The selection of prescription medications and vitamins I take daily is a carefully crafted cocktail, frequently updated by my best physicians. I’m not perfect about getting them every day at the exact same time, but generally I get them more often than not. Major disturbances in my flow tend to have outsized consequences. Last summer’s detour from my routine during chemo made for extended periods of pain and fatigue not caused by the cancer drugs themselves, and it took months to get my blood concentration of lupus drugs back to levels that alleviated sufficient pain. I don’t like lengthy disruptions to that routine.
Now I’m waiting for a new biopsy, and they asked me to avoid taking anti-inflammatories for days prior to being punctured, so my blood isn’t too thin. I understand the desire to avoid excessive bleeding, but I’m cranky about the process and its effects. Daily prescription NSAIDs don’t do anything for acute pain, but they keep me closer to neutral for the chronic stuff. I haven’t taken that particular pill since Wednesday, and the stinging pain is already back. It’s like rolling in a hot tub full of tiny insulin needles. No tragic pain, but irritation galore, especially in my face and forearms. The needle biopsy is on Monday. I have days more to wait through the stinging. This is the less well known part of chronic illness, the death by a thousand cuts feelings. It seems petty to complain about it, but it gets all the nerve endings vibrating as much as a rollicking round of poison ivy, it really does.
I stayed home with my jangling nerves all day. There was solid snow for most of the day, enough to make the roads sloppy. Staying off of them was the wise choice. It was much more fun to take it easy, put on a giant pot of pea soup, and listen to tunes on Spotify that I hadn’t thought of in years. February is good for days like this.
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