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Monday, April 6. 2009
Home is Where My Heart Is
It’s been a while since my last post up in this bitch! Yo, I had to get all ghetto after watching Bring It On: All or Nothing. It’s one of the sequels to the original Bring It On that featured a fictional high school in San Diego and starred Spiderman’s girlfriend, Kirsten Dunst. I actually have to look up her name every time, but not Eliza Dushku! She’s memorable!The 2006 version stars Hayden Panettiere as a rich girl who gets downsized after daddy loses his job. The family moves to Crenshaw. Okay, it’s a stretch, but what the hey, I watched it for purely prurient reasons! Wasn’t disappointed in that regard either!
Ms. Panettiere stars in that TV show Heroes. She has super powers of some kind. I watched an episode after seeing the young Hayden on a late night talk show, probably Craig Ferguson, can’t really recall and decided Heroes would not be in my regular television viewing lineup.
Maybe that’s changed though, considering all the time I have on hand now! I’m home from the hospital, have been for four days now and despite the efforts at recovery; physical therapy and such, I have a lot of time on my hands. A lot of time.
And, the pain being what it is, sitting at the Mighty Mac is tough. Didn’t know, until a few days ago, how much I use the pectoral muscles when typing. Oh yeah. It gets tight across the chest, not to mention the foot-long incision and the sawed-in-half and then re-attached sternum. It all hurts!
They were going to give me Vikodin for the pain, but instead I have Tylenol-3; acetaminophen mixed with synthetic codeine. Two every six hours the script says, but I limit myself to one when it feels needed. Sometimes two sounds like a good order.
That isn’t even the worst of the pain. Oh no, that is located in the right leg where the doctors took pieces of a vein to use for the bypasses around my heart. That’s the killer; almost makes the actual chest area pains seem … easy.
But I’m not complaining! Everything feels better already, thanks to the new blood flow. On Sunday I actually walked an entire mile in 27 minutes along Lake Miramar, the location of so many pedaling expeditions with the Trusty Trek. Then I had breakfast, popped a couple pills including one of those pain pills and napped. So I don’t spend as much time on the computer as one might expect. It’s much easier to lie down and sleep.
The reason I got the Tylenol-3’s goes back 25 years now, when I was a young buck, just six years removed from the Marine Corps and getting really great scripts — for free — from the V.A. to manage my pain. Didn’t really have much pain at that time but a Darvon mixed with the alcohol I consumed was a real treat so I continued having pain and getting the pain-killers and, wouldn’t you know it, a few muscle-relaxants as well! Pharmaceutical heaven!
Well, by that time 25 years ago I knew the alcohol and drugs were killing me slowly and had tried several times to quit, with no success. So, I continued on, drinking, using whatever drugs I could get and playing the victim game to facilitate my access to the V.A. pharmacy.
While getting my examination from the doctor, a woman whose name I can’t recall, she asked how the pain was, in relation to the effectiveness of the pain pills. Fully expecting to play the game again to get the prescription refills, what came out of my mouth instead was, “I think I have a problem with these drugs.”
“Oh, ok,” was her reply (roughly) and into my V.A. medical record went the note that I had substance abuse issues with certain prescription drugs, primarily narcotics. And it’s still there today.
It was devastating at the time and after leaving the V.A. hospital in Milwaukee (Wood, WI) I immediately went across the street to the cheap bars and began drinking my sorrows away. What had I done? I just closed off access to the gravy train! No amount of alcohol could erase the pain of that bumble-headed error.
Today we call it a “moment of clarity.” Back then: stupid. As a result, when a doctor at the V.A. tells me to my face I’ll be getting Vikodin or Darvons for painkillers, I walk away from the pharmacy window with Tylenol-3’s. And those work just fine. They could, in fact, get me high if I chose to do so, but I don’t. Life, seen through clear eyes, is a wonderful experience and I prefer it that way.
The T-3’s are a necessary nuisance right now, but in a week, maybe two, they won’t be needed. In a queer way, having a slight discomfort in my chest feels good; it reminds me I’m alive and have yet another lease on life. It compels me to get up, get some clothes on and do some physical therapy to recover from this heart operation.Someone who thought he was smart once wrote, “Pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth.” Well, he never endured heart surgery. On the other hand recovering from this is a learning experience, relearning in some ways and will make me stronger; that which doesn’t kill us … so it’s a spiritual experience.
Thank you for all the blessings I have received and those yet to come.
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