The recovery continues...
For those awares and unawares, I have been recovering for two weeks from nasal surgery meant to correct my crooked, screwed-up septum. Perhaps this is t.m.i. but I do not care: I have been injecting a saline solution into my nose four times a day (recipe = 1 gal. distilled water, 3 tbsp salt, 3 tbsp baking soda, 3 tspn olive oil) and occasionally feel a need to blow something out, which is always a globular, reddish-black mass that appears to be algae. Needless to say, that is necessary *says the doctor. It is in order to prevent scabbing and to hasten the healing process so that I may enjoy the benefits of my +$6,000 surgery. I am beginning to become dizzy at times on account of the larger amounts of oxygen entering my brain. It is a wonderful thing. This leads me to the next thing: drug addiction and the newfound sympathy I have for those suffering from it.
In my previous blog, I was under the influence of oxycordizone...the painkiller which was precribed to me by my wonderful surgeon. I took it for a week straight and followed the label: take one every four hours. My memories of that week are highly pleasant, despite my circumstance of being bed-ridden and dependent on my wonderful wife. I did enjoy the time away from work. But enter the post-recovery period...
After I had the gauze taken out (my wife referred to them as "nose tampons" on account of there being two strings hanging out either nostril for the purposes of pulling them out), I was given the instructions to begin cleaning it. I finished my prescription cold-turkey and my wife and I headed to St. Louis for a couple of days to enjoy some time away from life as we knew it. Well, that evening I began to feel strange. What could have only been voices began to whisper donut recipes in my ear, torturing me on the way to St. Louis. Then the sweats came. Then the shakes came. Then the fears came. Then the anxiety attacks came. Then they all combined and teamed up on me, violating me mentally, physically, and emotionally in any sick and degenerate way they could. In a nutshell, I came down and I came down ***king hard off those drugs. I thought, "How can this be? I am healthy!" Exactly. That is it. I am a skinny young man who is 90% naturalist, meaning I take as little 'tampered-with' items into my system as possible. This includes most food and almost all medicines. I do not even take aspirin (call it a mistrust of humanity that has grown into a critical mass). So it makes sense to say that a young man of enviable vigor who eats right, works out daily at his job, keeps crapitha out of his system, and drinks lots of water would suddenly be thrown into a spastic shock when drugs are suddenly introduced into his naive nervous system. I am not used to taking pain meds, so when my body was introduced to the blissful effects, it loved them...LOVED them. When I stopped giving my nervous system those drugs, it hated me...HATED me. So the end result being that I spent my mini-vacation in St. Louis (highest crime rate in the nation per 100,000 people, by the way) glued to the bed, hoping that either the anxiety attacks and pain would stop or a Boeing would crash land on my hotel and put me out of my misery...hopefully sparing my two pugs. But I have considered the plight of those poor folks who unwittingly become addicted to this stuff. God help them. It is a true, private hell to have to feel your life revolves around some pharmaceutical concoction and to go to the extent of becoming an addict. God help them all.
Here I am one week after the gauze removal and am at about 80% capacity and a million times better than a week ago. I now owe my wife a better trip in which we actually visit the Gateway Arch and get to SEE the Max Beckmann expressionist paintings in the sweet St. Louis Art Museum. Say a prayer for me if you read this.
*Recommended listening while reading this blog: "Vacation" - by the Go-Gos
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