Marijuana Toast

As promised, today was psychopharmacologist day. Given that oxycodone, if it hasn’t rid me of pain (the stuff dulls it down some), has given me a life back, the rest of my drugs will remain as is. What’s really funny is that I had no life to begin with. I guess the good news is that I’m out of the minus column. (You know, I’m afraid I’m really going to regret saying that.)

I didn’t want to fuck with what works. I’m way too close to suicidal to be stupid and try and wean myself off some of this crap now. (And there’s a lot of it.) No, sweethearts, I’m not feeling the least bit suicidal and haven’t since I emotionally recovered from my recent upper respiratory infection. (Put me face to face with death, why suffer longer than you have to blah, blah, blah?) Also, going into the winter is a bad time for me to screw around with mood-altering drugs because, if you all remember I suffer from S.A.D- Seasonal Affective Disorder along with Anxiety, Depression and PTSD. (Knowing that I suffered most of my life from S.A.D. explains so much the crud of my painful adolescence. I understand behavior that otherwise remained inexplicable to me. I feel like I should always have slapped on my person huge gummy red letters, “How ‘bout that!” Not quite To Sir With Love, but that’s as close as I’m ever going to get.) Now, I just sit in front of a light box, and I remain stable. I sure wish I had it back then. (The light box. But come to think of it, the huge gummy letters would have been cool.)

Oh, why huge gummy, red letters?

I don’t know. They just popped up into my head. They feel right. Let’s try and explicate them, shall we? There’s no Bocarde around to tell me my stream of consciousness is all wrong. Which it may very well be. But I’m sorry Mr. Bocarde, you can’t make that determination. Well, you can, but who would listen? Certainly not I. What’s even lovelier (than those big, fat sticky letters) is that I don’t give a shit. And odd man that he is (was? I hope not), he’d probably like that. I think he would also enjoy like this foul blog. (“Foul” was one of my darling Suzanne’s favorite words.) Bocarde loved Suzanne.

How could he not? She ripped apart everything he had us read. Those precious works he found so important and special that he wished to share them with us. He always gave her an A+ because she shred every single point he made about any of these beloved works- like Portrait of an Artist…one rip at a time.

He ate that shit up. Bizarre as you were, you, sir, you were one of the only interesting teachers in the whole goddamned school system. But let’s not speak of such things now.

Huge, gummy red letters. Ahh! They’re so perfectly clumsy, awkward, bizarre, and impossible to miss. The adolescent me knew only a few who what went on in my fevered, little brain. (Sorry to say, it’s not all that different from the crap you’ve been reading. Except I confess my tough-guy countenance is pure fantasy. Well not exactly. I hang my head in shame. I’m actually a very sweet person. No one would ever think so from reading this damned blog, but I confess. It’s kind of true. But no matter. This time, I’d be noticed all right. I think that’s kind of cool. Hey, it’s a helluva lot better than a zit the size of Mount Vesuvius. Oh, I’d sure wear my letters with pride. Yo, I don’t consider this humiliating. I find it liberating. My scarlet letters. You know, that is kind of sweet. Warped perhaps, but sweet.

Back to teachers in the Port Washington Union Free School District. One day Mrs. El Kadi who, for those who didn’t have the pleasure of her acquaintance, was a mad woman. Flat-out bonkers. One class she announces, “Don’t you find it interesting that the smartest person in the room has the smallest forehead?” I slump in my seat. Shit. The class is looking around. Obviously, they can’t discern forehead size like Mrs. El Kadi. Finally, she breaks the suspense and points to the back of the room. At me. No one in the room gives a shit. But I’m mortified. What was this woman thinking? Who said she was qualified to teach anyone anything ever? Good old Port giving the enfeebled or just plain mad a chance to live a normal life.

Back to me and the present. After the visit with the psychopharmalocogist, Chip made an appointment at my behest with the Heebie Jeebie Lady chiropractor. Oh how soon they forget! My goilfriend the doctor recommended her because she was “a good practitioner” and right in the neighborhood. My beloved chiropractor is in Washington Heights. Among weekly visits from Tamar, the best P.T. on the planet, Rachel, the fine masseuse, and Kristen my angel, my therapist who comes twice a week, I’m physically unable to make the trip up to Washington Heights to Laurie, my darling chiropractor. (It ends up about an hour each way.) I do miss her terribly.

Besides the screwed up back (which I actually think is responding to all the attention paid to it), my head and neck decided to get in on the fun and flip out too. Sons-of-bitches. Here’s where the Heebie Jeebie Lady comes in. Since she stopped coloring her hair, she doesn’t give me those same heebie-jeebies she had years ago when first saw her. I knew I needed to see a chiropractor and fast. I really was desperate. ) With each passing moment, it became more and more difficult to turn my head left or right. (Besides being rather restricting, it was painful as all bloody hell.) C’mon, don’t I already have enough on my “plate” to contend with? It doesn’t work that way, does it?

