Well, I made it to Marc’s Grocery Store.
I stood there, in my bedroom looking down at my chest of pills, having taken a dicyclomene, and wondering what more I should do. Should I wait? I’d been waiting since this morning; it was already 2:30, if I wasn’t going now, I wasn’t going at all. The dog assumed I knew what I was doing and was at the door waiting. I figured she knew something I didn’t, so acting entirely on impulse I took one sixth of an oxycodone and we walked out the door.
I was fine. It was lovely. I had a smile for all my fellow shoppers and a kind word for my cashier. And I will surely pay for this tomorrow.
I don’t take Percocet, or its sister Oxycodone, for pain any more. I take them for fear. I learned my lesson about pain and pain pills last March, on my spring trip to the Hospital; for it is opiates that brought me there in the first place. There is a stricture in my descending colon, about 35cm in. Last winter it had become bothersome so I was taking pain pills, about one a day, by quarters. But the pain just kept getting worse. By the time I was ready for “Club Med” every time I used the bathroom I felt as though I was being torn apart. My mouth would water, tears would run from my eyes, I would gasp as my lungs would lock up from the pain. I would go, and then I would sleep, sometimes for an hour or two, until the pain medication kicked in. Then 10 or 12 hours later I’d do it all over again. The intervals between got shorter, the pain got worse, then the fevers came and by late March I was in the hospital.
There on 11 Doan Hall they are generous with their pain medication. They were happy to give me Demerol, Morphine, . . . Oxy-what ever. But I had seen doctor P. before I went in; told her I was not feeling so good and I was running low on pills.
Her nurse, M. said “Dr P. does not write prescriptions for pain medication.”
“I am not a drug addict” I said in in all indignation.
“She knows you are not a drug addict” M. answered, “Dr P. believes that pain medication is very bad for people with Crohn’s disease, it aggravates the colon and makes their condition worse, and she will not prescribe it.”
There were two ways I could have dealt with this information; one of them was to give her the benefit of the doubt.
When I got home I put the last few tablets away and waited to see what would happen. After a few unpleasant trips to the bathroom, the swelling began to go down and it got less painful and difficult by the day. That was lovely, but that was not the surprise. No, the surprise was opiate withdrawal.
My body had grown used to a certain level of oxycodone, approximately five milligrams every six hours, and its response to being deprived of that was unmistakable. What hurt? Nothing, the pain was entirely existential. It felt as though my chest has been pierced by a hollow shaft arrow, and the blood was running from my heart, my chi was draining from my chest to a puddle at my feet. Oh, I thought, this is what it feels like when you die; when someone strips the paint from the walls in your psyche, when you are not sure where you end and the white noise begins.
I’m not sorry I went through it. I learned a few very important things. I learned first that I am not infallible, I am not bigger than Opiates, and that even a little is addictive. It’s not the amount, it’s the consistency with which you take it. But mostly I learned what it is to withdraw. What it means to feel for a little while, 48 hours, that you are having a psychic break down. Then to come out the other end feeling whole again. Like Odysseus I’d heard the Harpies. They have nothing to recommend them, but for the fact that many who do hear them do not survive to tell the tale.
For a long time afterwards I did not go near the Percocet, and it wasn’t pain that was ever going to make me capitulate. That is a deal with the devil you can not win. But colon spasms are caused by emotional and physical stress, and if you are already having spasms there is nothing so stressful as having to go out, into the world, away from your safe bathroom, in you quiet house, then walk the long isles of a grocery store pushing a heavy cart. Synthetic opiates tend to put you in a much better frame of mind if you have to do this. And if your colon is not in bad shape to begin with, and if you don’t do it again tomorrow, or the next day, or the week after that; and if you are going to be brave and not mind a little pain and blood for the next 36 hours, then a little Percocet may be useful to you. But you must remember, it is using you just as you are using it, once let in, it will call your name every chance it gets, and it is absolutely, positively not your friend.
I am stunned that someone can put into words what I go through every day.
Good luck Georgianna, and hang tight.
Please feel free to send a note or a comment any time you are in need of a good word.
Marya
[...] is making any sense, I am in pain. I am writing the confession the Inquisitioner wants: Yes I took the oxycodone, I took it yesterday as I felt myself sliding under the water (board) and I took it again this [...]