the time, you're not thinking hard enough."

...The things you let yourself believe to get by...]

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MUSIC TO SOOTHE SAVAGE FIBROMYALGIA: THE ARCADE FIRE!

This is Intervention and Wake Up (performed at the T), my two favorite songs by The Arcade Fire.

I've seen these guys twice. The first time I saw them they were on their first tour, visiting the 9:30 club in Wash., DC. Watch out for the guy with the crazy hair, the big drum, the harpsichord, the guitar, the tambourine, the kitchen sink. At 9:30 he left the stage at the end of the show by climbing the wall somehow, swinging over to the balcony and going through a Staff Only door.

Until that show I had only listened to the (first) album a few times, and liked it quite a lot. Still, at the time I was into an all-Arts-&-Crafts-bands-all-the-time kick. But a friend of mine knew if he invited me I wouldn't turn him down (I owe that bastard) because I'll see any band, within reason.

(Wow. I could knock so many bands right now... Good thing fibro fog is preventing me, right now, from coming up with any bands I hate... And recalling bands I hate likely is further complicated by the fact that I don't listen to them or think about them.)

Moving along: Since the show at 9:30 I've loved the Fire intensely (my wordplay, especially when unintentional, makes me cringe). In my not-humble opinion (all who disagree are simply wrong), seeing Wake Up live will change your life forever, and much for the better. There's nothing like screaming/moaning at the top of one's lungs in tune with thousands of people... Cathartic.

The last time I saw them I knew I had fibro. I screamed and screamed.

Everyone screamed with me.

[I likely will not post tomorrow since I will be getting back, then, from a short trip I'm taking today. I'd rather not go, however, because I forgot to take my Oxy last night and wish I had died in my sleep and was on the coroner's slab right now instead of about to go someplace and have to put on a smiley... But I am proud of myself, at least, for not doubling-up this morning...

I'll be getting back here late tomorrow night. Traveling makes me super-anxious, so I'll be drunk as hell when I return and just crawl into bed. ...That's the plan at least.

PS: The above "drunk as hell" bit was a lie. I would never drink on OxyContin, Klonopin and Prozac. What am I, stupid, and with anxiety that can't be controlled, when travel is involved, even by the holy trinity (POK)? The nerve (of me to pretend I know what you actually thought after reading what I wrote)!

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THE TENS UNIT: GREAT FOR MYOFASCIAL PAIN SYNDROME (TMJ-ISH), NOT MUCH ELSE!

"Temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJD, TMJ or TMD), or TMJ syndrome, is an umbrella term covering acute or chronic inflammation of the temporomandibular joint, which connects the lower jaw to the skull. The disorder and resultant dysfunction can result in significant pain and impairment.

...

"Muscle pain can sometimes be associated with trigger points in muscle tissue. These trigger points can be localized by digital palpation, both intraorally and extraorally. This is known as myofascial pain syndrome."

The above is from Wikipedia.

Here is how I use my TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) unit to help with my myofascial trigger points, which hurt like hell, curtail how wide I can open my mouth and cause me to bite down on my teeth extremely hard in my sleep, and probably grind them a bit (known as bruxism... One night I forgot to wear my bite block, which situates a plastic pad between my molars to keep them apart like parents would homicidal children riding in the back of the family van on a very long trip. In the morning I discovered that I had shattered my back-bottom-right molar into four pieces):

I place the two-inch-diameter electrodes (sticky pads) directly on my TMJ and turn up the juice. I electrocute the hell out of the joint for only about a minute every morning and night because I'm placing the electrodes right on my trigeminal nerve, which allows one to feel one's face (somewhat important... Even if one experiences only pain from it), and if I fuck that nerve up I'll end up looking like a stroke victim... But perhaps on both sides of my face.

I should note that all TENS units tell users specifically NOT TO DO THIS. Therefore, like just about anything else I do, I cannot recommend it to anyone else.

But oh sweet zombie jeebus how much it helps...

The trigger points remain painful to the touch, but I can open my mouth wider than I have been able to in years. The electrode-application seems to function as the most effective massage on earth. I probably would have to be massaged all day, just on my TMJ, to achieve the same results.

I'd rank the improvement in my facial pain from a 10/10 to a 4/10. Pretty damn amazing.

So I love my TENS unit dearly, even though it does absolutely nothing for any of my other trigger points or pains. The relief I get from my myofascial pain is enough to make me wish my TENS unit were a woman so I could marry her. What's more, I'd switch teams and marry it if it were a guy and we lived in Massachusetts. ...Well, as long as it (he) didn't have a mustache...

