You're going to do WHAT?

When the bad days erupt, they can feel like a slow controlled explosion, with each passing hour feeling worse than the one that just came before.


This past week, I’ve been trying to reduce my morphine dose, as I’m seeing a new holistic doctor in New York City, who has put me on a nutritional regimen that is suppose to reduce my pain. But I’m still on a hefty dose of the stuff, which combined with all these new vitamins he has me on, landed me in the hospital the other night with a case of constipation that was literally off the charts.

As embarrassing as telling this tale might be, it’s a grim and somewhat common reality that anyone who takes opiates, whether by choice or not, must deal with the sometimes extreme irregularity it causes, and Saturday night at 3 a.m. will go down in the annals of my life as yet another indignity my poor body has suffered as a result of this unrelenting pain.

It’s happened before—this extreme constipation, indelicately called fecal impaction—but somehow I was always able to, er…well, push through. You would think that one would be able to tackle the problem with some basic laxatives long before it would get to these end stages, but for some reason, it often can happen hard and fast (oh, these puns), with little warning that a huge amount of cement is building up where it ain’t supposed to be.

Each time it’s happened, I’ve sworn that it would be the last time, that I would do whatever it took to prevent these occurrences, but the new supplements must have been my undoing this week, for when the clock struck around 3 a.m. Saturday morning, and all measures I’d been employing for the previous eight hours or so had failed, I intuitively knew I’d been beaten and that this time, I’d have to go to the emergency room, as even waiting until morning could make this dangerous case even more perilous to my health. Plus, having a brick sitting in your bowel feels like, well…a brick sitting in your bowel, and you want it out as quickly as humanly possible.

I did get myself to the emergency room, and luckily I didn’t have to wait too long for a young male doctor to come in and remedy the situation, which was basically sticking his finger up my ass in order to break up and pull out the offending material a little at a time. But oh, the indignity…and the discomfort! I can’t believe that we can put a man on the moon, but the best we can come up with when it comes to a clogged pipe is manual dexterity.

Before he took the plunge, I asked in astonishment if there was any other way, if there was any magic potion they could shoot up there to break things up, but he said somewhat curtly, “Nope. I just have to get in there, and it’s nasty.”

He then told me to take down my pants and roll over, as a nurse stood by, pan in hand, ready for the rocks. Before I knew it, he’d put on two pairs of rubber gloves, greased up, then plunged in with such ferocity that I grabbed onto the side of the bed for dear life, fearing that my poor anus was being ripped from its moorings.

He wasn’t in there for even a minute when the intercom clicked in, saying he had a phone call. “Excuse me,“ he said, removing the gloves, “but I have to get this.” “What?” I whimpered, shocked that any phone call could be more important than stopping in the middle of a procedure such as this. As one might imagine, a patient in this position wants the entire matter over as quickly as possible, and it felt like an hour for him to return as my poor butt was throbbing, even though it was probably just a few minutes.

It gave me just enough time to ponder how awful it was going to feel all over again when he returned, and my imagination didn’t disappoint. He was just as vigorous the second time around, to which I grunted, “How long is this going to take?” “Oh, a few more minutes,” he said, which inspired such fear in me that I gave a mighty push, and well, the matter resolved itself from then on in just a few seconds to the surprise of both him and the nurse. They both acted like a baby was coming as they rushed to get the pan underneath me, realizing that nature was taking its course in a way I just couldn’t control.

And just like that it was all over, and before I knew it, I was back in my apartment, back in bed tending to my severe case of bronchitis and fever, which felt like kids’ play compared to what I’d just been through.

Since then, I’ve been trying to reduce my morphine even more, and I’ve been staying away from the supplements for now, but frankly, I’m miserable. The pain in my face is too fierce right now to reduce the morphine any more, and I was in tears most of the afternoon, wondering how in god’s name my life has come to this—that I’m on so much pain medication that I actually needed an emergency room doctor this week to pull a brick out of my butt with his bare, if gloved, hands.

The poor guy didn’t even stick around for me to thank him. I did thank the nurse though, who was left with the grunt work, ‘natch, of throwing out my poop. I told her I was sorry that I’d come in with such an unpleasant task, but she couldn’t have been nicer, shrugging off the whole ordeal with, “Honey, this is what we’re here for. We’re here to help, and it’s not just you…this happens to people all the time.”

And with that I walked out a little easier than I walked in, if a little bowlegged.



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Pills For Enlightenment

It would seem impossible that I could live a life without painkillers at this moment. This morning was a bad one that required one morphine pill, a Xanax and three Vicodins to get the pain to a somewhat bearable level, but I can no longer stand what these medications are doing to my spirit.

As I felt the pain battle for supremacy in my face and jaw (despite the meds), I decided to just lay on the couch at one point and give in, to not fight, to boldly tell it to get as bad as it wants to get--that I can take it.

It's always remarkably relaxing when I do this, as I suppose in these moments I can compartmentalize the pain, set it aside, and live with it instead of fighting it. But for some reason, I seem to do this only when I arrive at the point where I'm realizing it's winning handsomely, and the only way to win the war, so to speak, is to surrender the battle.

