What I've been feeling and doing, and why I'm not visiting blogs

I saw my new pain doctor today, and he loaded me down with Lidoderm, Cymbalta, and Butrans (I already had Dalmane, Ambien, Restoril, Neurontin, Dilaudid, oxycodone, Vicodin, Demerol, Fentanyl, Requip, and probably a few more that slip my mind at the moment). He also referred me for acupuncture, hypnotherapy, physical therapy, biofeedback, and a half dozen other therapies, and finished off by telling me to consider a TENS unit and a lidocaine infusion (I obviously looked wealthy). All this plus a new diagnosis. No, it’s not CRPD like my internist said, and it’s not even syringomyelia like my last pain specialist said, and it’s hardly a complete mystery like my surgical neurologist said. Oh, no, it’s CPS (central pain syndrome, whatever that means—I rarely even Google diagnoses anymore). I damn near fell on the floor laughing when he said that. God, I could diagnosis myself by closing my eyes, opening a medical encyclopedia, and pointing at a disease, so what the hell do I need these overpaid morons for? Oh, drugs. That’s it. I need them for drugs, man.

I’m going to rant—or should I say “continue ranting”? The son of bitch had me piss in a goddamn cup so he could fucking test me for drugs (“I told you what I’m taking,” I said. “Don’t take it personally,” he said). He even insisted that I bring all my medications so he could look at the bottles, but he wasn’t content with just looking at them; he counted the pills—or rather his nurse did. I knew that a drug test awaited me before I went in, so I hated him from the start, and tortured myself about whether to go at all since I didn’t really expect any good to come of it anyway (you lose faith after your 30th doctor). I agonized right up until the last minute, at which time I concluded that I would put up with his drug test shit until the first of the year when my insurance cycle starts over, and I have to start paying through the nose again. The whole time I was there, I kept wanting to slap him silly. If I were a hair’s breadth less stable, I would have too. Although I’m not entirely unsympathetic to a doctor's need to protect himself in the event of a lawsuit, I doubt that it sets well with many people to be forced to prove they’re not lying.

After I left his office, I went to another doctor’s office for an Orthovisc shot in the knee. He missed the joint three times, and kept having to jab that long old needle around. (Why, yes, thank you, it did hurt about as bad as it sounds like it would). I’m glad that I’m able to handle pain as well as I am. I’ve been so near absolute panic and/or despair so many times that I’ve lost count, yet I persist in believing that I handle pain better than most people. I’m probably a fool for thinking this, but it somehow helps me to maintain that illusion, if it be an illusion.

I’ve all but stopped smoking the medical marijuana (I’m still eating it in small amounts). After I poisoned myself (see August 8), it just never felt the same. When I smoke it now, the first thing that happens is that everything that makes me anxious or unhappy hits me at once and is multiplied by a factor of ten; and the second thing that happens is that I become a complete idiot. I can still write—I’m ripped right now in childish rebellion against the fact that the pain specialist told me not to mix pot with one of my new drugs—and it even makes me write when I wouldn’t otherwise want to, and about things I wouldn’t otherwise write about. Like now. Peggy’s off to New England for two weeks, and I had just as soon be working at a job that I started three days ago after postponing it for years for fear the pain would become unbearable. That job is painting the laundry room and building a new shelf unit for it. The work entails filling holes, moving heavy things, scrubbing the walls and ceiling with trisodium phosphate, cleaning up the mess, and then applying three coats of paint. Six years ago, it would have been a small job, but now it’s killing me. It’s also making me very happy because I do love manual labor.

With Peggy gone, I let Bonnie the dog and Brewsky the cat sleep wherever they please instead of locking them away like we usually do. Surprisingly, Brewsky has taken to sleeping with me in my twin bed. Two dudes together, you might say. I feel badly that Bonnie can’t join us, but it would be a bit much for me even if it wouldn’t invite trouble between her and Brewsky—it would also mean a move to Peggy’s double bed.

So, there you have it; I’m busy, so I’m not visiting blogs, and I wouldn’t be writing in one now if I hadn’t smoked that pot, because I really want to get this job done as a surprise for Peggy who after forty years still hasn’t learned that I’m dumb enough to do such a thing.

“I talk about what I see, and I’m so sorry that 99% of what I see is no good.” Manu Chao

If you're in the mood for happy music, go to my last post, but if your inclination is toward darkness, stay here.

When I started medical marijuana, I switched overnight from talk radio all day long to music radio all day long. I started with modern American pop stations because I was looking for musicians to complement my collection of artists from the sixties and seventies. Whenever a commercial came on, I would flip to another station trying to find even one artist I liked, but I never did, and it wasn’t because I was stuck in the past. Indeed, I was screaming to be carried into the 21st century music scene, but not just because I live in the 21st century. Since I liked a Colombian singer whom Peggy enjoys named Shakira, I started getting library CDs by other Latin performers, and that’s when I stumbled upon Manu.

