A Choice
There was a choice to make.
The unspeakable pain started suddenly in my chest about a month ago. When I awoke my entire chest felt like glass and movement felt like shards cutting deep through my body. Rising from the bed was and is horrific. After I load up with narcotics, the pain settles into one single long dagger cutting through my lower right rib cage. Excruciating. The Oxycontin doesn't touch it. Neither does the Vicoden.
So the Dr. says go on 40 MG Prednisone. I resist. Stubbornly, I hold out. I hold out because I want to be alive and to be loved and not alone. I want to laugh and make art and music. I want to see beauty. I hold out because I have done that before and it changes everything. I begin to cry out in pain. I can no longer hide it. It engulfs me. It becomes more and more evident that the ER is in my near future to get relief. I think about the hours of waiting, sitting in the middle of God knows what germs with my immune system already totally shot, and having to drag some family member through it all. Then maybe some Morphine, maybe a little relief, but in the end the same old dark friend would be waiting for me: PREDNISONE.
So today I made the inevitable choice. Went up to 40 MG on the Prednisone. What a horrible chemical. The pain level is already different, but still extremely bad. Maybe tomorrow it will be less. Meantime my broom has come out of the closet. I am like a stranger to myself. I look in the mirror and I don't see a wife, friend, daughter, mother. I see a deep dark pit of pain, sadness, and rage, murderous rage; like a dark force has dug its claws down deep in my soul and rooted itself in. Like it wants to stay there forever and evict me from my own soul, my own life, my own mind. It mocks me, laughing at it's strength and my weakness. It's power is staggering, its' purposes pure evil.
Life is going on around me, I know it is. But I am unplugged, there is a ditch deep and dark and wide and inpassable and I am alone on the other side of it.
No not alone exactly.
I have my PREDNISONE.
4 comments:
Try to remember you are not alone, it doesn't matter how that evil medicine makes you feel. We're here for you and most of all God is still in control. - With all my Little Girl Love - Mom
pred is like the worse thing for your bones! i suffer from advanced rheumatoid arthritis. at one point i was doing 30 mgs day! for 3 yrs. i finnaly found a great doc in reno that set me up with a 'cocktail' of arava, metholtrexate and preds.
it is better, becoz i am down to 5 mgs of pred, (i can't seem to get lower, i inflame so ez).
backlash! my bone density is like an 80 yr old gramma, so now i have to shoot myself with some crap everynite, (and i hate needles, oh well), for the next yr. . .
just keep pluggin' along!
god speed, and i wish you well!
m.a.
Jeannie, once again your post has moved me to tears. Prednisone is evil and does save lives. Is it true that the guy who discovered it got a nobel peace prize and several years later committed suicide when he realized the monster he created? I would be dead if not for prednisone, and sometimes I wonder if I am not dead because of it.
Read "Coping with Prednisone."
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