That written, DO NOT USE A TENS UNIT FOR TMJ OR MYOFASCIAL PAIN SYNDROME! (Following my motto, adapted from Gandhi: Cover the ass you want to see in the world.)

[It makes sense for the pain and anxiety scales to make a comeback now that I'm on 30mg of OxyContin and 6mg Klonopin:

Pain: 6.5/10.

Anxiety: 4/10.

I see Dr ML&S April 7, at which point I hope to have my Oxy dose increased, so my pain should decrease even more. At this point I will be treated, medically, as best as is possible. This will likely mean that my pain and anxiety will both be around 3.5/10. Still debilitating, but the best that can be done, and enough to make me happy. Ish.]

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DEALING WITH THE FALLOUT FROM MY PREVIOUS E-MAIL TO X!:

[The below is my response to an e-mail X sent me after the e-mail I sent to her, and previously posted.]

I truly didn't mean to cause a shitstorm here.

Anyway, my problems were never that I was abusing drugs -- my problems were fibro and everything that comes with it, plus under-treated generalized anxiety disorder.

Tons of shit comes with fibro... Likely everything you thought was caused by drugs.

But now I'm on 30mg OxyContin, 6mg Klonopin, 60mg Prozac daily -- just-about optimal treatment. The problem before was that I was not on the right drugs, nor the right dosages.

I am unbelievably better now and probably feel as good as I ever will (though my Oxy probably will get bumped up a bit).

If you thought I was having a drug problem, you should have brought it up... You would have found out that I haven't been on Percocet (drugs) since early January. I've had to do without any pain medication for months, and that has been the cause of all my problems. I even came close to offing myself...

And after going through all that, to be so misunderstood is incredibly hurtful. This is obviously the worst time in my life so far (and hopefully in my entire life), but we DO talk about you and your problems primarily.

Granted, I'm not incredibly forthcoming when it comes to mine... But shit -- can't you figure out that losing my life as I knew it was/is incredibly tumultuous? Did you really need me to spell it out?

And I'm sorry, but there are many times that you make me feel like the only reason you don't "lose ME" is because I am useful to you, in that I can predict what your douchbag ex was/is doing.

I don't want to "lose you." I just want you to get rid of the fucking fuck somehow...

So what I wrote was off the mark. I missed one out of 100. I apologize. I just wish the fucker was out of your life so we could talk about anything else but that thing that continues wasting the rest of the world's oxygen...

I didn't want to offend you, and I apologize for doing so.

But christ, can't you block his numbers? Can't you do SOMEthing more than what you're doing?

And I don't know why I seemed to go off today... My head feels strange now that it is clear. Or as clear as it ever has been since I have had fibro.

Maybe I was having a Woe-Is-Me moment for some reason and decided everyone else's problems are minuscule compared to mine and that I didn't have to be civil.

Probably the case, and I don't know why.

I apologize. ...And I know part of my behavior is that I'm almost as sick of your rat-fucker of an ex as you are...

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MY PREJUDICE AGAINST CHRISTIANS IS DESPICABLE!

"Anyway, I'll write about what happens tomorrow at my shrink's. He's in a place that advertises itself as providing 'Christian Mental Health Services.' ...So hopefully I'm not taken off all drugs and told to simply pray away my anxiety (and fibro, for that matter, which could just be god's way of telling me I'm pissing him off with the atheism thing...)."

I wrote that yesterday. I apologize for being offensive -- though it was, of course, a gross exaggeration for humor's sake.

But was it funny?

I don't think of it as very funny today, after seeing Dr. Sweet at the place that offers "Christian Mental Health Services."

But Dr. Sweet did act differently from many psychiatrists I have been to: in that he listened, was empathetic, and really knew his stuff.

He took a history, trusted me, and put me back on 6mg of Klonopin. Ideal!

He also gave me a neurological test that, once again, proved that I have cognitive memory disorder. Or is it cognitive deficit disorder? ...Point made: I'm dumb now. I have what we fibromyalgians refer to as fibro fog.

My anxiety is down today thanks to Dr. Sweet. I spent only about 40 minutes with him, but he improved my life immensely in that time.

In the future he only wants to do med checks, which is the exact appropriate thing, but means I will see him in four months, if I still am in Lummox at that time. If I am not, I can only hope to find his doppelganger in Portland.

I apologize for my idiocy. And we know I'm not talking about the fibro fog on this score.

Mixx it!

MUSIC TO SOOTHE SAVAGE FIBROMYALGIA: BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE!

Now that I'm used to OxyContin (the side effects are gone, the pain relief is not and, I have every reason to believe, never will be), it's back to insomnia.

I'm seeing a new shrink tomorrow morning, so hopefully he writes me a script for Trazodone, 200mg of which allows me to sleep... Or has in the past, anyway... I haven't taken it in a while and antidepressant drugs have a funny way of not doing what they once did after they haven't been taken for a while, or after they've been taken for a few weeks or months.

Which is to write that drugs like Trazodone (an atypical antidepressant best used for insomnia) can crap out on you at any time. They're magical that way.

...Or maybe I can get my Klonopin back up to 6mg per day. Having a lot less anxiety would allow me to get much more sleep (8.5 hours is my personal requirement... It's what I needed -- and got -- almost every night before I had fibro).

Anyway, I'll write about what happens tomorrow at my shrink's. He's in a place that advertises itself as providing "Christian Mental Health Services." ...So hopefully I'm not taken off all drugs and told to simply pray away my anxiety (and fibro, for that matter, which could just be god's way of telling me I'm pissing him off with the atheism thing...).

Until then, enjoy Lover's Spit!

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HERE'S HOPING MY TENS UNIT WILL EASE MY FIBROMYALGIA!

Today I had my second-to-last physical therapy appointment. My therapist, who I refer to as Mary Cassatt, worked with my insurance and got me a TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) unit for free. Love her -- which explains why she gets a great name and people like Dr. Douchebag get names like Dr. Douchebag (those who follow this blog will know that he's the shrink who cut my Klonopin dose from 6mg to 4mg per day before he knew anything about my case. I've been super-anxious ever since he did that, and he doesn't care one bit. What a fucking douchebag...).

So I'm about to watch TV and electrocute the hell out of myself for the rest of the night. Should be fun!

...I'm also definitely getting used to the 30mg of OxyContin per day that I'm on. Yesterday (or today, to nitpick) I went to sleep at about 2:00 and woke at 10:00. Not bad. And I didn't feel like I had to dive under my bed's covers at 8:00 pm like I have every preceding day this week. Good stuff!

And today I don't feel tired or apathetic at all, plus I'm not getting motion sickness. Pretty sweet!

So I currently use only Oxy, Klonopin, Prozac, and a TENS unit to control my pain (from fibro) and generalized anxiety disorder (which is really, left unchecked, a 24/7 panic attack). And I think I may as well drop the Prozac. But I'll probably have to wait to get out of my parents' house to do that, since they figure I may as well take it since it may be doing something and it's cheap because I get the generic: fluoxetine.

But, the Prozac, I am all but sure, is doing nothing. Studies show that antidepressants are only slightly better than placebos. ...And I've been on every SSRI, SNRI, Gabitril, et al, and none of them helped. I have always needed Klonopin, and have been on large doses of benzodiazepines since age eighteen. It's the only thing that works for my anxiety at all and, therefore, the only thing I truly believe I should be taking for it.

So after all the crap with all my doctors -- I've seen about fifteen in all for my fibro -- I'm simply going to be on Klonopin, OxyContin, and use a TENS unit.

Very, very simple. The doctors I see and have seen, of course, had to make it as fucking hard as possible for me to get to this point -- trying probably around thirty drugs in all that didn't work, under-treating my pain and anxiety while doing so (except for Dr. L in DC. Guy is a genius, and provided me with the most stable period of my life by taking such good care of my GAD in my pre-fibro days).

To wrap things up: I have known for years that all I truly need are OxyContin and Klonopin. But it has taken years to get down to just these two (after I wean myself off Prozac/fluoxetine).

Most doctors do not listen. And most have their favorite therapies. And most hate to prescribe their patients Oxy and Klonopin because they're potentially addictive and can induce tolerance.

BUT NOT IN PEOPLE WITH FIBROMYALGIA AND AN ANXIETY DISORDER.

Doctors need to wake the hell up to the above reality.

Now for some electrocution!

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STILL GETTING ACCUSTOMED TO OXYCONTIN...!

I am so very tired...

Especially after going crazy in physical therapy. I am in pain, having a bit of a panic attack, and need some Klonopin and a nap.

Which is what's I'm going to take and what I'm going to do.

I should be accustomed to this side-effect (feeling logy) in a week or so.

In the meantime, this blog could be a bit boring, I'm afraid. But the excitement should return around Sunday.

In the meantime, I'll post what I can and try to make it interesting...

Hopefully I have interesting dreams while I sleep the clock around...

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MIRAPEX: A CURE FOR ALCOHOLISM!

