We have a strange relationship with pain killing medication around here. We go through enough traumatic bodily events to need serious pills, according to the doctors. But neither of us, nor either of the kids while they were still living with us, enjoy the feeling of being fuzzy and not in full control of our faculties. For that matter, the kids barely even wanted to take ibuprofen, much less anything more extreme, for their aches and pains. The man is the least likely of any of us to be willing to take the prescription pills that come after surgery. (Nor is he likely to follow doctor's orders to take it easy -- I had to chase him back inside from doing yardwork the day after his gall bladder came out.) I have been prescribed more pills of all kinds than a woman my age should ever have seen, and I have absolutely not taken them all. I can't stand the side effects of most of them, and for others, I don't like the primary effects either. I am due for another trip to a pharmacy take-back day, to return things I will never consume, for any reason. I don't need them taking up space in my house, and I don't need the risk that some visitor to my house will go nosing through and find expired meds that could do harm. And the last thing I want to do is flush them down the toilet, to pollute the municipal water supply. I shudder to think how many pharmaceuticals are already swirling through my tap water as is.
For all that I want to wean myself off of my pain pills as soon as possible, I did find myself on the phone with the doctor today, asking what I ought to do. My belly hurt like I had been punched, and I looked in that medicine bottle and counted. If I stay on the percocets, I don't have enough to get through the weekend. But the docs are not allowed to refill those kinds of meds over the phone (or maybe that's just a rule from this particular practice, I don't know), so I have been encouraged to transition myself to plain old ibuprofen. I was relieved to be offered that advice. It will help me feel more in control of my destiny, and less dependent on substances that keep me from being able to drive or to think clearly.
The man and some of his friends were boasting about some of those "traumatic bodily events" this evening, joking about body parts that have been accidentally removed or resculpted. The only time I ever saw my man under the influence of morphine, it was while he was stretched out in a California hospital, holding his suddenly-shortened thumb on a pillow on his chest, while he made wisecracks about accident paperwork that needed to be filled out. This evening, he wrote a haiku on the subject, and I warned him I would reprint it. Here it is.
Haiku to My Table Saw
You cut wood so quick
Make it easy to build stuff
Oh, crap, my thumb! Zing!
Now, if only I could find that picture we took when he got home from the reattachment surgery, as he sat on the couch in his bathrobe, with his thumb extended in a giant white bandage, like an out-sized hitchhiker's hand gesture. He was doped out of his mind, and he smiled broadly while he held the sign we made for him and his giant thumb, "Vegas or bust!" Instead, I just have a couple lovely pictures of the Motherpark, one of a beautiful sunset, the other of the dusting of snow it got this afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment