Pain: Pt. 4

LOLCAT Weekly Roundup 10, courtesy of Maggie Jochild's Meta Watershed.

Emergency Root Canal

Tomorrow afternoon I'm having an emergency root canal.

Till after it is done and this pain goes away, I'm pretty much off line.

It's been over ten years since I had an emergency tooth extraction. It was an emergency because the infection had gone too far for a root canal, and the pain was so intense I thought someone was beating me in the face with a pipe.

This is rapidly approaching that level of pain, and that's in the face of MASSIVE loads of penicillin, as well as three different pain medications along with drugs designed to ease how the pain meds work. (My pain doc just approved my increasing my major pain drug to almost double for three days.)

Feels precisely like someone is hitting me in the face with a one-inch pipe. (The scar on my left lower chin.) WHAM.

This is what Lower Manhattanite went through back in April. THE FUCKING PAIN... Pain: Pt. 2

I almost drove my car into a fucking bridge abutment back in the late 90s when I had no health insurance and was out of my goddamn head with the pain. I would have done almost anything, up to and including taking my head off, to just.make.it.stop.

I have dental insurance now; didn't then. I had to wait a day or two for the money to be transfered from Arizona from Mom to pay for the extraction, all the while reminding myself I had four children.

People used to die from dental infections (and poor people sometimes still do.)

Tomorrow. Root canal. (No dying, thank you very much.)

Till then, my pain and I are just lying here, watching old familiar DVD's and doing as little as possible. Sleeping even. If you have a genuinely urgent email I might respond. Most likely I'll get back to you Friday or Saturday. Or Monday. Sometime very much not now. If it is urgent, call me.

All Gods and that which can not be spoken of, bless Dentists, therapists of all types, and people who take care of people who are in pain.

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The Creator

Available Sunday's at Salon. Click for LARGE.

Damn straight. See every post on pain ever written at GNB.

It's 6 am. Time for my morning pain meds. (And going back to sleep. I won't be able to write worth a damn for a few hours.)

After which I'm heading over to a sports bar to drink Coke-Cola™ and watch Danica Patrick kick everyone's ass. (Qualified in fifth place with a speed of 225.197 mph, roughly 1.2 mph slower than the pole position.) The 92nd Indianapolis 500 starts at noon/9 am ET/PT, and I plan to watch it all.

Tradition. *smiles*

Open Thread:

1. Are you taking meds today and if so, for what? (No need to name the med.)

2. What are you drinking?

3. What are your plans for today? (And tomorrow, Memorial day?)

4. Danica, and any other sports conversation.

No politics please. *smiles*

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Pain: Pt. 3

Meta Watershed: LOL Weekly Roundup

“Ouch!” (We're still healing...)

Quick update on your intrepid bloggers. And other notes.

LM had his dental surgery Thursday as scheduled.

Lots of ice, rest, taking his meds, watching old comedies, being a good patient.

He's recovering well, if posting a tad too much while still in pain. (And yes, as he pointed out, the Sean Bell verdict came in when it did. So he posted. Still. Take it easy, dammit. You're recovering from fracking surgery. “Doc” has spoken.)

*waves to LM sweetly*

As for me, I met with the pain doc Tuesday as scheduled. I am also recovering, and hope to resume a quarter-normal posting schedule late next week.

We -- my medical team and I -- think we have a fix, but it's been three, increasingly long months. Last month was the worst month I can remember having in, well, a long time. Probably a year and a half, back while I was still not myself quite yet. Pain is rated on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst. Each month when you visit the pain doctor, you answer a number of different question sets, in order to draw out a baseline over time.

One of these questions sets is:

What is your current pain level?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

What was your worst pain in the last week?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

What was your least pain in the last week?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

What was your average pain in the last week?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Normally, I average -- this, mind you, even with all the medications I take -- about a 4. We try and keep me in a range where I don't peak above 6, with lows of 0-2 pain; that's a good week (month.) This is normal for me, as much as I have a normal.

Three months ago my minimum pain was 4 with breakthrough pain up to 8. Two months ago I averaged 6 with peaks to 8. Last month I averaged 8 peaking to 10. Everyone who is around me closely, noticed. Bad month. Bad. *smiles*

This month my pain doc and I aren't getting fancy, we're just hitting the pain head on with more of the same drugs already known to work with me. So far, so good. My pain levels are dropping and associated issues are getting back under control.