I used to have such a thirst for alcohol that I would get drunk on Thursdays and always be horribly hungover at work on Fridays because I had stayed up until the wee hours the night before because it took me quite a while to get drunk.

In my search for a way to ease my fibro I ended up on Mirapex, and about a month into taking mega-doses I no longer wanted to drink.

...Well, I wouldn't be shaking for 5:30 to come on Fridays, anyway.

Today I have swallowed about three liters of wine just to see if I can, in fact, get drunk. It would seem I cannot. ...And I'm not even weird on it, though it's matched with 50mg oxycodone (through Percocet) and 4mg Klonopin.

I didn't sign up for this... Apparently Mirapex changed my brain and did so, perhaps, for the rest of my life. I haven't taken the stuff for months, but still have no thirst for the drink. Last week when I was in such pain that all I wanted to do was die I couldn't even make myself swallow enough vodka to make a difference. Maybe there isn't an amount of vodka that would make a difference.

I simply slept well the night I drank vodka... And woke the next to find two fingers in the bottom of a fifth.

Strange thoughts on this strange day...

...If you think you have a problem with the bottle, ask your doc about Mirapex. I believe it's supposed to allow your brain to produce more dopamine... Or somehow make more dopamine available to your dope-loving brain. Either/or/and.

All I have now is a headache because it's been a while since I've taken a Percocet, and I'm going to have to take 50mg of Trazodone and a Sonata to get to sleep just so I can get the sleeping over with, it can be another day, and I can have more Percocet... I only get five a day and make myself stick to it.

...But what about Tylenol etc and liver damage (I take five Percs a day, 10mg oxycodone/325mg APAP)? Three-twenty-and-five multiplied by five is 1,625mg of Tylenol. Four grams is an overdose. And the wine must be taxing my liver like Paul did Jews before he had a seizure and founded christianity.

...I've been taking a multivitamin and a strong B-complex tab ever since I was put on legal dopes at eighteen years old, and I get a liver enzyme test at least once a year, and my largest internal organ is just fine. Pristine. Begging for more.

And now I have pared down my drug diet to three meds I know and love, which should save my delicious liver some trouble: I take only Prozac, Klonopin and Percocet. I need nothing else (well, except for Trazodone and Sonata so I can get to sleep)... In fact, if Prozac wasn't available in a generic formulation, I'd drop that too. But the drug reminds me of my college years, is relatively cheap, and so it stays.

...When my rationality and my sentimentality collide, the latter wins almost every time.

...I will forever keep a quilt that was my older brother's that has bled all its stuffing and a brain that spews dopamine like a busted fire hydrant... But I'm unable to splash in the middle of the road in the late-July of a humid Washington D.C.

I'm unable to get drunk.

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F---------------------------K!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry that the head looks awful, but I didn't think it proper to write FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!! in that space.

I received worse than no help from the people I saw today. And to cover my ass (Cover the ass you want to be in the world...), I must admit this is a work of complete fiction. A one hundred percent fabrication. The below is a horrible dream I had. Or something.

JK Rowling isn't the only one with a lackluster imagination... (Easy with the fillet knives fanatics...)

...On with it. Here is what happened in said dream:

I wrote the following on Wednesday night, hoping the doctors I saw today could read it, since my writing is better than my speech, especially since I've had fibro. Enjoy, and I'll tell you what happened at the Center after (this is going to be a long post, so swallow the drugs I don't have access to, if you have access to them yourself). The following is an integral piece of the story though.

Or not...

Hell, it's just so damn degrading it simply must be relevant.

Enjoy!:

What I Have:

FIBROMYALGIA, which causes:

1. Chronic Daily Migraines [when I write longhand all my knowledge of grammar, punctuation, and proper capitalization evaporates like a sip of brandy on the tip of the tongue], pain 10/10, nausea 7/10, photophobia 7/10, phonophobia 10/10.

2. Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Everywhere (10/10).

3. IBS -- have lost 17lbs. in past month... Not necessarily bad, but a lot to lose in one month -- Pain associated w/ it 10/10, decreased ABILITY to eat and drink fluids. Always dehydrated. (GP not concerned.)

4. I'm 29 and I need a cane to walk. ENOUGH SAID? (Or, rather, written?)

5. DID I MENTION PAIN? The pain is going to drive me insane very, very soon.

6. RLS -- restless legs syndrome.

7. Generalized anxiety disorder.

8. Major depression.

9. Inability to sleep longer than 4-5 hours per night because PAIN wakes me.

10. Alpha wave intrusion into delta-wave sleep, so sleep is short, and of poor quality.

11. My Mom and I shared a hotel room last night. I knocked myself out with Benadryl, which I've had IV too, it does nothing, but woke her up about every hour because I apparently moan loudly due to pain in my sleep.

