Pill Popper

Hello kids! Today, I’d like to talk to you about herniated disks. They are of the devil. (At first, I accidentally typed herniated dicks. Hehehe. I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old boy.) For those of you who might be anatomically challenged, the disks that I’m speaking of are located in the spine. They are these little jelly donut like spacers that go in between the vertebrae in your spinal column that act like shock absorbers. They’re there so that when you run or jump or do anything to put pressure on your spine, your vertebrae don’t come crashing down on each other and the nerves in your spinal cord don’t get screwed up. When one of the disks is herniated, that usually means that the disk has been squished to the point where the “jelly” in the “donut” has been squeezed out and is putting pressure on the spinal cord and all the nerves that run down your legs. That’s USUALLY what happens with a herniated disk problem, but for some reason, I gotta be different, I gotta be the unusual case. Instead of my disk being squeezed out, it’s being squished inward. Looking at my MRI images, my disk looks like a heart; it’s being pinched inward on one side, so there’s an arrow shape bulging out the other side. It’s extremely painful. 

I’ve been dealing with a herniated disk, located in my L4/L5 region (L stands for lumbar which is your lower back, L5 is the lowest vertebra), since November of 2011. From November until March 2012, I had ex-rays, the MRI, a toradol shot in my hip, a variety of medications both narcotic and non-narcotic, electronic stimulation therapy, physical therapy (lots and LOTS physical therapy), and two epidurals. I finished up my physical therapy that March and I guess you could say I went into “remission” and I felt great. For a couple of months. Then the second week of July 2012, it allllllll came back. It was really frustrating. I thought I was done with this mess. So I went back to the doctor, had another toradol shot, was put on some steroids, nerve blockers, and narcotics, eventually had another epidural and went back into physical therapy. I was able to finish up this second round of physical therapy right before Halloween. I felt awesome again. I could go shopping with my mom without having to stop and sit every five minutes. I went to Savannah for Thanksgiving with my best friend and I was so excited about actually getting to walk around the city and River Street without slowing our whole group down. I was determined that my disk problem wouldn’t come back again. 

Well, I suppose being determined to stop something from happening is different than actually preventing that something from happening. Because my back pain came back again. It was slightly different this time than the other two times. The first two times it was like BAM: PAIN. I’d just be laying bed, then when I would try to get up, something would go wrong in my back and I’d be in excruciating pain, and not be able to stand up straight. But this third time, the pain kind of creeped up on me. At first, I thought I was just achy because of the weather. It had been cold and rainy for about a week and a lot of times when the weather is like that, it can affect your joints and bones and stuff. I guess it’s a part of getting older. But as time went on, the pain kept getting worse and I started to realize that it was my back. I was pissed. So I went to the doctor, said, “yo, same shit, different day”, they gave me another toradol shot, more steroids, more nerve blockers, and my favorite, more narcotics. Aaaaaand I’ve just had my fourth epidural.

All I can think about this happening is, I’ve got to get over this before September. I am NOT going to let this stupid thing, this silly little busted jelly donut in my back, ruin this great opportunity that I have before me. I WILL get better. I HAVE to get better. Something I’ve noticed, looking back at all of my bouts with this back pain, is that there’s a pattern where the back pain would happen, I’d get all these drugs and shots, and do PT for 3 months, then I’d be better for about 3 months, then it would come back. So the pattern is that about every six months, the pain would come back. Basically, the epidurals would last for about six months and then I’d need another one. Epidurals aren’t really that big of a deal. It’s just a couple of shots in the lower back (four to be exact, two shots to numb the areas on each side of the spine, then two shots with the big daddy needle on each side of the spine). It’s not the same thing that women get when in labor. I mean, it is, just a different dosage of steroids. It doesn’t numb my whole lower body, like I’ve heard it does when giving birth. When I was getting ready for my first epidural, I kept telling myself, “you’ll be ok, you’ve gotten several piercings and two tattoos, you can handle this.” But getting an epidural is really nothing. It doesn’t even compare with getting a tattoo or piercing. Of course, this is all coming from someone who is ok with needles. So if you’re squeamish, like I know my best friend is, you might have a different experience with it. I just hope that this epidural that I’ve just gotten will last for a little longer than six months. Or at least that I’m able to strengthen the muscles in my back, so that my disk can go back into place, so that I can go to St. Augustine in September and have the time of my life, without having to worry about pain. 