If all goes well, sometime next week, I'll likely start posting again. Not at my normal pace; taking it easy. Now I'm still waiting to see if the meds really do bring the pain levels all the way back down to normal.

'Cause we sure as hell don't want the pain levels going up to an eleven.

Hmmm... I wrote about that once.

Group News Blog

“Ooooowww... Fuck!”

Furthermore, the numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven. Most blokes you know, will be torturing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten. Where can you go from there? Where? Nowhere. Exactly. What we do with the Raytheon ray-gun if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Put it up to eleven. Exactly. One more painful.

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Bottom line... If you need time to get well, take it.

The rule at GNB is, wellbeing comes first. Period.

All of us at one time or another have taken a break to handle life issues. We love journalism, and we love you, but in order to do any of that, we must take care of ourselves -- and honor our parents, too. (Yes, I did talk with my Mom today, thanks for asking. And thanks again for those wonderful photos from your trip to Tucson. [That was a shout out to a regular whom I'm not going to mention.] But if you take a trip to Tucson, you can score with me by sending photos. I'm just saying I miss Tucson. Still. Always.)

People ask me sometimes, “what is it that makes GNB fundamentally different from other blogs?” Is it that people here are so smart? Or classy? That our men and women are so damn sexy? Our military coverage?

All these help. And yes, we inherited Steve's legacy. But more than all this, it's that at Group News Blog, we are profoundly committed to making sure people are left taken care of, in the interactions they have here. A year ago right now, the heart of who GNB is now was forming, as we worked together to make sure communication stayed in, and that everyone was taken care of, that people remembered to breathe.

You're our people.

We're in our tenth month, and committed to taking care of you.

Thank you for being here.

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Pain: Pt. 2

Not As Bad As Pt. 1 BUT STILL DEBILITATING.

Ren Höek Suffering In Dental Pain While Trying To Sleep—Just Like Me.

I'm posting this from a radio station across the street from my dentist's office.


I'm waiting for a prescription to be filled. I am in a word, in AGONY.


I have great teeth, having never gotten a cavity until two years ago—a pretty good track record of forty-plus years with “no drillin'/no fillin”.

But it is my gums that have betrayed me. or rather—one section of my gums.

I've had an issue with a “pocket”—an area where there is a gap between the tooth and gum (lower right, second tooth from the back), and there is a bit of bone loss there. The tooth itself is fine, it's the underlying bone 'neath the gum line that is the issue. Where that should be, is a space. And into that space drifts stray bacteria and gunk that all my brushing, flossing and “swording” cannot penetrate.

Last Tuesday, I felt a bit of discomfort. By Thursday, it was a dull ache. By Friday, it felt like The Mole Man himself and his minions were tunneling into my jaw to hide from Reed Richards and The Fantastic Four.

The area was inflamed. I brushed, and Water-Pik-ed. I flossed. I gargled with warm salt water, regular Listerine, then Hydrogen Peroxide. I could feel the inflammation de-stabilizing the tooth itself. There was a palpable “heat” from the obvious infection. I began gulping ibuprofen every four hours to get through the day. My tolerance has built up considerably to where after the medicine kicks in—which takes about an hour—it then works for an hour, and then I feel it cycling off for the next two. And then it's another two pills.

I couldn't sleep. The throbbing was too much. Every four hours. Brush, gargle with three solutions, then pills.

Made an emergency appointment with the dentist last night for today. Saw 'em.

I will need gum and bone replenishment surgery to finally fix the pocket. I asked them if they could just “take the tooth out” because it hurt so much but the reply was. “We don't remove healthy teeth. Your tooth is fine, it's the underlying oral structure that's at issue.”

Which made a painful bit of sense.

Therefore, on Thursday, I will be back to see the oral surgeon after the antibiotics I have been prescribed kicks in. The swelling in my gum should have faded a bit, as will hopefully, the pain. The enhanced painkillers he scripted will help me to sleep a little and maybe release my waking mind from the waves and stabs that distract me so.