Current Meds:

1. Topamax, 100mg/day: does absolutely nothing. Have been on for one month and will discontinue, just as I have tried and discontinued every other migraine drug (plus prednisone in case they were cluster headaches).

2. Klonopin, 4mg/day.

3. Vistaril: Dr. Douchebag (psych.) wrote script for up to 200mg/day, but SAID I can take as much as 400mg. Not a good way to practice medicine. (Will be seeing a new shrink beginning March 20.)

4. Zanaflex: 24mg/day.

5. Ultram: 200mg/day. A horrible and cruel, cruel joke. My GP previously prescribed my Vicodin over 2 weekends. He prescribed (I think...) 7.5/750s x 20, but was unhappy that I took all of them over the weekend.

I did so -- and made sure not to exceed 4grams APAP in any 24hr period [that's an overdose, for those playing along at home] (Dr 9 doesn't work on Fridays, so weekends were 4.5 days) because the Vicodin couldn't come close to taming my pain. [That sentence could have been a bit clearer... But, then, it doesn't matter: The docs at the Center wouldn't read it or even let me read it to them. Why not? They didn't want to hear anything I had to say! One doctor took down the meds I'm currently on, and from then on it was a battle royale: Me yelling at them, and them trying to advocate for their position and failing miserably. It would seem the two doctors I dealt with had never been in a debate in their entire lives. Or a lukewarm conversation.]

And how could Dr 9 expect Vicodin to tame my pain? He knows my previous Doc, a pain management specialist, had me on Percocet, which only succeeded (at the low dose it was set at) at keeping me non-suicidal and able to walk one block to and from work.

Vicodin is a horrible joke. Ultram is Dr 9 pissing in my hat and making me wear it.

* MY SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS: I have only received any pain relief whatsoever from Percocet. I would suggest we treat my pain aggressively and treat me with about 70mg oxycodone to start, and see if I need more or less. [Again, could have been more clear. At least you know I'm transcribing exactly what I wrote... Although I'm not convinced it's important that it be one hundred percent accurate... Oh well. It is. The next transcription will be bullshit.]

Of course, now that I've written that, I appear to simply be a drug-seeker.

But we all know about pseudo-addiction, don't we?* [My doctor did not.]

My pain -- my indescribable, horrible, hell-itself pain has been amazingly under-treated for years. AND I WANT RELIEF AND I WANT IT NOW. EVERYONE KNOWS OXYCODONE WORKS, BUT SIMPLY NEEDS TO BE SUPPLIED IN A SUFFICIENT DAILY DOSE.

LET'S DO IT ALREADY. HOW MUCH LONGER DO I HAVE TO SUFFER BECAUSE DOCTORS WON'T SCRIBBLE A FEW WORDS ON A PAD? THOSE FEW WORDS -- THAT SCRIPT IS LITERALLY MY TICKET OUT OF HELL!

* See final page for brief summary of pseudo-addiction. [I left, briefly, to piss in a cup, after inviting the doc to read what I had written. When I returned, the page was flipped to the summary on pseudo-addiction. Bad Sign No. 1.]

6. Prozac, 40mg/day.

7. Mirapex, .5mg/day.

8. Insane amts. of vitamins and minerals: generic Centrum; 100mg Co Q-10; 100mg B-2; B complex w/ vitamin C; 1,000 IU vitamin D; 1,000mg magnesium.

ALL THE ABOVE ARE WORTH A WOODEN NICKEL EXCEPT KLONOPIN.

[What a hokey and cheesy way of saying that only Klonopin is worth taking. ...And “hokey” is, itself, hokey and cheesy.]

Dr 9 sent me here so I would be put on chronic opioid analgesic therapy [when I first mentioned this term, the doctor I was speaking to had no idea what I was talking about. It would have been poetic if a cold bead of sweat trickled down the nape of my neck at that moment. What really happened: I closed my eyes for a second, slid down in my chair a few inches, and the words “You are so so so fucked” went through my head.], which he will not do himself because he “doesn't do much prescribing of narcotics.”

[As it turns out, neither does the Center. I was informed by three people, multiple times each that I had “zero chance of getting treated with narcotics.” And they all said "getting." They couldn't even use proper English and say "being" -- and let's not start on "zero." Small things like that help me be remorseless when it comes time to yell simply to wound... When your display will get you nothing you want but the other person's pain.]

In short, he wants you to put me on COAT, which he will then prescribe for me monthly.