But as she was on all my past visits, she is a fine practitioner. She’s good too. I have a head and neck back. You really don’t know how much you’d miss them if they flat-out went cuckoo on you. Not crazy. Loony tunes I know intimately. No, that they just don’t work. (I can’t even imagine what stroke patients go though.) Let’s just say you miss them an awful lot. Now, they’re behaving themselves, and I know have a chiropractor in the hood if I need her again. I think she has a new name. From now on, she’s “The Good Practitioner.”

Flattery will get you everywhere, even when you’re dealing with lumps of flesh. Oh they know. Yes they do. They just remain impassive as always. Slowly, but surely, they poke up their little invisible antennae and if you coo just right, they’ll cut you a break and stop leaving you in agony. It’s a subtle cross between love and diplomacy. Difficult. But left in the right hands, they’ll- the lumps of horrifically painful flesh - eventually cut you a break. And the oxycodone sure doesn’t hurt.

Even if it may be making me queasy. (Damnit!) Hello marijuana toast! (A most beautiful and often necessary invention.)

A Beautiful Mind

Today was a fun day. I was really afraid of taking a shower. No, I mean scared out of my wits. (I sit in a disabled person's seat, I have my husband helping me the entire time, I am fully protected. from what, I can't tell you. but whatever it is, it scares the bejeezus out of me.) No, I'm not afraid of slipping in the shower.

I'm just afraid...of the shower. I thought I got past this irrational nonsense months ago. And I did. But it doesn't mean that this crap isn't just sitting in wait, just below the surface. Waiting to jump out of the cake. Surprise!

So I put the shower off. I put if off until I could put it off no longer. I think I must have smelled and looked like that certain type of European. You know, the ones who prefer not to bathe but dip themselves in eau de cologne as if that negates the need for a bath. At least, I skip the eau de cologne part. And change my clothes every day. And Chip swears I don't reek. What a loving and wonderful husband I have! How could I not???

I'm totally losing it. My brain doesn't function the way it used to. In my prior life, I remembered everything, and I always knew where to find whatever I was looking for. A stinking little memo. A signed estimate. A fact about the Hindu Kush. Everything there is to know about topiaries. Thomas Kuhn.

Today, no dice. Now we don't know if my brain has been permanently damaged by my little stay in the ICU. For such a small person, I have been told that the doctors needed to drug me with inordinate amounts of drugs to keep me down: 26 milligrams of a Klonopin type drug every hour for eight weeks straight. I think that alone can screw up a brain, don't you? How could it not?

I also find that I either forget to type words I fully intended to or instead, type words that may vaguely sound like the one my brain intended to type, but are just completely wrong and have not a thing to do with what I'm writing. Spelling has become an issue. Me, the person who could spell every goddamned word on the planet whether I knew what it meant or not.

I don't know why, but these things still have the power to stun me. I keep bugging the hell out of poor Rich for being so fucking flighty. Please believe me, Rich. Flighty was the last word anyone would use to describe me. So, I feel like an asshole for being so disorganized, and I can't accept it. Except, giving into it would likely be easier to bear. So I'm feeling like a fool , because I can't find a section of Since When which you, my sweet dear, have already edited. This makes me very weepy, and I still can't find it. I despise when my shortcomings effect others. Fine, disappoint myself. But everyone else???

Then, I have another doc who thinks that my "brain lapses" are from the psychotropic drugs I'm currently taking. (I take a lot of these too.) Diagnosed with depression, anxiety disorder, and PTSD (yes, just like a fucked up war veteran) requires shitloads of drugs that I have no clue as to when I can begin weaning myself off of any of them. We increased the effexor for a while. It made me completely psychotic. How could I know this never having been diagnosed psychotic before? Trust me. When you're psychotic, you know it.

I had to pull off "A Beautiful Mind" guy trick until I returned to sanity. I repeated to myself over and over: "What I'm feeling isn't me. Don't act on these feelings, because they are drug induced. They are not you." It didn't stop me from feeling like a psycho, but it allowed me to keep one foot on the ground until that damned third effexor left my system. At least I learned one thing from the experience, I really don't want to be psychotic anytime soon. Nor do you.

As I get closer to four p.m. everyday, I start tearing at the walls. And I'm jumping out of my skin. My four p.m. Klonopin (plus nap so I can wake up feeling fresh as a daisy) has now become the three thirty p.m. Klonopin. Must. Need. Now. So I do.

I'm still weepy, but at least I'm not jumping out of my skin anymore. And I'm clean. But I still take a shitload of drugs, and I really can't see a day anytime soon to begin reducing them. Not when I'm still convinced I'll die within the year. Oy. And for the next week or two I'm going to continue feeling like a "feeshy wife" to boot. I ask you all for your patience during this difficult time. Bon chance!