GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1013: MY CALENDAR IS STILL PACKED AWAY

 

Yesterday I found my motivational bottle of whiskey. There's maybe a quarter-inch of booze in there, and I'm guaranteed not to drink it because the original cork broke, and there are hundreds of pieces floating in the bottle. But I do like to take a sniff from the neck every once in a while. Sometimes it smells glorious, but most times it grosses me out, the desired effect.

It's been three years and a handful of days since my last drink. I don't know how many days because my calendar is still packed away. However, I made an ugly discovery this morning while refilling my bottle of liquid Vicodin from the cannister CVS gave me. I usually get a little red flask of the stuff, but for some reason I got the cannister this time. I read the label and found, much to my horror, that there is alcohol in this.

So technically I haven't had a drink since the last time I took my medicine.

I'm supposed to take 15 mL every four hours. That is the equivalent of a sip of decent beer at 6.7% ABV.

After some agonizing I decided that it doesn't count against my years and days. #1: I had no idea that there was alcohol in this. #2: It's not like I'm drinking this stuff to get wasted. Sure, the pain gets to be a bit much sometimes, so I'll take 30 mL, but it's not recreational. I'm using this as directed, as a painkiller.

Yes, I can hear myself. I used to drink to kill the pain of a terrible constant months-long headache, and that was how I became an alcoholic.

It gets worse. The temptation to drink in this new home is exceptionally strong. I've almost gotten myself convinced that I can just have a couple of drinks to unwind each night. Right now I have edibles to unwind. My new home is a nonsmoking place. You can't even smoke on the property. So I've stopped smoking weed, but the edibles aren't kicking in like they used to.

Yes, I can still hear myself. I'm looking for an excuse to get fucked up. I'm writing this to convince myself to *not* do that.

Because the rest of me is very much onboard with getting fucked up, but as I write this I can feel myself coming to my senses. Yet: "Hey, man, you don't have *any* days because you fucked up. You took the liquid Vicodin. So give up. Go get some bourbon. There's a place just down the street. It's a college town! There's a place just down *every* street! Let's go, dude!"

The other day I stopped in a Casey's to use the bathroom, and I had to crutch (I'm on a walker, not a crutch, but "walker" my way doesn't sound right) my way past the liquor section. I scowled at Evan Williams, but Larceny? Whoo-boy. I loved Larceny. If I wasn't in dire straits of a piss, I would have stopped and considered. Considering might have lead to something else.

The one thing that stops me flat is the cage on my leg. I can't tell you how many times I've almost fallen over on the walker dead sober. I have stopped myself from eating it each and every time. But if I was drunk . . .

It doesn't matter. The cage is coming off tomorrow. I won't have that to stop me soon. But I will still be in a cast. Maybe that will help.

Speaking of which, I've been advised that it's possible the cage *won't* come off tomorrow. My surgeon asked me to get a CT scan today (last minute) because she's afraid two of my bones haven't fused together. If they haven't, she said she won't take the cage off.

THE CAGE MUST COME OFF. I'm at the very end of my wits on this. I can't have this cage on me anymore. The longer it's on, the higher the risk of a bone infection and a subsequent amputation. But that's not what's eating me. I NEED TO WALK AGAIN. I can't keep crutching around on walkers and actual crutches (I use one for stairs). No matter how much of my liquid Vicodin I take, I'm still in pain, especially when I'm on stairs. I can't take it anymore. I literally can't.

Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow, and the surgeon will tell me that the CT scan showed the bones didn't fuse, so the cage isn't coming off. Or I'll go under, and when I wake up the cage will still be there. The cast is supposed to be a walking cast, so I've decided that if I can't walk around tomorrow on my feet, sans cage, I am going to get a bottle of Wild Turkey 101, and I'm going to drink myself into oblivion.

I know that sounds crazy, but have you ever spent approximately three months with a cage around one of your feet? One that keeps several metal rods going through your flesh and bone in place? So that you're in constant pain that whole time?

We're going to find out about a lot of things tomorrow. Things have been going my way lately. I can only assume this will go my way, too. So here's to hoping I walk out of the hospital on two feet tomorrow, and that I'm carrying my folded up walker under one arm. Wish me luck.

I really hope the cage comes off for many, many reasons, but one of the big ones for me is, I'll finally be able to change my boxers. I've been wearing the same pair since the cage was installed. The ones I'm wearing are pretty rank by this point. I spray them with air freshener every day. But hey! No pee stains or skidmarks! 

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #987: THE BIG MOVE, PART 2

 I woke up super early yesterday morning so I could move the last of my shit out of the hotel. I begrudgingly got dressed and went downstairs to get a handcart from the lobby. Except there were none. FUCK. I had to carry this shit out by hand, and my back was giving me troubles. It took me a while, but I got everything down. I had enough time to give myself a half an hour to rest before I got ready for work and to leave the hotel for good.

[Not for nothing, but there were other people humping their shit out to their cars by hand. I'm not the only one the handcart thieves put through hell.]

Something told me not to return both keys. I'm glad I didn't.

On the way to work I started feeling weird, like maybe I was about to get another bout of my mystery illness, except I didn't have any liquid vicodin. I'd used the last of it two days previous to stave off another attack. Not that I had a bed to retreat to, now that the hotel was gone.

I got to work, and before I could punch in, I felt the illness come upon me. I begged to leave work, and I barely made it back to the hotel in time to puke my guts out. Horrible. Horrible shit. But it happened, and I knew it would continue. I tried to ride it out in the hotel bed for the two hours I had left before checkout time, but I couldn't do it. I gave up and went to the ER.