P.S.: I wrote all this down because I've been stuttering and groping for words in speech since I've have had fibromyalgia and wanted all this to be clear. I hope it is.

I also know it reads as though I am incredibly desperate.

You have no idea how desperate I am to get some, any -- hopefully the most possible, though -- relief from my pain.

PLEASE HELP ME. YOU ARE LITERALLY MY LAST HOPE. I have nowhere else to go.

Goddam. I'm finally done transcribing that freaking note. ...Doing that was not fun. Hopefully this next will be, for all of us:

Did I refer to the over-full colostomy bags I saw today at Fakename Whatever Whatever Pain Center as “wizards” in my last post? I'd punch myself in the balls for that one if it didn't feel like I'd already been hit by Tyson (admittedly, everywhere but there) in his good years -- and his pre-wife-beating pigshit rapist years. He lost it in the ring and outside it at the same time. Borderline personality disorder?

Whatever. Fuck all rapists.

Can people stop cheering for Kobe for fuck's sake? Maybe it wasn't rape, but...

Well, I'm pretty damn sure it was. So sit down, shut the fuck up, oh wow he jumped high and a ball went in a hoop. Your city is now better than the city the rapist is playing against. You and the rapist became one in that moment -- you cheering for him as the ball rolled off his fingers made all the difference. Now go get in a fight in the parking lot with some guy who flew in all the way from New Jersey -- a fight started because you're both body-painters and got pissed at each other on-sight.

How long does it take for the paint to come off each, individual, hair?

So the two of you go to jail, while Kobe finds a rape victim or two then buys their silence -- for now... But his story ends in a jailbox to be sure...

But back to me me me me me:

It's a good thing I have about 10 glasses of wine in me. Because:

“Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.”

Charles Bukowski wrote that in Factotum (which everyone should read and if anyone calls him a beat they should get beaten). I've always shared that horror with Bukowski. It's never seemed right that someone has to work to live. And so we have a society where everyone fucks around all the time at work. Why can't we just work intensely for one eight-hour day per week? We would be far more productive.

And we could live our goddam lives 160 hours per week.

The fact is, society can do whatever it wants by mutual agreement... In this case, American society. If we choose to work far fewer hours, but to actually make those hours count, we could do it, and easily. And the economy would be fine: Fuck Wall Street and stocks and ever-rising profits. Let's hit a nice plateau and stay there. If we decide we're OK with that, we're halfway to home plate. (And 99 percent of us should be because our portfolios aren't really doing a goddam thing for us compared to the Trumps etcetera of the world. Fuck the rich, kill the stock market.

[Ed.: But I could really care less... I remain untouched by the economy at large: The 12-year old socialist bastard who writes my stuff for me (I get him drunk on mouthwash and set his spirit free on the electronic page) gets the job done in 15 minutes or less.]

Fuck. Fuck...

Sorry. Took a huge hit today and am avoiding the real topic.




I'm almost at the end of my rope, and I have more than enough to hang myself with. And I feel like using it to do so.

But I remember how one of the doctors I saw today didn't so much as flinch when I yelled at her: “What the fuck do you do for fibromyalgians (TM) in this place, give them a gun and point them out back?!”

She seemed to consider it in her stony silence.

All my doctors want me to leave them the fuck alone. They want a moment's peace. If they knew I was dead, they would be assured peace.

And I have made my life's purpose to deny them peace so long as they deny me mine. I treat all who are in the position to help me but who do not as if they are actively hurting me -- as if they are my fibromyalgia made human. And they may as well be. They have the power to make me feel about eighty percent better. Easily.

It's not a hard fucking thing! Scribble the word “oxycodone” on an Rx pad, sign it, date it, hand it to me, and TING TING TING! this dirty angel gets his wings and is sonic-booming out of Hell.

The worst thing about my death? The doctors would not be blamed by anyone but my nuclear family. Everyone else would call me a pussy who "took the easy way out."

Dears, suicide is never the easy way out. It's how a sane person responds to an insane world that has pushed him/her to the ledge...

When doctors don't do the right thing, I sleep with a clean conscience despite the fact I've uttered every obscenity I can think of at them. I sleep better for it, in fact. I have known people for only one hour and have judged them to be stupid, vile, ignorant, and without the requisite amount of empathy to survive in an orangutan colony.

But do I really trust these snap judgments?

Huh...

Mostly, I think the people I deal with are horribly, horribly ignorant. And "ignorant" is rooted in “ignore.” Which is awful, because it suggests a person is choosing stupidity. And the people I deal with are. They ignore facts that disprove them. The mountain of evidence that will wash them away...

