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The good news is that all five pins were removed from my finger last week. The bad news is that the bruise covers half my palm and it's that putrid purplish-greenish color. The doctor prescribed Oxycontin. I love that man!
However, that's not what I'm addicted to. When the entire weekend is spent in bed in a drugged-up stupor, Facebook and work are prohibited on the doctor's orders. Lest I write something that I would later regret. At this point, the drugs have lessened and it's probably safe to go back in the writing pool.
Reading wasn't easy while on the heavy drugs. No concentration. Which means that movies were also too difficult to follow. Even when Mr. Gaelic queued up an old Popeye cartoon, my mind couldn't stay on the plot. Now that's saying a lot.
To occupy myself I reverted back to a deep, dark secret that only a few very close friends know about me. It's my p*rn habit. Actually, two different kinds. Because I like to spice things up a bit. My usual food p*rn websites make me hungry. But the meds kept me from salivating too much over gorgeous photos of flan and roasts and cream sauces and wine sauces and, well, you get the picture.
So instead I indulged in my other p*rn habit. House p*rn. Maybe I'm a frustrated, closet architect. Because I adore looking at house plans. And you can keep your colonial, center-stairway, ranch, split-level, saltbox, McMansions. I like modern house p*rn. Give me concrete and steel and glass and cantilevers and hearthless fireplaces.
This is one addiction that causes no harm. Until it's time for the retirement house.
There will be a short break in the challenge. After gearing up for my first motorcycle ride in almost four years, the pins in my finger were dislodged while wearing the protective gloves and spending a couple of hours on the motorcycle yesterday. The pain that had been occurring on both sides of my knuckle shifted all to one side. The knuckle looks not only massively swollen but also deformed. Even the mini Ace bandage wrapped around it to control the swelling sends me into stomping fits accompanied by more expletives than most sailors know.
Oxycontin is my constant friend until the doctor's office opens tomorrow morning. The new hand doctor (finally got to see him over three months after my original hand doctor's untimely death) said two weeks ago that his office would call me to schedule the in-office operation to remove the pins. Call me? My a$$! It reminds me of "Don't call us, we'll call you."
This has been one long weekend.
About three weeks ago, we had an ice storm and a two-hour delay for work with schools closed for the day. Mr. Gaelic, in typical male thinking, went out to scrape the ice from the truck, neglecting to salt the walk on the way to the vehicle. Two step out my front door, not even off the front stoop, and WHAM, I fall and shatter my left ring finger. Two cut-off wedding rings, five pins, one cast, and untold numbers of Oxycontin later, he readily admits he could have been more focused on safety and less focused on getting to the office "early".
The stitches came out Friday. While the nurse was removing the black threads (and let me just go on record as saying that having stitches removed from a finger hurts almost as much as the break itself), I was lamenting the scar I will have. The nurse (a man) suggested that a new ring might be in my future. Mr. Gaelic agreed. And I have a witness!
Mr. Gaelic has been very protective ever since my fall. He holds my arm in the snow, or walking down stairs; he carries bags for me; he drives me to work. (Oxycontin use prohibits driving, at least in my book.) He also drives me to my favorite hair salon to have my hair washed and blow dried. The bandage is supposed to stay dry and I wouldn't be able to hold both a hairdryer and brush even if he washed my hair for me at home.
Yesterday's salon outing also became a stop at my new favorite designer's store. Certain designers cut their clothes in a way that fits my body well without the need for alterations. Dana Buchman used to be my favorite until she discontinued her designer line in favor of a line exclusively for Kohls. She may be the same woman, but her clothes don't fit like they did when she had her own stand-alone stores.
Yet even with my new favorite designer, he has several labels and each one fits differently. His basic line fits me in the rear but not the waist or sleeve length. His next step up runs small for size. Even though dress size numbers don't bother me, if the mid-line label fits my waist and sleeve length, it doesn't fit my hips.
That leaves his top-end prêt-à-porter line. Prêt-à-porter is ready-to-wear, as opposed to his couture line which is seen on the catwalks of Bryant Park (oops, I mean Lincoln Center where they moved Fashion Week this year). Great. Just great. My body type fits the most expensive line. What's a girl to do?
Buy on sale only.
Which is what happened yesterday. I snagged a 100% cashmere dress for more than 75% off the original price. I didn't have to elbow my way through the crowds at Loehmann's or Filene's Basement or TJMaxx. The saleslady set us up in a cozy dressing room with a loveseat and table and offered us coffee and water. And the dress fits like a glove!
My new shopping habit won't be hitting the discount racks in strip malls, but hitting the stand-alone designer store downtown when they hang a Sale sign in the window. Same price, better service. Eureka! I have found my new favorite store!
Periodic Limb Movement Disorder (PLMD). That's my diagnosis. It's similar to Restless Leg Syndrome but much different. "PLMD is characterized by involuntary leg twitching or jerking movements during sleep that typically occur every 10 to 60 seconds, sometimes throughout the night. The symptoms cause repeated awakening and severely disrupted sleep. Unlike RLS, the movements caused by PLMD are involuntary - people have no control over them. " So says the NIH information on PLMD. It's a neurological disorder but nothing along the lines of a brain tumor or other more hypochondrical disease.My doctor said I had 15 of these movements a minute. That's one every four seconds. No wonder I'm so tired during the day. With that much moving around during the night, I'm getting more than my fair share of exercise while I sleep.
The nurse called with the results of the sleep study. She said it’s basically a neurologic problem and the doctor wants to see me. The appointment is for 1:30 today. Stay tuned, same bat time, same bat channel.
Insomnia is a b*tch. Actually, it’s the caffeine that they snuck into my afternoon supposedly decaf latte. Whatever the cause, the effect is the same. The inability to sleep until it’s time to get up.
