Jay Lake (jaylake) wrote,
Jay Lake
jaylake
  • Location: Nuevo Rancho Lake
  • Mood: thoughtful
  • Music: the ticking of the grandfather clock

[cancer] Being a drug puppet

This isn't cancer-specific so much as surgery-specific, but I am finding the whole drug experience to be more than a little frustrating. I'm currently taking hydromorphone (Dilaudid) on a sliding basis depending on pain level. I'm running pretty close to the minimum dosage, as the pain really has been pretty manageable since last week's Pain Crash. When I take the hydromorphone, I just check out. Sometimes I fall completely asleep, sometimes I drift off to the magical land of drool-dreams, sometimes I smile and talk but the world makes a lot less sense.

Who the hell does this by choice? Why?

I am being a drug puppet. The strings are owned by the hydromorphone. Given that the alternative is pain sufficiently intense to be more disruptive than the drugs themselves, I'll take the bargain, but it is an uneasy one at best. This stuff robs me of my intellect, of my focus, of my capacity to be multithreaded, of my ability to write or even read.

Once I am back in the fiction saddle, there is going to be some serious whoop-ass opened up. Meanwhile, being a tourist in the land of the slow, I am at least enjoying the dream fog.

Except when I am not, of course.
Tags: cancer, healthcare, personal
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