The docs I deal with learned what they learned about narcs 30, 40 years ago. But guess what? A few planets have been discovered since then, and Pluto has been demoted too (it never belonged... You have the rocky planets, then the gas giants, then... an asteroid?).

And what has been discovered about narcs in the years since these docs learnified themselves?

Well, for starters, people in chronic pain don't develop tolerance to narcs.

I was talking with one doctor today:

“Well you're so young no one would...”

(The point of using reason with these people had long past... In fact, I don't think reason has a place in the entirety of Jesusland... Get thee to a coastal city... And in the West or Northeast -- the South is tainted!) “Oh, of course, I'm 29 and I have so long to live that my tolerance would get so massive that...

"WAIT! I want you to read this!"

In my hand was the article from this post, showing that, as written above, people in chronic pain don't develop tolerance to narcs.

“No. I won't read it.”

“What?! It's only a few paragraphs! It covers a few studies!

A weird, small silence as we glared at each other, her eyes not cold, not distant... Simply no light behind them.

"What? Will reading it harm you in some way?!”

“No, let's--”

“OK, then riddle me this--”

“I won't riddle you anything.”

Can you believe this exchange? It's like a brother and sister squabbling, not a doctor and patient having a discourse for crissake!

“Listen, I know you're going to go into the bullshit--”

“I don't think this is the way we should be speaking.”

“OK, then it's crap that people in chronic pain develop tolerance to narcotics. If you would read this you would see that careful research bears out what I say.

“This is not the truth.”

“This is not the truth?! I hold the truth in my hand.” And I held my hand in her face.

“No.”

“Fine. Listen.” She started to speak. So I made sure she couldn't, which meant I had to yell. It felt good... It gave me the fleeting exhilaration you get from punching through an ocean wave...

“IF PEOPLE IN CHRONIC PAIN BUILD UP A TOLERANCE TO NARCOTICS, WHY HAS [FRIEND OR LOVED ONE], WHO HAS [MS,MD, THEREABOUTS] BEEN TAKING THE EXACT SAME DOSE OF MORPHINE FOR SIX YEARS? HE HAS NO TOLERANCE TO THE DRUG AND HE CERTAINLY ISN'T A FREAKING ADDICT!

"THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NO TOLERANCE AND NO ADDICTION SO DON'T GIVE ME THAT STUPID CANARD! READ SOMETHING ON CHRONIC PAIN AND NARCOTICS THAT HAS BEEN PUBLISHED THIS CENTURY!"

I slumped a little, took a small breath, and let myself enjoy the taste of saying:

“I'm sorry, but when it comes to narcotics, I don't think a single person in this building has any idea what they're talking about. You seem to believe that opiates are intrinsically evil when, in fact, they saved each of us from death once or twice, I'd bet.

"I had an appendectomy -- what did you have?"

I stared into her eyes, mine half-closed in self-satisfaction like I had just ejaculated. There was no way I was getting any help whatsoever out of these people, and I had known that for quite a while.

But for a few hours a few people were my fibromyalgia -- and perfect proxies: ignorant, lemmings, eyes on the heels of Dear Center Director so they can follow in lockstep, and Dear Director does not believe in Evil Opioids because what good have they ever done...

...I tried to calm down by reminding myself that all of what I was experiencing is simply what happens when 40-year-old medical knowledge is applied to a disorder that is just starting to be misunderstood: My life gets completely and utterly ruined.

AND I AM SUPPOSED TO ACCEPT THIS.

GET WITH THE FUCKING PROGRAM.

...Of course, one may worry about the repercussions of one's actions -- fuck, “one” just spent four hours yelling at two different doctors, calling them nothing less than idiots (and being goddam spot-on).

So on the way home I called the Center and told the records department that I withdrew my HIPAA records-release as of that moment, and that the only person their records of my visit could legally go to are me. And, if they so much as think about sending them to anyone but me, they have to call me first.

Not even my GP is going to know what took place today. I'm just going to tell him they were only offering treatments I had already undergone -- which is exactly true. The bastards expected me to go to a hospital for two weeks and get the exact same treatments Dr 9 had given me with little success before he took off for vacation! Fucking freaks!

Goddam it I want Logic 101 to be fucking mandatory for everyone on this earth!

And, of course, there's Einstein: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." By his definition, I was in a house of motherfucking loons that plays at being a medical center. I used to think medicine was grounded in science, but now know better: It's mostly grounded in idiots and outdated knowledge.

I toyed with one of the doctors. I asked her to name a treatment and I would tell her if I had undergone it.

