A Prescription for Vicodin

I have a huge distrust of medicine. Although Blake's addiction to prescription pills amplified this, I've felt this way on some level for as long as I can remember. When someone offers me Advil or Ibuprofen for a minor ache or pain, I always decline. It's not that I don't think they work, as I'm sure they will, I just don't like putting random chemicals in my body. Something about that has always felt weird to me. Unless something is seriously wrong, I'd much rather let my body heal itself. 

For the past couple weeks, I've had a pretty bad ear infection/ailment of some sort. I'm actually not quite sure what's wrong because the doctors keep telling me it's something different every time I come in. At first I was just going to wait it out like I usually do, but when I told my parents about it over Thanksgiving, they insisted I go see someone. So I saw someone, she looked in my ear, wrote me two different prescriptions, and that was that.

The whole thing felt really rushed to me. When she gave me the prescriptions she said, "These might help, let me know if they don't." Might help? So I'm going to pollute my body with pills that might not even help? And if they don't, you'll chalk it up to trial and error and send me home with another set of prescriptions? This was just too much.

But with the insistence of my parents that I need to get better at taking care of myself, I've been taking the prescriptions exactly as directed. I've been waking up each morning with three pills, taking four more throughout the day, and can't fall asleep until I remember the last two. All the while I've been waiting for my ear to feel better, but it only seems to be hurting more. 

When I went to the doctor this morning, he said he saw no signs that I ever had an ear infection to begin with. But even though I don't need the antibiotics I was originally prescribed, he advised me to keep taking them to avoid the potentially bad effects from cutting them short. Ugh. After he prescribed me something else to attack the ailment he thinks I actually have, he told me he was also giving me Vicodin.

My stomach dropped. "Are you sure I need Vicodin? That's a really serious pain killer. I don't think I really need that one." He was confused, as if he'd never had a patient question his decision to give them medicine before. He explained that if the pain is making it hard for me to sleep, a pain killer could really help. He told me that I don't need to suffer; these pills can mask the pain. 

I don't need to suffer; these pills can mask the pain. 

As that sentence continued to echo in my head, I wondered if it's the mantra of every addict. I wondered if it's that kind of thinking that leads to the justification of coping mechanisms that only serve to hide a problem instead of fixing it.

I let these thoughts carry me away. I wondered if it started out like this for Blake. After his accident, his doctor harmlessly prescribed him Oxycontin. He told him he didn't need to suffer; as he healed, these pills could mask his pain. And they did. They masked his pain and then started to mask everything else. Created a disguise so encompassing that it ended up numbing him to all pain, not just from his injury. A feeling so addictive that the suffering of a real life seemed too unbearable. 

After crawling down the rabbit hole for a while with that thinking, I had to ask myself: will I take the Vicodin? It has been pretty horrible staying up until four or five in the morning wondering if the pounding in my ear will ever cease. The doctor is right, I don't need to suffer. If there is medicine out there that can help me dull this pain, it would be silly not to take advantage of it. So I won't deny myself the help if the help is what I need.

But the difference is being in tune with what exactly I mean by "I need." I know that pain killers like these have a way of tricking you into thinking you need to continue taking them or at a higher dosage or more frequently. What you "need" can potentially change because pain killers make you feel good. And who doesn't like feeling good? If you could get the feeling of peace, ease, and weightlessness instantly from a pill, a pill a doctor told you to have, who wouldn't want to? The lines between what you need and what you want begin to blur. 

I see the pros and the cons, the benefits and the hazards. I can't spend another night up until 5 AM, but I also can't allow myself to believe a cure lies simply in a white tablet either. I am still uncomfortable with how readily doctors hand out prescriptions for pills, based on surface level guesses at what's actually going wrong. But even though I've always had a huge distrust of medicine, I also understand that it is necessary in some situations. What other choice do I have than to put my trust in a doctor? The only thing I can do is take this medication with a critical eye, from a position of ever present self-reflection.