Anybody willing to deal some of their Ambien?
Did you see "Lost in Translation"? That Sophia Coppola movie with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. Remember in the movie how they both were suffering from insomnia? My sleep cycle is such that my doctor ordered a sleep study. Sleeping in a strange bed is quite difficult. Try sleeping in a strange bed, with a noisy air conditioner, and wires attached all over your head, face, and body. There was what felt like almost an hour of trying to get to sleep. Then the what-felt-like an hour of: waking up, deciding a trip to the restroom would help, trying to get the technicians attention to unhook me, and then trying to get back to sleep.The technician woke me first to remove the wires because, of all the people spending the night, I was in the shallowest sleep. Arrgh!!! That was at 5:00 a. frickin' m. That makes less than five hours of sleep.While the technician was removing the wires, he said that I didn't snore. What a relief! But he said that he knew why I didn't sleep. Why? He couldn't tell me because he's not an M.D. Great. Another wait for the doctor to tell me what's going on. While I'm waiting, a little nap would feel so good. Where's Bill Murray when you need him?
There’s an old home movie that plays in my head. In the scene, the little redheaded girl wears a short dress, dating the movie from the late ‘60s. There’s a dirt road with nothing but brushes alongside. Down the edge of the road runs a small trickle of a stream. The little girl stoops down and scoops up a pebble which she quickly pops in her mouth. The father just as quickly sweeps her little mouth with his finger.
I’m not sure why that particular scene keeps running through my thoughts.
The past week has been almost a blur, fuzzy, snippets of life caught between lucidity and la-la-land. A friend who dropped by unannounced one day was stunned by the number of meds in my pill caddy. There’re enough narcotics in my house to bring the wrath of Nancy Reagan excepting that they all have labels slapped on the front with the prescribers’ DEA numbers.
My back injury and the accompanying meds to relieve the discomfort prevent me from fulfilling my duties in my chosen profession, homemaker – the third oldest according to Erma Brombeck, immediately following prostitution and motherhood. It’s an invisible injury, unlike a broken leg, and it’s one without a definite timeline for recovery, unlike a broken leg. Regardless, I beat myself up for not being able to do the work I chose to do. There’s guilt for having muddy paw prints on my wooden floors, for not meeting my youngest at the bus stop every day, for not having supper on the table when my husband gets home, and for being so off-schedule on my sleep cycle that my routines no longer seem to coincide with anyone who means anything to me.
It’s not as easy as removing a pebble from a child’s mouth. Although it’s as hard to chew as a pebble. It was simpler then, in the ridges of the mountains. It was more comforting then, in the arms of my father. The loop begins again. The little hand reaches into the cold water and pulls out a shiny round rock. It’s frozen in time. And in my mind.
There is a small tear in one of the discs in my lower back. The spinal fluid chemically irritates the nerve which causes awful lower back pain that radiates down my leg to my toes, to the point of making my toes feel like there are pins and needles in my shoes, my socks, or even on the bare floor. My doctor finally found a combination of meds that dull the pain enough for me to make it through the day without too much agony. But those same pills are enough to also knock me out if I end up doing something non-active like, say, eating lunch.To help with the joints, the doctor also recommends taking fish oil every day. After adding in the calcium tablets and the other vitamins, to keep track of all the pills I had to buy a multiple-slot pill caddy. My kids joke that it looks like a senior citizen's pill caddy.Last night at supper, I discovered that one of the cats had knocked off the pill caddy during the day. After putting everything back in, three pills were missing. Two fish oil capsules and one Schedule C pain pill. The cat was probably going for the fish oil. But that explains why he slept all day yesterday and all night without getting up once.
By now, we’ve all seen it – the photo of Michael Phelps smoking a bong at a college party. During the Olympics, Phelps was chemically clean. When Olympic gold medals and multimillion-dollar sports contracts are at stake, we hear all about chemical enhancers. But aren’t we all guilty of using drugs to enhance our performances?
Yes, you. Think about it. We wake up groggy and head straight to the kitchen for our morning cup of coffee in preparation of that nine o’clock meeting at work. To combat the mid-afternoon food coma, we walk down to the corner Starbucks for a get-me-through-the-next-three-hours cup of Joe. And that’s just caffeine. Add in the sleeping pills (OTCs as well as Lunesta, Ambien, and Rozerem) to enhance our sleep, tobacco to enhance our steadiness, and alcohol to enhance our calmness and you’ve got a vicious circle of chemical enhancers.
We heard a lot about Floyd Landis’s use of steroids in the Tour de France. We heard a little about the North Korean shooter who was stripped of his Olympic Silver after testing positive for a beta-blocker taken to steady the hands. But have you heard about poker player Paul Phillips who admitted that Adderall and Provigil helped him rack up $2.3 million in his tournament career? What about the two Air Force pilots who were on speed (Dexedrine) when they dropped a friendly-fire bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers and wounded eight more in Afghanistan?
Wow! Using cognitive enhancers is more widespread and more desired than physical performance enhancers. (Okay, let’s just leave Viagra out of this, shall we?) Cognitive enhancers can help you stay completely clear until the task at hand is accomplished, but doesn’t leave you jittery like caffeine. Most of us know that we’ll never be on the level with world-class athletes who compete for a living. Our livings are made, more and more it seems, in white-collar fields where cognitive enhancers could help us deal better with overbearing bosses and the not-enough-hours-in-the-day syndrome. So we rationalize our use of cognitive enhancers by tsk-tsking the doping athletes while downing the Working Mother’s Little Helper.
So, before the estimated 600 new cognitive enhancers hit the market by the end of the century, maybe we just need to take a look at our out-of-whack ways of living, step away from the medicine cabinet, and just take a nap for a change.