Surprisingly the ER didn't have much of a wait time. I got to my room pretty quickly. The doctor took a little while, but when I finally saw him he agreed to give me my Zofran and morphine. I felt the morphine take hold, and the pain went away.

But not the vomiting, which was unusual. I kept getting up and puking more and more until I had to ask for help. I asked for anything stronger. They gave me another dose of each. That seemed to put off the puking, at least a little bit. Because the ER rush had begun, they had to get me out of there. Except . . . where could I recover? The hotel was done for real this time. I couldn't drive to my new home in Joliet. I wouldn't have lasted very long on that hour-plus trip.

One good thing: when they discharged me, my primary doctor must have seen I was in the ER. My liquid vicodin was ready.

I could only go back to my old house. So far no one had changed the locks or cleared out the stuff we abandoned, and I hoped that would continue. Because I was puking again.

I went home and saw that thankfully I still had access. The place was cold as fuck and smelled like the bathroom, but I went straight to the couch we abandoned--an uncomfortable affair, I assure you--where I found a couple of throw pillows and took my liquid vicodin.

I passed out for a while, but when I woke up I still felt pukey. I drank more of it and tried to sleep again. I repeated this dance until about 10 am this morning. I was feeling a little hungry, which was the first sign of the horror passing.

So I brought all my stuff down to Joliet, where I'm typing this in the basement. I live down here with a cat and two ferrets. I'll be sleeping on my air mattress. But most importantly, it's a weed-friendly house, so I don't have to go outside to smoke.

I'm glad to be out of the hotel, but my mystery illness is a prick, and it struck at the worst possible moment. But I have the cure for now. I don't expect to feel this bad for another two months at least.

Also, my three minute commute is gone. My new commute is going to be an hour and ten, possibly thirty, minutes. Maybe not on Saturday, but still, that blows. At least my regular day off is tomorrow. I only have two doctors appointments, and the rest of my day is mine to unpack the rest of my crap. I just have the essentials out now.

To quote a great man, "OK for now." I'm going to bed.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #981: FUCK THIS SICKNESS

 About an hour and a half into my workday, I started getting the telltale signs that I'm about to have a bout with my usual sickness, the one that sends me to the ER after puking days on end. It shouldn't have happened. I usually get bad constipation when this happens, and I fired a formidable torpedo this morning. The first sign after that is a desire to keep stretching. Ordinarily when I stretch, it wakes me up, and I don't have to do it again. I already moved oxygen to my muscles. But a sickness stretch is something else. I keep stretching because there's something uncomfortable happening to my guts. That's when the spot shows up. It's not visible, but I can put my finger on it when it arrives. It's a spot that is nauseous at first, then starts turning into a pain point. When it starts to hurt, I know I'm fucked. So I asked my supervisor if I could leave early.

Because I do have one thing that can stop this sickness. I've discussed it previously. It's why I have the liquid vicodin (referred to as "laudanum" by my hetero lifemate, Rob Tannahill). If I catch it in time, I can put a stop to the sickness. If I've already begun to puke, it's too late. A couple of months ago, I had just such an occurrence. I woke up needing to puke immediately, and I tried to use the liquid vicodin afterwards, but it just wouldn't work by that point.

I got it in time today. I'd reached the point where I knew I was going to puke. It was almost to the point where I said, fuck it, and puked anyway. But I knew if I did that, I'd be stuck in my hotel room for days, puking my guts out and then dry-heaving when my guts have nothing more to give. Going through that at home sucks, but when you're living in a hotel?

The liquid vicodin has to be teamed with Zofran, so I took that first and then drank down a dose and a half of the, uh, laudanum. It put me down for six hours (it's fucking liquid vicodin, so I'm surprised I wasn't down for longer), but when I woke up I no longer felt sick. For the past couple of days I had a tightness in my belly that is no longer there, and I think that might be an earlier warning system if I'd been paying attention.

Today was not fun for me, but I survived without going to the ER. That's usually a good sign that I won't suffer the sickness again for a while. All the same, I had plans for the day, and those went up in smoke.

Ah well. I'd prefer life outside the ER, anyway.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #926: LIQUID VICODIN

 

You might remember from last night that I mentioned having a liquid opioid for pain since I can't take pills. I took the recommended dose, and I'm impressed. It's vicodin, in case you were wondering.

It surprised me by not taking effect quickly. I assumed that since it was liquid it would work faster. I remember thinking, maybe I should take more, but the doctor told me this is highly addictive, and he confirmed that I do, indeed, have enough to addict me. I doubted it at the time, but he also gave me Naloxone just in case of OD. Maybe he wasn't fucking around, after all. He hedged his bets. So I left it as is.

When it hit, it hit pretty hard. I've had many opioids throughout my life, and of those available to the public with a prescription? This is easily the best. The next step up, in my experience, is getting a morphine injection, which the public would have to be in the hospital to get. It killed my pain, but the rush is fairly intense. I'm not going to fuck around with this. It's potent, and I already want more of it. In fact, I may keep this aside for when I get another bout of my sickness. I have a sneaking suspicion this might stop such a bout.

I took another dose this morning because my guts were still troublesome, and it was a sensation I very much enjoyed, so I'm going to see if I can muscle through the rest of this pain. It should be gone by now, but I'm guessing the torn esophagus had something to do with it. I also have liquid Tylenol, which may work better for now.

But it's good to know I have this stuff in my back pocket.