Resiliency

I had a paper due today for one of the counseling classes in my grad program. The assignment was to write about a time of hardship and resiliency in our lives. Tonight, we had to read our papers aloud to each other.

This was mine (some of the parts have been taken and modified from earlier blog entires):

When people are deeply in love, they sometimes tell each other dramatic and romantic things like “I could never live without you.” Although a cliché like that sounds over the top, somehow love makes you say it with such conviction, like you were the first two people on earth to declare that to each other. When I said I could never live without Blake it was with complete sincerity. But now, even though I meant what I said with every fiber of my being, here I am living without him

In college, my boyfriend Blake was in an accident where he was injured and subsequently prescribed the painkiller OxyContin. Due to the extremely addictive nature of this drug, he got hooked. This addiction to painkillers eventually lead him to experiment with heroin, which is actually a cheaper, more accessible drug derived from the same source. Blake overdosed on heroin three months ago. The entire time we dated I knew nothing about his heroin addiction. He somehow managed to keep it completely hidden from me until the day he died.

I went through, and am still going through, a million emotions in coping with both finding out about my boyfriend’s double life and mourning him at the same time. The thing about lies is that just one has the power to breed contagious doubt about all other truths. Finding out about his hidden drug use initiated an overwhelming insecurity about whether a relationship I felt so proud of was just a product of my imagination. How could someone who actually cared about me keep such a huge secret? Were any of his feelings real? Did I know him at all? And then there are also the feelings of guilt for not being able to help him and confusion in wondering why he never let me.

But above all there has been an overwhelming sadness for the loss of my love and best friend. When I was with Blake, I felt like I could say anything, do anything, be anything. Anything and everything seemed possible because of him and how he made me feel. When he died, that was all taken away from me without warning and without any chance of getting it back. It was, and still is, devastating.

In the aftermath, the hardest thing in coping with such a tragedy has been feeling so torn to pieces on the inside, but looking normal on the outside. I almost wish I had an illness, broken bone, scar, something so it’s more obvious that I am not ok. If this were something physical, people could actually watch as I heal and know by looking at me that I'm still recovering. It's not like I want any of these physical maladies to elicit sympathy from others, I just want them to know that I'm not the same. I'm not normal. I'm not entirely myself.

But what is normal? Who am I anyway? These are things that I have begun to ask myself.  In order to manage what happened and look towards the future, I have given myself the permission to analyze anything I need to question, reflect on whatever I want to process, and feel any emotion that decides to grip my heart. I’ve done all of this through writing. 

I created a blog after a friend told me that reading how I explore my grief might be helpful for those who loved Blake, people who have gone through something similar, and most importantly, me. By opening myself up this way, so publicly and unapologetically, I have made my internal pain visible. Not only am I able to release what’s swirling around inside my mind, but I can also share my recovery with whoever wants to read it.  Whenever I feel like the pain is weighing me down or I can’t focus because it’s clouding my thoughts, I take out my laptop and allow it all to flow through my fingers. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m writing about until the entry is done. Then, I can read my message and discover new things about myself: who I am, what I value, and how I feel. Giving myself space to write has become both cathartic and essential to my well-being.

At the point when I first created the blog, I decided that this tragedy could either become a pain buried in the depths of my heart or a scar that blends into the landscape of my skin. It was my choice. I chose to wear the hurt openly because I couldn’t burden my heart with the weight of a secret. I realize, however, that I need to get to a place where I acknowledge this experience as part who I am without letting it define me. This is something I continue to navigate every day.

Through my journey of resiliency, I am beginning to realize that telling Blake “I could never live without you” wasn’t actually a lie. I’m not living without him because Blake has become a part of me. If I truly believe that I carry him with me wherever I go, I feel strong. Of course it's devastating to know he will never physically be with me again, this blow is lessened when I realize that I never have to say goodbye completely. He can be the reassurance in my head that whispers words of confidence, the pulse in my heart that beats with pride, and the air that fills my lungs and leaves me with a sense of calm. I don’t have to live without him because our love continues to shape who I am every day.