Music is crucial to my altered vision of the world, and so I had to find at least one new artist for this new day, an artist in whom I recognized brilliance, integrity, passion, and benevolence. I didn’t want an artist who would take me out of this world, but an artist who would put me more deeply into it than the news ever had. Manu is that artist. Listening to too much news hadn’t opened my heart; it had overwhelmed it under a cloak of objectivity, and I had closed myself off in defense.

You can find Youtube footage of Manu Chao performing concerts at packed soccer stadiums in dozens of countries on several continents, but if you’re an American, you’ve probably never heard of him. Such is our isolation. The song at the top was the first I heard by him. The opening lines (“Welcome to Tijuana. 
Tekila, sexo y marihuana”) made me think that the song was either a tribute to or a spoof about a major Mexican/American border city, and I smiled. Then, Manu’s voice—and other sounds and voices—began to come in one by one with incredible sadness. So it was that my first lesson about Manu Chao was that his music never gives me what I expect. I can’t even listen to two-thirds of a song by him, and guess where he’s going with the last third.

Manu grew up in Paris, the son of Spaniards who fled Franco. He’s a leftist who sings in many languages but mostly in Spanish. A common theme in his music is wealthy countries and individuals that live on the backs of the poor. Yet, to one like myself who has to look up the translations, his music initially sounds almost upbeat, and this combination of sad words and happy music makes the sadness more profound. I hear in his music the irony between how we all, to some degree, appear on the surface versus the heartbreak that we feel within. I’m also attracted to the layering of voices and instruments and to the changes of direction that he often takes within the course of a single song. So far as I know, there’s no name for his style of music.

Below is the same song performed before a live audience in France. Part of his appeal as a live musician lies in his ability to turn the mood of tens of thousands of people back and forth instantly. This--along with seeing him on stage--makes the video phenomenal, although I find the actual music less pleasing than the studio version.

My continuing adventures with medical marijuana

I started out smoking my pot with a homemade pipe, but I hated that pipe, so I got a store bought one, but I hated it too. I then bought a bong, and it’s far superior to the pipes, but I would prefer to not smoke anything, so last week, I threw two cups of marijuana leaves into a pint of olive oil, and heated the oil at 220° F (104° C) for two hours. The result was neither pretty nor tasty, yet palatable enough on toast. The only real downside to the mixture is that it takes so long to work (up to three hours). I’ve also had a problem getting the dosage right. One night I wouldn’t feel anything after swallowing a rounded teaspoon; the next night, a heaping teaspoonful would practically leave me catatonic. Because I’m trying to make my marijuana experimentation as pleasant as possible to Peggy, the catatonic nights posed some behavioral challenges. When you can barely walk or talk, just saying goodnight is difficult, yet I consider it important that I be able to function more or less normally when I’m high, so the challenge isn’t altogether unwelcome.

Yesterday, I decided to take a new tack, so I bought a bottle of 190 proof alcohol, and mixed it with nearly a quart of marijuana leaves (see photo). Now, I just have to shake the mixture twice a day, and in two weeks, the THC will have leached out of the pot and into the alcohol, at which time the foul smelling and horrible tasting concoction can either be taken with an eyedropper or rubbed into the skin. I will admit to no little curiosity about this combination of two intoxicants, which is infamous for landing people in the ER. Now, going to the ER when you’re having a bad time of it on pot isn’t the best idea in the world because—unless you’re psychotic anyway or your marijuana is impure—your only real danger comes from panic. So, you ask, how does that work, exactly? Well, think of marijuana as being like water in a lake. If you’re learning to swim, and you panic in the water, bad things happen unnecessarily, and so it is with marijuana, although with the latter, the bad things are all inside your head, and should go away after several hours if you are able to remain calm.

Before I close, I’ll report on my physical therapy appointment yesterday. The night before, I was in so much pain from my exercises that I needed marijuana, Requip, Neurontin, and oxycodone to sleep even a little, so I decided to ask the therapist if it made sense for me to keep exercising since, no matter how little I do or how much time I take off, the pain is still intolerable. I never got to ask because he told me straight away to stop exercising for a month, at which time he would like to see me again. As he pointed out, I’m already up to 80% flexibility in the shoulder that I had surgery on in April, and so it would be reasonable for me to give up the exercises for good.

