A SORT OF HOMECOMING!

I had to sleep for 24 hours from Saturday and into an hour ago -- ah, sweet chronic fatigue syndrome -- so I haven't posted in a bit.

Yesterday I would sleep for five to six hours, until my pain would come back as my OxyContin wore off, then I would take a pill at the predetermined time. (Every day I make a med schedule as soon as I wake up so my OxyContin and Klonopin doses are as spaced out as they should be to make it possible for me to suffer the least amount possible.) And when the pills(s) would kick in I would go back to sleep.

Sleeping all day Sunday was preceded by my hanging out in downtown Lummox Saturday night. I dressed well -- a habit from living in DC and being taught what to wear and why by my best friend, a gay guy with impeccable taste -- which was suitable for where I had dinner... Which consisted of crispy duck with a spicy-sweet plum sauce that had been injected beneath a crispy, fried skin, paired with an IPA. With a few notable exceptions, the best thing to pass between my lips since I left DC -- by far.

But the place closed at 11, and I wanted to see if I could run into anyone I knew at the sports bar a parking lot away in the block-in-any-direction downtown. I succeeded, and hoisted a few with people I hadn't seen since high school, buying Jager shots for anyone who wanted them.

The good thing about offering Jager shots: not many takers. Especially good when one has absolutely no income...

So I walked around the bar, which was having karaoke night. Some people sang songs from the '80s that weren't even cool then. The rest sung country songs, which was what I expected.

I mingled with the local girls, and was pegged as gay, most likely, by a large number of them because I wasn't wearing jeans, sneakers and a flannel shirt. Otherwise I was written off as an outsider most likely conducting some kind of sociological experiment. Which they did not flatter themselves with -- it would make me "in the mist," and them gorillas.

The girls were stuffed into their tacky clothes like sausage into most-unnatural casing. The most attractive woman there would be considered hideously overweight in DC. (Just as I would be... While I lived in DC I committed the following crime against humanity: I didn't have a personal trainer.) The funniest thing, I thought, was that saying "hi" apparently counts as a pick-up line in Lummox, and not a conversation starter. I even thought, once or twice, that I was going to get a light beer tossed in my face for my having the temerity to simply greet women in the customary, two-letter, manner.

I hung about for an hour or so, appreciating (unironically) the differences between the scene in Lummox and the scene(s) in DC.

I especially appreciated the fact there's a place I can go to for perhaps the best duck in the United States -- a place where dressing well is expected... And blighted only by the fact that to pick up a woman there you have to be able to work magic on a married forty-year-old, which is beyond me.

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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.

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THE NO-LOGIC ZONE!

[Fox News doesn't have the copyright to the above for some reason...]

This should be short because I am damn tired today.

Why?

Because I went in to my doctor's today determined to make him deal with my body and limb pain. I wouldn't even say a word having to do with my head or headaches.

I also was determined not to get kicked out of another practice, so I knew I had to keep myself from yelling, and that meant a few tears would show up in my eyes as I described my pain and how nothing had been done about it and nothing at all seemed to be in the offing... Except physical therapy, which makes my pain a lot worse.

Lately I can't eat and it hurts to digest even water because it feel like I spend every day doing nothing but crunches. My stomach is all Alien-acid-infused muscle that surrounds a stomach full of thousands, millions of microscopic, circular razor blades.

Anyway, the doc knows all about my body pain. I've told him enough times. The fact that I no longer can eat or drink fluids should have had him worried, however.

And maybe it did. Because finally I was put on an IV (They wanted to do this last week). The nurse and doc wouldn't tell me what was in it because they wanted to see if it helped my pain, and by how much. As I was asking if the sauce was supposed to feel like lava in my bloodstream, I passed out.

When I woke up, it was easy to gather that the nurse and doctor were a little too self-satisfied -- I had come in saying I needed painkillers to be able to eat and drink (water) in large enough amounts to keep me alive. But I was proven wrong. Obviously, their IV had worked on my pain, or how else could I sleep?

Because the fuckers gave me a drip of fucking Benadryl, that's how. And you only give you or anyone else an antihistamine if they're having an allergic reaction and/or if you want them to stop annoying you (if it isn't given for pain, it's given to put people to sleep). I don't know why parents don't make use of copious amounts of antihistamine on long car rides...