I have a pretty high pain threshold. I don't moan, I don't cry. I just get through it. But this is some next level shit. I swear, when the doc poked around in there a little while ago, it took everything I had in me to relax my body and not cringe into a fetal ball from the probe's jabs. Just biting down on the oral reflector to enable the X-ray they did nearly blacked me out. I've dislocated both of my shoulders, nearly broken an ankle, been knocked unconscious while boxing as a teen, and been blindside tackled by a 270 lb offensive lineman who thought I'd slept with his girlfriend.

Much as those things hurt, THIS pain kicks them all in the ass. It's an almost exquisite pain. Chameleon-like in its way. It can at one minute feel like a cold butter knife slowly being wedged between tooth and gum and then levered up and down to dislodge the tooth to a dirge-y rhythm. Then it can quickly morph into something that feels like Bruce Lee windmilling an “Enter The Dragion” nunchaku ballet on the area with steel-studded, brine-soaked “chuks”.

That last sensation almost blacked my ass out early Saturday morning. The nervous system is one hellafied machine.

I'm hoping to be on my way to being rid of this beast by this Thursday. I hope so. My mental “thought collecting/word-find” features are very much blocked out by this hurt. Trying to be light, I joked with the dentist's receptionist through my swollen jaw that I considered pulling a “Tom Hanks” move—his bit from Cast Away where while suffering with a badly infected tooth, he removes it brutally with a blow from an ice skate's blade edge.

Lonnie the receptionist didn't laugh. She looked at me seriously and said. “Don't joke. People do silly stuff like that over a long weekend when we can't help 'em.”

Her aide de camp behind the desk nodded affirmatively and ruefully.

Which brings me to this: There have been numerous horror stories—not fables or urban legends, but REAL HORROR STORIES about how folks without adequate insurance can find themselves not just in unbearable pain from a simple, yet nerve-torching malady like mine, but actually fucking DEAD from it. Whatever your feelings about this campaign season, and the people involved in it, one of the next goals I see for us hated online folk to embark upon is a concerted effort to get decent health care to as many Americans as is humanly possible. In the early nineties when the first initiatives on this were effectively and proudly “drowned in the bathtub” there wasn't the rapid-fire, mass-response ability that we have nowadays. I went into and out of my dentist's office today, had X-rays, an exam and was prescribed an antibiotic script and paid exactly $10—and that was for the prescription itself. The emergency visit was free. The oral surgery will be a few hundred dollars. I got a phone call from a pollster about two months ago asking all sorts of detailed questions about health care in New York state. Did I agree with the idea of revamping the system? Should the state take a stronger role? Should the federal government get involved? Would I pay an extra $40 a year to help subsidize the care? $50 dollars more? $60 dollars more? The pollster didn't appreciate my off-script reply “What's that? Two 7-Day “Unlimited Travel” Metrocards? A few frosty Starbucks beverages? C'mon man.”

Having health insurance is a blessing. And a blessing isn't a thing you can count on. Decent health care is the one thing you shouldn't have to pray you can have access to.—what with the basics of said care being in many cases the simple difference between life and death.

People die from stuff like this—as noted in the Deamonte Driver tragedy from last spring and another case here in NY a couple of years before, another under-medicalized child.

Along with FISA, and the war and all the other gaudy, brightly lit things we scrap for online, this one is as important as any of them, and strikes at our very cores—our physical bodies and the health maintenance of them.

I got help today, and will get the rest later this week and hopefully, and I do mean hopefully my pain will be alleviated. But for every “me” who can get the care, there are countless others who will suffer for days, and weeks, and months in spiraling pain and equally spiraling ill health.

Let's work on that, too. Blogswarms are fun and all for all the bright and shiny things. But some hardcore action on this issue would be a truly wonderful thing.

Now, with that—my prescriptions are ready. And hopefully this pain is ready to go.

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Pain

"Open Mouth Buddha, shedding Black Tears" Click for LARGE.
2007, Gallery #19, # 6915 - Kazuya Akimoto Art Museum.

Kyle and I were cleaning my room tonight. Hurt my back.

Nothing serious, but damn it hurts when it hurts.

In my head, I'm 30. *sighs* My body just doesn't play along. Grrrr.

Good news is, my bed is now clean. It had 20+ books, and a stack of magazines piled high. Now my bed's made neatly. I could stretch out before; now I can stretch way out.