While I’m reporting, I’ll add that I saw my surgeon last week. He said he was unhappy about having done three surgeries on me only to have each of them leave me in even worse pain. I try to stay upbeat around doctors to keep them from becoming discouraged, and so I did what I could to cheer Mark up, but I went away feeling badly about the appointment because I’m afraid he’s going to balk about doing a fourth—and hopefully final—surgery. Before you remind me that it’s the job of the doctor to comfort the patient instead of the other way around, I’ll just mention that what should be the case and what is the case are often miles apart. If you have a doctor whom you like as much as I like Mark, it pays to make your time with him something that he will feel good about because frustrated doctors tend to dump patients, even when, as in my case, a negative outcome is almost surely unrelated to any mistake the doctor made or could have foreseen.

I just realized that I’ve gained eight followers since I started writing about marijuana. Are some of them narcs, politicians, or talk show employees who will soon take my words out of context and feature me as an example of why Oregon’s medical marijuana law should be overturned? I’m torn between wanting to be as honest about this subject as I’ve been about other subjects, and not wanting to harm the future of medical marijuana, or get myself arrested, or make myself into an object of public ridicule. Maybe the mass of conservatives really are well-meaning people of conscience, but all I see in their leadership is greed, bigotry, dishonesty, and the willingness to destroy any and everyone who gets in their way; all in the name of their “Blessed Savior.” Oh, but I forgot; it’s our supposedly liberal president who reversed his campaign promises when he ordered the latest war on medical marijuana. Are no politicians to be trusted, ever? No, no politicians, ever. No politicians, no government agencies, no military spokesmen, and no religious leaders. Power does indeed corrupt, if not always, nearly always.

Upon being stoned for two weeks

After praising the pain-killing and mood-elevating qualities of marijuana in my last post, I cut my Naproxen (an anti-inflammatory) by half and my Neurontin (a painkiller) by two-thirds. I also doubled the intensity of my twice a day workout. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the pain came roaring back, and the marijuana couldn’t stop it. Why do I never see these things coming? As soon as I feel even a little better, I go overboard and lay myself low for days or even weeks.

So then, have I stopped the pot? No because it still helps. One hit will leave me stoned for hours, so I take eight during the course of a night, and am stoned all the next day. As with narcotics, the principal benefit of marijuana isn’t that it has the power to eliminate any and all pain, but that it has the power to make the pain easier to bear (lying awake high all night is definitely preferable to lying awake sober). Alongside the pain, I’m working on attitude, and the pot is helping with that too. How? I’ll enumerate.

Peggy. Peggy is not a person to complain until a situation is really bad, and she recently told one of my doctors that my unhappiness was making things very hard for her. Now that I’m smoking pot, she’s okay, I think—with Peggy, it’s often hard to tell. In any event, she seems happy, and we haven’t had a fight since my first puff. Marijuana undeniably softens me… I should mention that there have been two things in our 39-year marriage that nearly sunk the ship as far as Peggy was concerned. One was my womanizing, and the other was marijuana. Yet, if I stopped smoking today, she would no doubt tie me to a chair and force the smoke down my throat with a leafblower.

Music. I want to listen to it—I ordered Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Dan Fogelberg just today. Instead of walking into a room and finding me listening to the latest news of Syria or to talk about the Republican contenders for the presidential election a year and a half from now, Peggy walked in today to find me crying over Shakira (Donde estas Corazon). I simply don’t want to hear up to the minute news regarding horrible things that I can do absolutely nothing about except feel depressed and powerless. The question is, why did I ever?

Other people. I’ve become suddenly fascinated by the stories that others have to tell—and I will approach almost anyone. Before pot, my conversations were usually short with me doing much of the talking. Now, they’re long, and I hardly open my mouth. I’m quite amazed by how voluble people are once I stop talking about myself, and ask them about themselves. People who I never even liked simply won’t shut up, and, surprisingly, I’m okay with that.

Anger and depression. I spend a lot more time angry than depressed, but much of both have dropped away. I’m finally having to admit that I will probably suffer from some degree of pain and disability for the rest of my life, and I have concluded that (a) I can live with that, and (b) there are no magic bullets; there are simply various things that are useful to various degrees. Pain and disability are only half the problem. Railing against life’s unfairness is the other half, and I’m so tired of being angry that I simply can’t continue. I’ve done the best I could, and I respect myself for it, but now I am finding the strength to believe that I can do better, and I thank pot for that because I was wound too tight to unwind myself.

Directness. It’s scary, the things I say. The pot makes me too open, too willing to risk rejection. Yet, there is something frighteningly beautiful about that. It’s like art, music, and visiting the woods, in that I love it so much I had rather die prematurely than to live without it. Pot used to close doors for me because it made me so paranoid that I couldn’t function around other people—and I don’t just mean appropriately; I mean at all. Now, pot that is far stronger than what I smoked in the old days is opening doors. Go figure.

*The illustration for this post is by Maf04. One way that such art captures the psydelic experience is by inducing a sense of disequilibrium. Of course, with art, all one has to do is to look away.