She stopped after four matches. And they were IV treatments. My god she thought she had me...

And I brought a bag full of medications I had previously taken which all doctors averted their eyes from as though the sun's incandescence itself lay inside. Every time I offered: "Don't you want to take down all the meds I've been on previously?"

"Just put that away, please," -- annoyed.

They knew I had them dead to rights, trapped in a goddam corner. I had already tried every single thing they wanted me to try -- a-fucking-gain. And they thought it perfectly sensible.

It was the strangest thing... They didn't act human when it came to this matter. They acted like very simple robots who had been given the wrong input and the only thing going through their brain-like-structures was DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOESNOTCOMPUTE! I saw them try to think of why they though why they did... In the end one doctor simply had to leave the room, with me saying,

"Hey, thanks so much for helping out a 29-year-old who has to use a goddam cane!"

"You know, it's your choice to use it."

"IT'S MY CHOICE?! I hope you die soon!"

The door snapped shut. I had jumped to my feet in a microsecond, and I believe she thought I was coming after her, armed with the cane I chose to carry just in case I wanted to beat the shit out of a woman.

Why else would I carry it?

Then the other doctor came to sit by me and said "Maybe this isn't the place for you; all you want is drugs."

I grabbed my head like I was trying to tear my hair out: "Are you kidding me? You two are talking about pumping every drug under the sun into my veins for a period of two freaking weeks, and I only want one simple bottle of pills -- only one drug -- and you think I'm the one who wants me to be whacked out on drugs?

"I realize this is going to end our session, so I have to say it: Anyone who doesn't think all of you are totally insane is insane themselves. Everything you and the other woman have said has been either a personal insult or an insult to logic. I'd ask you for a referral to the Anesthesia Pain Treatment Clinic or whatever it's called, but I know you won't give me one because they might give me those fucking evil narcotics and actually decrease my pain those assholes.

"Merry fucking Christmas."

Then I left.

...Anyway, when/if Dr 9 asks me about my appointment there I'll ask him why the fuck he sent me there.

Then I'll politely ask:

“And how was your vacation?

After he tells me how great Wherever The Fuck was, it will be my turn:

"Me? I've been great, of course! Thanks so much for leaving me high and dry, with absolutely no way to get any relief from my pain whatsoever! The weather in Hell has been fucking fantastic!”

...But I'd actually love for the Center to breach HIPAA and for Dr 9 to know all about what went down at the Center for Lobotomized Doctors. Then, besides having told MDs that they're not smart enough to velcro their kids' shoes I could get them fired and make off with some money, too.

It would almost be justice...

But who cares about justice anyway? Be honest with yourself one goddam second and realize it's vengeance that really gets your saliva going.

...And now I must apologize for this spotty account of this wretched, putrified day. I wanted to get down what I could as quickly as possible... But holy god I could tell this one a million ways a million times.

Until next, I say Viva Hate Forever because it's days like these when Hate is all I have. And I'm lucky that I can hate deeply and thoroughly enough to sustain myself.

But to you, blogfriends and fibromyalgians, love and kittens (especially if you somehow read this far!).

Mixx it!

PAIN, ANXIETY OFF THE CHARTS!

"Today I really struggle[d] with my fibromyalgia..."

And that's after taking (so far today):

200mg Ultram (does nothing, hoping for placebo effect... Anything, somehow...)

4mg Klonopin, can't take any more today, so I'm up Shit Creek without a flotation device.

150mg Vistaril, something my quack shrink, Dr Douchebag, gave me when he took away 2mg Klonopin daily (knocked me down from 6mg to 4mg on my first visit, practically as a way of saying hello). I think it's a fucking antihistamine. Christ...

8mg Zanaflex, just taken out of desperation. Zanaflex is supposed to reduce muscle spasticity. Joyous drug...

All this to try to tolerate being alive on this foul day as I have no doc to go to -- Dr 9 is on vacation, so I can't go in for a shot of Demerol or even an IV of Benadryl... Goddam it I'd take anything to sleep or be in less pain or... Christ, not be the thing I am now.

Anxious about the What if the Pain Center doesn't help me this Friday? I'll be totally, completely fucked.

And the pain, I cannot stress enough, is unbearable. I can't think of anything else and it's the one thing I don't want to think about...

Now I can't write any more. Too much being upright for today.

I hope to post tomorrow and the next -- off Friday for the Center appt. -- and then to write Saturday with great news. Hopefully of an oxycodone script large enough to kill a horse, but simply make my daily life bearable.

Viva hate...

Mixx it!