In the past year and a half, I’ve done a lot of thinking about pain. I’ve had to think about what is painful, and what isn’t. What I can tolerate, and what is just completely past my level of tolerance. In my physical therapy sessions, I’ve had to describe what the pain feels like, and where it is. That’s probably the hardest thing to do. You have to figure out if it’s a shooting pain or a dull pain, whether its tingling or throbbing, whether it’s just in my thighs or going past my knees and down to my shins. You have to rank the pain on a  scale from 0 to 10. Everyone’s pain tolerance is different, so everyone’s scale is going to be different. When asked where my pain level is on that scale, I always feel like I’m exaggerating how much pain I’m feeling. But then I have to remind myself that if I undersell my pain level, I’m not going to get the care that I really need. If I am feeling a constant pain, a pain that makes me grimace, it’s nothing less than a five, but if I can stand it for a period of time, then it’s not quite a ten. So that’s why, when the physician’s assistant asked me where my pain level was the other day, I told her it was a seven. The other day, when I went to Starbucks to try to work on this post, I was getting all set up, getting my computer out, plugging in my power cord, and then when I sat down, the pain was so unbearable, I thought I was going to throw up. I wasn’t there for more than five minutes before I had to pack up all my stuff and head home. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world. Pain. Unnecessary pain. It makes me want to punch somebody in the face, just so they can feel the same thing I’m feeling. A lot of times, when I’m so frustrated, and just can’t take it any more, I’ll just scream as loud as I can. This usually takes place in my car. I did that the other day. I was driving over to my parent’s house for dinner and when I got in the car, I just couldn’t take it, so I just started screaming and crying. I live about ten or fifteen minutes from my parent’s house, so once I was about halfway there, the pain had somewhat subsided and I calmed down enough so that I didn’t look like a crazy mess when I got to my parent’s house. Not that it would have mattered what I looked like, they’ve been there with me through the whole thing. They’ve seen me on my good days and they’ve seen me on my absolute worst days. 

Someone else who saw me through my good and very bad days was my now ex-boyfriend. My first two flair ups happened while at his house, getting out of his bed. When it first happened, he was there for me. At the time, he was trying to go back to school (ironically enough) for physical therapy, after flunking out of nursing school a couple of months before he was supposed to graduate. So he knew a lot about how to help me. He was there for me when I needed to switch out my ice packs, he was there to get me fresh water when I needed to take my meds, he was there when I took a really hot bath and nearly fainted after getting out. He was my own personal nurse. And I didn’t think twice about it because I didn’t really have to ask him for help, he would just do it. But I was so self involved with my situation, that I didn’t think about how it was affecting him and affecting our relationship. Obviously, it ended up putting a huge strain on our relationship, and as I was in the middle of my first round with physical therapy, and as our one year anniversary was approaching (which just so happened to be Valentine’s day), he told me that he was tired. He was tired of having to take care of me. And rightfully so. It just never occurred to me that the whole thing was just as stressful and frustrating for him as it was for me. So we broke up for a couple days, got back together for about a week, then broke up again and made it almost two weeks and then were back together again. I was better for most of that summer. And he and I were so on-again-off-again. It wasn’t all about my back problems. There were other things affecting our relationship, whether it was my lack of experience dealing with relationship problems, or his emotional stuntedness. But my back pain was a silent factor that was always there in the shadows. He was with me for a little over a month when the pain came back for the second time. August 21, 2012, three days before my third epidural, was our final break up. It was just time. We were both headed in different directions in our lives and we were only able to keep it together for that long because we liked having sex with each other (sorry to any family members who just read that, but did you really think I was still a virgin?). For any of you who were able to read my “Baby Mama Drama/Lifestyle Changes” post before I had to take it down, you know that my post-break-up-friendship/relationship with my ex did not work AT ALL. So that kind of sucked. But I just want to say now how grateful and thankful I was, and still am, to have had him to help me through those difficult times. I know it wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t fun. But he was there regardless of how I looked or how I acted. So I just want to say thank you to him, whether he ever reads this or not. Thank you. 

Something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, and now seems to be the perfect time to do so, is my slight addiction to pain meds. When put in a situation where you’re dealing with chronic pain, pain pill addiction is almost inevitable. When you first start out, you feel like you’re just following the doctor’s orders. If you’re in pain, you take this, then you won’t be in pain anymore. And it’s awesome. It almost feels like magic. You take it, wait about thirty minutes to an hour, depending on the last time you ate, and presto, the pain is gone. You start out just taking it at night to help you get to sleep. Then you get up the next morning and you find that it’s really painful to get out of bed, so you take some more. Then you’re sitting at work, and it hurts to sit in your chair, so you take some more. And before you know it, you have it scheduled out when you need to take it so that you go through your whole day without feeling any sort of pain. Numb to your entire surroundings. After a while, the dose you’ve been taking doesn’t do the trick anymore, so you double it. And the cycle just keeps going like that. That’s what happened to me. I didn’t want to feel any sort of pain, so I would pop a pill if I felt like there was any sign of pain. The first doctor that I saw wrote a prescription for 5mg Lortab (hydrocodone/acetaminophen 5mg/500mg), which is not a super strong dosage. I remember when I still had this prescription, I was spending the day with my ex and some of his family for Christmas, and I took 8 pills throughout that day. That’s 40 milligrams of hydrocodone and 4000 milligrams of acetaminophen (which, according to the FDA, is the maximum daily dose for adults). That’s A LOT. Mind you, I was in a lot of pain that day and had trouble walking at this point, much less doing anything else. This was when the vicious cycle started. I eventually switched to a different doctor and he started prescribing Norco (hydrocodone/acetaminophen 7.5mg/325mg) to me. The difference between Norco and Lortab, other than the brand name, is that Norco has less acetaminophen in it, so that you can take more of it and have less risk of liver damage. It’s meant for people who will be in pain for an extended period of time. The first prescription of Norco that I received was for 90 pills. I went through that bottle in two weeks. I was taking 5 to 6 pills a day, usually two at a time. I was then given a bottle of 70 pills and I made that last for about three and a half weeks before I was given another 50 pills. So in the space of about two months, I had consumed 210 7.5mg Norco. 

