Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff

[Macha]

@eye8urcake While I can't speak for your husband, as someone who also has that pain pill resistance (it takes morphine, for example) and auto immune nerve/spine damage - pot works better and faster for me than my sister who did not get my pain med resistance. Two or three big hits and I'm relaxed and daydreaming, and she's making fun of me.

[eye8urcake]

@Macha We smoke a lot and this is the first year we've managed to grow enough to not have to buy it, which has been a blessing. That painkiller resistance you both have seems to extend even to marijuana, but there is the bonus of him being able to get to sleep even when he's in pain that's a huge benefit - he's pretty hard to knock down and he's been on some terrifying cocktails.

He's more worried about sleep than pain relief, in terms of the hierarchy of shit that sucks in his life, mostly because lack of sleep makes his hypomania worse, so we're kind of always on the prowl for those things; 1) sleep, 2) some kind of relief from pain, with managing 1 giving us more time to figure out what will help with 2 at any given time, which varies wildly and sometimes is absolutely nothing.

[Rinel]

@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I was prescribed this once. I stopped taking it after a month because I noticed no difference at all. It led me to assume, for a long time, that it was one of those drugs that doesn't actually do anything and doctors prescribe it just to shut people up.

Oh, it works for me. I've just taken it for a very long time, and my body has grown used to it. When I first started taking it, it made everything feel incredibly cozy. Like you were curled up by a fire drinking hot cocoa.

As I said, I've almost certainly developed a dependency by this point, but it still does a hell of a job at stopping high anxiety in its tracks.

And, you know. Memory. High level cognition. Awareness. Reflexes. Stops those in their tracks, too...

[Auspice]

I just want something that works for chronic pain. That's all.

My legs are getting worse. Maybe it's the weather. I'm just tired of struggling just to walk in the mornings.

[boneghazi]

@Rinel Right? Thankfully my addiction wasn't as bad as it could have been, but my tolerance had grown so much that I was needing to take like 10 to 15mg at a time for the same "buzz" that .5 to 1mg was giving me when I first started.

I didn't have much of a choice with going cold turkey. I didn't have any more available and to be honest no one knew about my addiction. Not my friends or boss or husband or any family. I was embarrassed that something like that could happen to me (I do not have an addictive personality, as they say) but it's just so easy when your tolerance is through the roof to take more.. and more... and more.

The doctor that gave it to me didn't prepare me for the reality of benzos though. He didn't tell me about how addictive they were, or how dangerous or anything like that. I should have done my research but I was just so goddamn happy to get rid of my anxiety. I had started doing weird repetitive scratching on my hands with my nails, tearing the flesh off without realizing it and in my line of work (tattoo artist) having open sores on your hands is a pretty fuckin' bad idea. But I couldn't control it. I have no idea where it came from!

I also, near the end, had trouble with memory and just... felt slightly drunk all the time? But also.. numb?

Benzos are a hell of a drug.

[Rinel]

@nyctophiliac

That's horrible. But don't blame yourself. You should be able to trust your doctor, and so many are so careless with prescriptions. I'm lucky to have a wonderful psychiatrist, and we've kept my dose at 0.5 mg/bd with another 0.5 mg/bd as needed. So I take 1 - 2 mg per day. My dose hasn't changed in a year (hence the dependency and the lack of feel-goods), but I've seen what benzos have done to so many of my clients.

They're lifesavers, but they should be treated with way more respect by prescribers than they are.

[boneghazi]

@Rinel I am impressed you have the self control to manage to stick to it, with the lack of feel goods. When that happened to me I just took a quarter more.. and another quarter... and then.. on and on. It got way out of control way fast.

I'm glad to hear you also have a great psychiatrist, they are rare gems!

[surreality]

We have at least managed an appointment with the nurse practitioner in a little while. Ideally she'll be able to make a referral to Not That Guy, and handle my prescription refills. Fingers crossed.

It seeeeeeeeeeeeeeems to have calmed down a notch today, so I'm hoping they can arrange for a heavy duty antibiotic to knock it the rest of the way out over the weekend. Please please please please please...

[boneghazi]

@surreality I have no idea whats going on with you, I've never heard of any doctor saying.. that kind of thing. Yeeesh x_X good luck with the antibiotics.

[surreality]

@nyctophiliac It's... yeah, trust me, it's pretty gross. The tl;dr is: 'one of those weird corner case things that can happen in premenopause is that your body just decides, 'hey, you know these still work, right? Try lactating for that day or so before your period! THE CLOCK IS TICKING!' (Body's response paraphrased, obviously. )

1. This is shit they should really warn people about in health class no matter how rare it is, holy crap.
2. Since the rest of the body isn't set up for that, or getting it out of the body, infection is possible.

