OWW MY SCREAMY HEART

Spent all day with the Heart doc. Left feeling crushed. They'll be calling me tomorrow to make test appointments. He suspects blockage in additional vessels. I can't breathe. I can't breathe because all the air has suddenly been sucked out of my world by the enormous vacuum called *bad news.* I have the misfortune of having shitty genes and an abundance of lipoprotein-a. I am about to crawl under the porch, taking my nitro pills with me. Nobody better get a stick and poke at me, because by God I just might snap.

Bad Haiku of December

My winter pallor

Not unlike summer pallor

I am milk on snow

OWW MY SCREAMY BOOBS, ROUND 3

This morning bright and early I toddled off to Dr. Turban-wearer's office. I waited in the waiting room. I waited in the exam room. When he finally got to me he said straight away, "I am sending you back to your referring physician and releasing you. There is nothing I can do for you."

"Releasing me? After only one visit and only one drug?" I pleaded.  No response. "WTF is the matter with you?"

"There is nothing I can do to help you." He looked at the floor.

"So you're just giving up? You're not even going to try? What about the drugs I'm on now? Where am I supposed to get those? You know perfectly well a primary won't prescribe the narcotics I've been taking! What about my panic attacks? Where am I supposed to get Ativan, without which I will soon be hospital-bound?"

Without looking at me even once, he launched into preaching mode, "This is a pain you are just going to have to learn to live with. You have too many things wrong with you. Your heart, your back, your various injuries, your neuro-muscular issues...all of these are sources of pain and there is nothing I can do that will make it better. We all have to live with pain. For instance right now I have a headache and my hip hurts. See how I am standing?"

"I don't give a shit about your headache or your fucking hip. Take some aspirin and go see your referring physician."  I left.

I got into my car and sat in the parking lot for about 15 minutes just weeping. I have 24 days to find a drug source or I'm up shit creek. This pain is unendurable. Even with drugs it is barely manageable. I can't just *learn to live with it* since it affects every aspect of my life. It affects how I get out of bed, how I put on clothes, how I comb my hair, what I eat and how I eat it. Goddammit I can't even take a shower since each bead of water that falls on my skin feels like a dagger.

Sheer desperation has made me consider having mastectomies, wondering if I actually cut off my screamy boobs if they'll stop being so urgently screamy. On the other hand, if it's the nerve that is damaged, the nerve will still be there, and so will the pain. I can't win.

Suddenly it all becomes clear, and I understand it completely. This my friends, is exactly how heroin addicts get made -- out of sheer desperation.

OWW MY IMAGINARY BACON

I had high hopes for the drug, Lyrica. I took it for a total of two weeks. The first week I felt pretty good. The second week I started crying. Not just crying like my eyes were leaking, but crying as in sobbing and wailing in grief. I'm still not over it.

I called Dr. Turban-wearer's office to report my symptoms. After taking a ration of shit from his secretary, my phone call was returned later that day.  She had the gall to say to me, "Well, are you a patient of Dr. Turban-wearer's? I just don't know why you would be calling here to tell me you're having symptoms." I was stunned.  I said, "No, lady. I just picked a random phone number to call out of the phone book.  YES, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, I AM A PATIENT.  Do you have a pen in your hand? Yes? Great, write this down..."

Last night I dreamt I was eating a bacon sandwich with mayonnaise and cranberry sauce, of all things. I was crying while I was eating it. I woke up crying in actuality. This is how fuckered my brain has become in only two short weeks of Lyrica. I can't sleep worth a damn. Not sleeping is nothing new, but I certainly don't need dreams that make me cry when I finally do manage to fall into a deep enough sleep to conjure up a dream.

If you engage me in conversation, you might not get answers you're expecting. Consider this fair warning: I am not my usual "ray of sunshine" self. The fact that I can recognize that I am slightly off is a good thing, I suppose. Now, I'm just hoping it passes quickly. I don't need to be a total uber-depressed nutjob in addition to my *regular* ailments.

My next appointment with Dr. Turban-wearer is October 24, when I suppose he will move onto the next drug. I'm running out of possibilities and time both, FFS. Since the recent news of contaminated steroid shots and the resulting outbreak of meningitis, I am ever so glad I didn't jump on the shot bandwagon right away. I'm desperate, but not desperate enough for meningitis.

THE HOARD OF PAIN

Dammit, I started a gout attack yesterday. Just what I needed, another pain. Incidentally, let's talk about SCREAMY FRIGGIN PAINS...Gout is a very urgent, acute type of stabbing pain. I don't know if it's connected to the change in meds or not.  It is on the opposite side from where my previous attacks have occurred. I guess I'll find out, won't I? The only bonus in having a gout attack is that it makes my other pains seem less urgent. Yay for the brain, which has a way of addressing the most hideous pain first, and kind of shoving the other pains into the background. UGH!