So I woke up, came home, went back to sleep, woke up and am writing this instead of having dinner.

And, of course, my pain is right where it was before the Benadryl. (Point conceded: I needed the sleep. More important point: I need 24/7 pain relief you (Dr) scrotum toupee (toupees made with 100 percent all-natural human hair)!

The doc is off tomorrow, and I'm fine with not seeing him then. Hopefully it will give my psychologist's materials time to get to Dr 9. After he gets the psych's opinion, if I'm not put on painkillers it would be wise for me to quit the practice altogether and just order pills online or score smack on the street.

But I live with my parents, so none of that will be happening.

Fuck. Stay tuned to see how I get out of this corner...

[Pain: Intolerable.

Anxiety: Intolerable.

Hell: other people.]

PS: I can't say enough that everyone with fibro has a duty to make their doctors' lives as close to their own hell as possible until the docs finally gets to the point that, to make their own lives better, they have to improve yours. It's the only way fibromyalgians are going to get the meds we need.

We have to fight and scrape and claw to be the ones who define how fibro is treated while fibro is just coming into mainstream consciousness.

At the doctor's office, keep being an asshole. And if you aren't one, start now. No matter how nice your doc is -- Dr 9 is nice as hell, as far as his demeanor, all the while keeping me in a prison he could write a few words on his script-pad and set me free of (a malevolent fuckwit with a smile is still a malevolent fuckwit) -- if he or she hasn't gotten you as close to 100 percent pain-free as possible, he or she is an impediment, may as well be the one causing you the harm by not taking it away, and he or she doesn't deserve an ounce of respect or deference. Give none but what is required to keep you in the practice, receiving the best treatment you can until you can get better and better and better treatment. (Ask everyone and their double-secret cousin about doctors who are good with fibro or just plain loose with narc scripts.)

And nothing really works for horrible pain but narcs. Don't settle. Never settle, and never give in. Fuck what's convenient for your doctor, for the medical community -- when your every waking minute is agony, you deserve to be a little selfish.

And I know writing "I need narcs" a million times makes it look like I want narcs for their own sake. Well, maybe to those of you who took a nasty fall a while ago and didn't come back 100 percent from the concussion. I refer you, Concussion Charlies of the world, to the above description of my abdominal pain. And to all my other posts which, in some way, I'm sure, refer to my pain. The sad thing is these descriptions aren't exaggerations.

And Charlie, I wonder if a scrotum toupee wouldn't cover up your scar(s) nicely, while making you irresistable to women!

PPS: If anyone has experienced near-100 percent fibro relief from anything but narcs -- and if anyone writes me about the guafenesin protocol it goes right in the goddam trash unless it comes with a double-blind, controlled study proving its efficacy -- tell me about it.

If there were such a thing, I think all fibromyalgians would be on it though, don't you?

When what is, essentially, a cure, is found, the news can't be guarded by grizzly bears that protect the thing as though it was their own cubs.

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I HATE THE WORLD SLIGHTLY LESS!

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It turns out that my visit to my new shrink -- actually, he wasn't a shrink, but a psychologist -- was quite productive. He agreed that I need to be on a pain management protocol.

Pills, people. Stronger than Vicodin.

He agrees I need to enter the land of as-pain-free-as-possible.

And I love him.

The coolest moment was this:

I came off a rant, describing my pain, the red-hot pokers jabbed halfway through my torso from the back, six on each side of my spine, the constant marathoner's lactic acid burn in my legs, the aching in my arms that makes them feel swelled like spinached Popeye, the always-on migraine (and its friends nausea, phono- and photophobia), and he said

"Don't take this the wrong way, and don't get mad... but I really wouldn't want to be you.

"To the extent I can imagine what it must be like to be you, I wouldn't trade places with you for anything. You have to go to U of M, to Detroit, to Chicago... You have to get on a program that Dr 9 can stick to..."

I thanked him because he was the only one who hadn't condescended to me after my pain-description tirade. "Oh my god I'm so sorry. Try to stay positive." Christ. Let me douse you with gasoline, light a match and you try to fucking stay positive.

The good doctor is going to stay (very) late to dictate a message to Dr 9 to tell him that I need to get on an extremely aggressive pain management protocol. And he's going to follow up.

He cares.

Caring is creepy for a doctor to do in this purgatory of a town.

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