If antibiotics don't smite it, they can sometimes remove it with a needle. (Bad enough!) When you're a ridiculous cup size, though... not so much. Cut and swab and drain. (Do not ask me to describe the specifics of 'cut and swab and drain', TRUST ME.) It's seriously painful and takes body horror to a new level when you feel forceps stabbing at your palms from the inside of your body outward while fully conscious and already borderline panic attack. (Particularly when you have zero warning this is all about to happen.)

Maybe he thought I knew this was the process? Maybe he figured the people in the ER who tried the needle method gave me a heads-up this was next? I dunno. I just know he dove in without a word of explanation beyond 'hold this'.

Thankfully, the nurse practitioner was able to refer me to someone else in the department, and when I mentioned his name as the previous surgeon, well, the look on her face kinda said it all and she was very eager to set up connections with someone else.

Antibiotics until I can get in to see the new team, which is best possible outcome so far.

ETA: On the plus side, I don't get the worst kind of awful infection gross. Just massive buildup of water/plasma.

[Macha]

@eye8urcake Yeah. Relaxed, not pain free. But I get so tense when I keep trying to work through the pain, that even just relaxing so I can rest is a godsend. I used to use it just to fall asleep (Dad got me smoking with him when he realized I didn't sleep at night like he didn't), and now I use it when I'm so tensed up that I need to stop, or I might break.
Lucky me - Ambien works (though they took me off it, the bastards), and now I'm on a mix of gabapentin and something else.

[surreality]

...and they forgot to send in the refills for the prescriptions. Really? FML.

[Macha]

@surreality Fuckers.

[hedgehog]

@nyctophiliac

Yeah. I had my original pdoc 'fire' me for having the audacity to be late to appointments whilst not having childcare available, and didn't give me any Klonopin refills. Other than the occasional lateness, I was a completely compliant patient.

So that was months of detoxing and withdrawal from benzos that I had no medical assistance with. With an infant in the house.

[Wizz]

This year after a change to my meds, I started to fall asleep in the middle of the day and stay asleep for hours. I hated it so much, because I always feel like my free time is a precious and very limited commodity being a single papa and so this was robbing me of entire chunks.

Changing away from the meds back to a stronger dosage of the old seemed to help a lot, but now that winter is in full force and I've built a tolerance to my sleep aid, my sleep schedule is shot to shit and Iiiiiiii'm right back to sleeping in or just being so exhausted that I have to nap to even function, which increases the depression, which increases the urge to nap...it's miserable.

ETA:

@Macha said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Lucky me - Ambien works (though they took me off it, the bastards), and now I'm on a mix of gabapentin and something else.

Ugh. Gabapentin was what was knocking me out hard. It was wonderful for my anxiety, but holy shit did it feel like I was narcoleptic.

[Auspice]

I have to keep an ambien script myself. The other drug they had me try wouldn't help me sleep at all, but I'd spend the following day feeling drugged and out of it.

Thankfully, with the weighted blanket, I'm taking ambien even less frequently.

[Wizz]

@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Thankfully, with the weighted blanket, I'm taking ambien even less frequently.

I really ought to try one, but I get so hot when I sleep that it usually wakes me up just with a regular one. Kinda worry I would be a sweaty restless mess, haha.

[Auspice]

@Wizz said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Thankfully, with the weighted blanket, I'm taking ambien even less frequently.

I really ought to try one, but I get so hot when I sleep that it usually wakes me up just with a regular one. Kinda worry I would be a sweaty restless mess, haha.

I do wake up usually at some point to kick it off, but initially settling in? Ohhhh man.

Just get a fan!

[Macha]

@Wizz
I wish the gabapentin would knock me out. I got it for fibro pain/limb displacement disorder, but it doesn't put me out.

[Rinel]

@nyctophiliac said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Rinel I am impressed you have the self control to manage to stick to it, with the lack of feel goods.

Absent actual addiction, it's mostly a knowledge thing, not a self control thing. After all, now that you know what it's like, you haven't gone back! So you have just as much self-control as I do.

I have the dubious benefit of having written down "benzo addiction" on countless public defender intake interview forms while sitting in parish jail. That sort of thing does a good job of internalizing just how dangerous this stuff is.

I've just been lucky enough to be better informed than most about how the drugs work and what dependence on, much less addiction to, them is like.