I owe three people/magazine/journals, articles or notes on stuff they're writing. Plus I'm way behind in posting here at GNB. I've been sick (in pain or actually ill) off and on the last two months. Mostly pain stuff, which my medical team and I are trying to get a grip on. It lays me up for days and days at a time; I've pretty much given up explaining what's going on to anyone but my inner circle.

This month, I've been taking Opana on a trial basis -- in addition to my regular pain meds. While the pain control has been good, Opana's side effects haven't been good at all. The good news is, just as in when you're making a change in any operating system, you make ONE change at a time. I've been very stable in my, i.e.: the baseline which is "Jesse", for a while now. Unlike say, several years ago, or worse, back in 2001-2002 when I had just had the neurosurgery and was completely in the fog. So when the Opana threw me off a bit, in some very specific ways, I was able to sort out what was going on, fairly quickly and report.

After meeting with a key member of my medical team today (er, yesterday -- Monday) we've put the med on my allergic/contraindicated list:

• Neurontin (gabapentin)
• Effexor (venlafaxine hydrocholride)
• Celexa (citalopram)
• Lyrica (pregabalin)
• Opana (oxymorphone HCI)

All five of these meds were either directly to treat pain, or for helping my nerve's electrical system work better. In some cases, both. FAIL.

It took years to work out the medications I'm on now. YEARS. And when pain happens which isn't controlled -- as I currently have in my right hip (from the car accident) which impacts my ability to walk (from an old ski injury on my left knee) -- it takes a while to figure out precisely how to control the pain. It's vastly more important to get it right, than to throw any damn thing up there.

Why?

Because these chemicals impact your brain. They change who "you" are. Literally, too much, too little, the wrong dose, the wrong med, and "you" go away. Who is there? Not you, sucker.

Maybe a younger version of you (an emotional teenager or twenty year old) with the memories you have? Maybe a paranoid, someone who is violent or repressed, asexual or very sexual, scared or angry, dominating or with almost no emotions...

Pouring brain-altering medicines directly into the bloodstream, fracks with who you are, right now. And "you" won't know it unless you and your entire medical team:

• has a long base-line on who "you" are,
• is actively looking for changes,
• is super-competent to detect changes,
  
• you have a support structure at home, work, and with your medical team prepared to work with you as the medicine is adjusted till it works properly, and is unafraid of changes in "you", and
• confident in their and your ability to return you to baseline.
  

Once, shortly after someone learned that I take pain meds, this asshole (who I was fighting with at the time) talked about my health in one of her/his comments to me, saying in effect, "I just don't trust your judgment anymore. Maybe your meds are off?" It wasn't a friend doing me a favor; it was a fuck-you. I blew that person off forever. Done.

Chronic pain patients; chronic patients of all kinds, do what we can do, when we can do it. The adjustments take however long they take. I write what I can, when I can. Pain is there till my Team and I figure out a way to make it go away, without taking "me" with it (or regressing or losing "me" in the process.) I am one of the key parts of all of this. Only my children, I, and a few key members of my medical team, can tell my Team as a whole, if "I" am still there. Which means sometimes, I have to trust, for example, Kyle's judgment or my therapist's judgment, over my own. Even when I am certain about something, if they say otherwise, under certain circumstances (like after certain med changes), we go with their assessment as to who I'm being, over mine.

I never lose sight of how fortunate I am. I have medical insurance. Good medical insurance. It pay co-pays at Tiers 1, 2 & 3. Even though I have to pay over $200 a month in prescription co-pays, I can handle that. This new tier 4 & 5 pricing as talked about today in The New York Times would make it impossible for me and others so situated to survive my kind of pain. Self-medication (a slow suicide) is the traditional option... booze and street-drugs. These not only cost too much -- thousands of dollars a month -- but they work poorly, as well as causing massive damage to one's body. In many cases they are illegal.

I have friends who were hooked on horse for years. Decades in one case. Decent pain medications are a recent deal. And you need money; the poor and working class don't get the good shit. They get booze and street drugs, as our fathers and grand-parents did after their wars. Want the good stuff? You'd better be middle to upper-class, or owning class. Then you can have decent drugs, legal drugs, and not worry about getting busted, keep your job, and be able to afford everything through your health plan.

Did I say drugs? I meant, medicine.

Enough. Time to sleep on my big clean bed, let the pain flush away.

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