sickness

The Drugs Don’t Work…

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…they just, as the song goes, make you worse. Sigh.

A couple of weeks ago, my GP prescribed Duloxetine, a replacement for the Amitriptyline I can’t tolerate—which in turn, was a replacement for the Nortriptyline I had been unable to tolerate before that. (These are typically used as anti-depressants but are also pretty good, I’m told, for tackling neuro-pain.) But what with my neurodifuckity being on fi-yuh of late (thanks, Brain), picking up the prescription slipped my mind; it was only when I had to collect Mum’s script that I remembered my own. So, I collected it yesterday and took my first dose before bed.

Bad idea. Really bad. Terrible nightmares, most of which involved images of THIS BOX. Dream-people telling me it was dangerous, warning me not to take it because it messes with the ol’ hormones… which is ill-advised when one is awaiting surgery…

…and I woke up the sickest I’d been since the Pregnancy Years. Real, throwy-uppy badness. So nauseated I wanted to curl up and sleep it all away.

What pisses me off the most, though, is having to call in sick again. After the latest bout, I’d just been getting back on track, feeling pretty well, aside from having to have the occasional stick-day (leaning on that thing helps with the joint pain and the stomach nonsense). But apparently, my body just does NAHT take chemical changes well.

The upshot of all this is I’ve decided to go completely drug-free. Medication is more trouble than it’s worth. Of course, this means I am now rethinking the idea of going on HRT once I’ve had my hysterectomy. Might go au naturel with that, too. Better knuckle down and do some research. To drug, or not to drug, as Hamlet didn’t say.

I’d never intended on having a loud, dramatic life, but shit keeps happening. It just does, so the least I can do is write about it. One day, I’ll look back on all this and laugh, right?

I have high hopes, though. I have every intention of coming out on the other side—not the death thing, the other thing. Getting through it. Being better than ever – evolving like the finest of on-screen protagonists, making decisions good and bad, and reaching the end of my character arc with heaps and heaps of tales to tell.

That’s the dream.

Foe is Me

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Not getting any better. Not even remotely. HRT would help enormously, but I can’t have it – they won’t do the op if you’re taking it. I have no choice but to suck it up and get on with it until my organs are sucked out of me. Which is likely to be September, I’m told.

But get on with what, exactly? I don’t want to do anything. I can’t do much at all, really. In this heat, I am all but absofuckinlutely, well and truly, utterly fuckin’ buggered. My knees and my hips keep seizing, my collection of gooey gynaecological objects has gone cuckoopants, and I am so high on painkillers that a flock of seagulls has just flown past me. And yes, I did have that hairdo in the eighties. (More like a hairdon’t, but I digress.)

Despite the one-foot-in-the-grave*-ness of it all, there is a thing, and the thing is this: I might be signed off sick but I still have to parent. I am still a carer. I still have to do the mom-stuff and the daughter-stuff when I can’t do the day job. Which means I still have to get the shopping in (which all but kills me), feed people, deal with my elderly mum’s care needs, and do all the Mom-as-PA nonsense with the kids’ schools.

(*I wonder what the cremation version is. One speck of ash in the urn?)

My brain (cell) is all NOPE, probably because it’s in tune with my equally nopey body. And as meltdown malarkeys would have it, I have little aptitude for thought. What little thinking I am doing includes but is not limited to the likes of:

“Is it completely inadvisable to operate on oneself? I have a delightful kitchen knife…”

Alright, so I am my own worst enemy. I’ve never been a fan of myself (or my stupid body), and lately, the self-loathing has reached a new low. But I do have moments of clarity. Moments where I try to have a word with myself, and stay positive. So, with that in mind, I thought it might be just spiffing to shelve berating myself for a while. Stop beating myself up for not being able to work/take the kids out/do normal human things. I can’t bake; hell, I can’t even do the wordthang (there’s a novel that isn’t going to write itself, a poetry collection to compile, and my collection of Liverpool horror stories needs an edit). That’s how I know I’m ill. I’ve lost the will to write, to pun, to rhyme (Is that one collective will or three discrete wills? I ask my annoying self…).

So, I started a sentence with ‘So’. Then, in the interests of staying just PEACHY POSITIVE, I wrote a list of things I am able to do at the moment:

  1. Write lists
  2. Mope
  3. Complain
  4. Whine
  5. Shout at clouds.

That’s it. I’m officially ancient. I don’t need to yell, “Where’s me cane?” because I already have one. I use it to point at things.