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Sunday, April 12. 2009
Chocolate Covered Vikodin
The worst thing about painkillers like Vikodin is that they leave you feeling dull, like your mind is numb. For addicts, that sense of numbness is the desired effect, masked by a sense of euphoria of course. Take enough of these and you’ll not feel any pain, physically or emotionally. Consequentially, I take just one Vikodin, no less than six hours a part.The chest incision will let me know when I need a Vikodin; it’s unfailing in that regard. On direction from the visiting nurse, I time my walks to the Vikodin; pop the pill and 20 minutes later take a walk. It’s much easier to get in the physical exercise if the pain is substantially reduced and that is vitally important when recovering from major surgery.
So many people have told me about people they know who have had the same surgery but didn’t do the physical therapy, the walks. The story always ends with the person going back for more bypass surgery within five years. Except in the case of my brother Carl, who died.
Neither scenario is appealing really, so I do the walking. It’s hard though and easy to understand why so many people do not take the walks, use the spirometer and progress beyond the stage of being a cardiac invalid. My goal is to be pedaling the Trusty Trek once again by the end of May and to be pedaling hard by July 4. Gotta be cruising Mission and Pacific Beaches for the MTV 4th of July Bash!
No one really likes pain. When training to be a Marine, we chanted little diddies extolling the virtues of pain — ooh-rah! — but really, when it comes down to recovering from serious injury or surgery, that type of pain is excruciating, nothing like the pain of running five miles in combat boots.
When I think about it, I owe a lot of what I am doing to those days 30-plus years ago when training in the Marine Corps. It takes a certain amount of discipline to overcome negative inertia; the easier thing to do is to park in the comfy chair, click on the groove tube and take a nap.
There’s another organization, which deserves credit for whatever positive steps I take in this recovery, and it will remain anonymous. But, I will say that all the friends who have stepped up to the plate to lend a hand, go to the store, take me for walks around Lake Miramar, prepare food and a variety of other errands, they all are from this anonymous organization. I have no family in San Diego but several of these people have stepped in with a smile and have been not only willing, but enthusiastic in helping me recover. You can’t put a price tag on that!
“What is a spirometer,” you ask? This is a device you use to clear your lungs of fluid so you don’t develop pneumonia or worse. To use it, you suck air through the spirometer, trying to keep a bobber between two points on one scale, while achieving a pre-determined level for the piston in another scale. The goal is to make you cough, forcing any phlegm and fluid from you lungs. It’s nasty really, but vitally important.One of the stern pronouncements I received from nurses and doctors is that at 53 I am far too young for this type of surgery and that note was delivered more as a scolding really. I’m not sure what to make of that, it’s not like we choose to have heart disease, although we choose to engage in the behaviors that bring on heart disease. At what age should someone expect to have bypass surgery? 63?
Here it is and it will require some change of lifestyle; which means today, Easter Sunday, no chocolate or those little marshmallow peeps, no jelly beans — all my favorites. Well, maybe I’ll sneak a little.
Now it’s time for bed. Gotta get up early in the morning, so I’ll pop another Vikodin and settle into the big comfy chair and elevate my swollen foot. One of these days the recovery will be over. Until then ...
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