It occurred to me today while watching TLC, that I have become a collector of pains-- a pain hoarder, if you will. Honest-to-goodness *stuff* hoarders will collect things and not even notice it's a problem until they are positively inundated by their items, or killed when a pile collapses on them. They rarely seek help unless until their horrible secret is discovered by loved ones, or the stench alerts authorities.  My hoard of various pains is slowly killing me, smothering me under their weight, looming over me in a great, teetering pile, affecting every aspect of my life.  Where did I put that snorkel?

2ND OPINION: OWW MY SCREAMY BOOBS

I just got back from seeing a new pain specialist, hereafter to be known as *Dr. Turban-wearer,* and I have a new plan of attack. I had been hoping for injections, but he said since my pain is neuralgic/ neuropathic in nature, injections would probably not help and might even make me worse. He gave me three new drugs to try, one of which is Lyrica.

Dr. Turban-wearer told me today that when they opened my chest and spread the ribs apart, the nerves to T5 and T6 were damaged, which certainly explains the screamy boobs and the rib pain. It does not explain the continuing sternum pain. It does not explain my screamy xiphoid process. So, I got some answers, but not all. I am supposed to call him after five consecutive days on the drugs he issued today, to say if I am better or the same. WOW, he expects a result in only 5 days.  That alone makes me a little hopeful.

He said, "I know you are in terrible pain, but I also think you are a little mad." I asked if he meant *mad* as in bat-shit crazy, or *mad* as in angry? He laughed. I admitted to both. Being in pain this long without help has made me crazy. Being in pain this long and having doctors who do nothing has certainly made me angry.

I have completely stopped taking Neurontin/Gabapentin, the drug which was responsible for turning me into a floppy rag doll. All along it had not been helping my pain, and Dr. Whackadoo's solution was to increase the doseage, which only made me more clumsy and more floppy. The last thing any myasthenic needs is additional help at being weak (the point Dr. No-Fly, the neurologist, had been trying to make from the get-go). 

I have an appointment with Dr. Whackadoo tomorrow. It will most likely be my last visit with him, unless he has received some profound revelation in the past several days, or has miraculously grown wings and stigmata since the last time I saw him.

DUELING DOCS - A TALE OF TWO TITTIES

At this very moment Dr. Whackadoo and Dr. No-Fly are duking it out over my medications. I wish I could get them in the same room and mediate.  No-Fly says Whackadoo's meds are poison. Whackadoo says I must take the crap he's prescribed AS prescribed.  I am inclined to agree with
Dr. No-Fly, unfortunately I just can't stop taking these drugs, as much as I'd like to do it.

The subject of today's battle in particular is Neurontin, aka Gabapentin, which has turned me into a rag doll.  I'm weak, short of breath with any movement, unable to walk more than 20 feet - plus...THE KNIFE IN MY CHEST IS KILLING ME.  How many times do I have to tell them that before someone hears? This drug is obviously not helping my pain. The whole reason Whackadoo exists is to treat pain. Nothing else, just pain.

Let me give you today's pain example: This morning in the bathtub, gingerly wiping *Lefty* with a soapy washrag caused me to scream and gasp for breath.  WTF?

Dr. Whackadoo is a small, scrawny man. I could easily crush him with one blow, even in my weakened state.  I think constantly about crushing Whackadoo. I think about grinding my heel into his adam's apple after he's hit the floor. Of course, this crushing and grinding does not happen until I've fastened a bulldog binder clip to each of his nipples and given them several twists, so he has a slight inkling of how my chest feels. I'd have to tie him up first because I know he'd never hold still. He's the type that would go all squirmy and piss himself in the face of any threat. That, and I can't run him down due to having the legs of a rag doll.  Well-played, Dr. Whackadoo--incapacitate the linebacker-sized woman with drugs BEFORE she does you great bodily harm. Pfft.

I can lay on my couch.  I can walk to my bathroom.  I can walk into my garage and get in the car. I can feed my dogs and let them out. If it's not boiling hot outside, I can even stand on my patio while the dogs are doing their dog things. I really can't do much else, other than watch life go on around me without being a part of it. So, if some tragic event happens to befall Dr. Whackadoo, I have a perfect alibi. Unless the Memphis PD has a Jedi Mind Trick or Voodoo Department I figure I'm safe. Oh, but a girl can dream...