When I do this, the pain does ease up somewhat, and I wondered this morning if this tactic would be successful if I went off pain medication altogether. It seemed like such a shockingly bold move, even stupid, but the idea intrigued me.

Yet when I significantly decreased my pain meds in an experiment last week, the pain skyrocketed, and it took two days to get it down again. It's actually been pretty bad ever since.

But I literally can't stand this medication fog anymore. As I've been so isolated and sedentary for most of the past year, I joined a gym this week, and man, what an effort not only to exercise, but just to walk over there! My malaise fought me every inch of the way, and the depressing thought kept creeping in, "Why am I bothering?"

What's keeping my hope afloat, though, are the memories of more joyous times, when, despite my problems and issues, life could also feel electric and exciting, and I would be wildly filled with creative ideas that gave me more than enough fuel to execute them.

But my days are so very different now. And I have to wonder how they fit into the overall pattern of success/defeat defeat that has defined so much of my life. If everything around us is truly connected by some kind of universal web, where past, present and future are illusions of our three-dimensional world, and if I go on the assumption that I'm here on this earthly plane to learn deep truths via the gift of free choice, then what is the lesson?

Of course, my malady may be nothing more than a freak occurrence of bad luck, but for the sake of argument, if this ordeal does somehow reflect a bigger picture, what in that picture am I missing?

When I think along these lines (which always seem to effortlessly surface during these moments of surrender), it all feels so profoundly obvious to me--that of course this is all connected, you numnut, but you just don't want to go there. You don't want to face the sheer terror of the wild blue yonder before you, and instead would prefer to stay in your hovel of pain and medication, where the space is oh so small, but oh so familiar.

As I've written about before, most of my adult life was devoted to music, to being the best singer/songwriter I could be. Those were heady times indeed, but when one is so singularly focused on JUST ONE THING in life and that thing no longer exists, it's hard to feel anchored to the earth anymore, despite my other artistic endeavors.


And why was my life devoted to JUST ONE THING? Because I felt so incapable of succeeding in love relationships. Time after time, I made such poor choices in men, which had less to do with them and more to do with my low self-esteem. And let's face it...a life without love, or even the potential for love, is hardly a life at all. I dare say my fear of intimacy borders on something pathological, and I am the less for it.

Of course, now that I'm so ill, in such pain and on so many medications, I continue to feel myself unworthy of a love relationship, but of course this is just more of my bullshit. I'm aware that I'm actually quite good (for the most part) at handling extremely difficult physical conditions, and I'm also aware that no one is perfect; that we all have our proverbial crosses to bear and baggage to unload. Pain and illness does not deem me unlovable, but in my own mind, it gives me an excuse to melodramatically retreat, which is made all the easier by the fatigue created by the meds.

It's a vicious cycle indeed. Pain and fatigue keep me isolated, yet isolation keeps me away from any possibility of love, which would restore much-needed balance in my life, whether the pain was there or not.

It's certainly no easy thing to wake up with severe pain in the morning, and would be harder still to take a stab at not medicating it, but something has got to give. I've become frozen in time, remembering the person I used to be, yet only vaguely seeing the person I could become. And therein, perhaps, lies the rub.

With all previous definitions of myself shattered, who am I now, and who do I want to be? Where do I go from here? I can't see it, and this terrifies me, frankly. And with pain taking up so much real estate in my brain, it's difficult to formulate a new vision for myself or for anything...even some nutty creative endeavor.

Before all this happened, I was actually feeling okay about setting the music aside for awhile, by exploring new paths, by venturing forward full speed ahead in faith and love.

But of course, my faith was shattered, too, when pain exploded onto the scene. God not only vacated his co-pilot seat in my life; he actually hit the ejector button, leaving me to crash land in some foreign sea all on my own. I've been trying hard ever since not to drown.

And so my present is now largely defined by reruns of Criminal Minds. Nothing soothes the tortured soul, it seems, like stories of sociopathic serial killers.

I watched a preacher today during a Sunday morning TV program, and he talked about faith, about putting our troubles in God's hands. He focused mainly on the recession and the joblessness that many of his followers were no doubt experiencing, noting Bible passages that basically said to quit worrying, have faith that God will provide, and just enjoy your life.

When it comes to money and my freelance work, I can get with that. But how those parables apply to someone in chronic pain still has me stumped. Maybe they don't apply, or can't. Once again, I'm reminded of Buddhist teachings that say there will always be suffering in life; the trick is to rise above it (no matter how harsh the circumstances), relinquish your attachments, and enjoy the bliss that ensues.

But I'm told by this one Buddhist sect that I'll have to chant two to three hours a day to attain this enlightenment. Huh? What? Is this a joke? I get impatient with how long it takes to walk to my kitchen. Can't they just make a pill for it?


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Note: Watercolors are some new entries in my illustrated journal. I'm using them as inspiration to get back to my flamenco classes!




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