After I got through that first bout of back pain, I had a conversation with my dad about my dependence on Norco. I remember he commented that I seemed like a zombie for most of that January. Of course, while I was in the midst of it, I couldn't see how it was affecting me. I do remember realizing at one point that what I was doing was not good for me, that I was starting to get addicted to the pills. I had gotten so caught up in a daily schedule of when I “needed” to take the pills, that I wasn’t taking it on an as needed basis, like I was supposed to. So I had to start “listening” to my body, to really pay attention to when I was in pain, and when I wasn’t. I started slowly cutting back, trying to only take pills when I really needed it. It was really hard. And since my body had built up a resistance to it, I still had to take two at a time for it to do anything for me, I was just taking them fewer times a day, mainly just at night. At this point I had started physical therapy, and when doing therapy, the therapist is constantly asking when I do and don’t feel pain. So I couldn’t be drugged up when I would go to therapy, otherwise we wouldn’t get anything done. 

I am very lucky that I was able to pull myself away from the edge of addiction. A lot of people deal with drug addiction, even with prescription drugs, and it starts out the exact same way that it started for me. It starts out so innocently, just following doctor’s orders, but it can quickly spiral out of control. I believe it was in between my first and second bout that I saw an episode of Intervention where this chick was taking 50 Norco a day. 50 A DAY. Like whoa. I can’t even fathom that. That episode really hit home because she was taking the same thing I take. It freaked me out. So ever since seeing that episode, I’ve made sure not to let my pill popping get out of control. It’s something I’m still dealing with today, and something I’ve dealt with even in between my bouts. When I’m nearing my end of dealing with a bout of pain, I try to keep a couple of Norco for emergencies if the pain all of a sudden comes back again. But it’s very tempting, even when I’m not in pain, to take it recreationally. The moment when the pills kick in, there’s a wave of relief that washes over you and it just feels so good. However, I know that if I give into that temptation, that I could become a slave to it, and some really shitty things could happen. 

To wrap up, I want to reference one of my previous posts. In my post “The Man”, I wrote about making a lifestyle change and eating healthier. Well I tried and succeeded for like 3 or 4 days. I’m really bad at sticking with things like that. Like I mentioned in that post, getting fast food is just so much easier than actually going to the grocery store and buying healthy food to cook and eat. A big reason why I was trying to make a lifestyle change was to prevent me from having to deal with this back pain again. And the reason why the back pain keeps coming back is because I’ve been (forever) struggling with getting some weight off. Losing a substantial amount of weight will not only make me look sexier (hehe), but should also help my disk to heal. But saying is SO MUCH easier than doing. I don’t even remember not being overweight. I’ve been like this my WHOLE life. I would just resign to the fact that I’ll be this way forever, but I can’t do that. Not if I want to be able to go through life without having to deal with this shit every six months. I don’t want to be in pain, I don’t want to have to worry about whether I’m going to get addicted to pain pills, I want a normal life! And the only way I’m going to be able to do that is to make a permanent, lasting lifestyle change. 

I have a friend from college who lives with Fibromyalgia. If you don’t know what that is, you should go look it up, but it’s basically a condition in which the sufferer is in pain all the time, all over her body. I’ve seen my friend dealing with it when we were in school and I know that it sucks. I’m sure the stuff I go through with my back problem is nothing in comparison to what she deals with on a daily basis. She’s like the strongest person I know, for having to deal with this, among other things. Right now she is going through a program that is about pain management. I’ve written to her, asking about what she deals with with fibro, and how it affects her life. I know she’s busy with her program right now, but I’m really looking forward to hearing what she has to say about pain, and I’m hoping it will help me to get through my pain problems. I’ll make sure to update this post once she writes back. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this: if you need to make a lifestyle change, do it. Don’t wait around for things to get worse. I need to hear that as much as anyone else.