Fuck Today (Part 1)

2050

So… I used to be a HDO patient, I was at 300mg/day (that’s a LOT, I’ve done some research into oxy junkies on youtube - surprisign what people feel OK with sharing and I haven’t seen any that are that high ((no pun intended)) as of yet - not that they aren’t out there mind you) but due to recent DEA intervention in my area my Dr is in jail (I actually warned him about the DEA having a mad-on for HDO’s and to take extra care/thank him for trusting me enough to take the risk - turns out he wasn’t very good at managing risk, anys) I’ve been cut down by 74% over the past six weeks (well, did that cut in four, loitering at 74% for a month before next cut) - shit, I digress.

Point being, I’m an outlier, 300mg/day doesn’t get me “high”, no to say there isn’t sedation - there most certainly is - but it’s easily manageable. I had also been at that dose for close to a decade (I know!) and my standard dose was 75mg @ 4x/day but sometimes I would go as high as 150, again will no significant side effects.

At any rate, I’m now waaay down and have been given a slew of other drugs, so many I have to write them down because I can’t remember them all (Oxycodone, Alprazolam, Gabapentin (2 different doses of this), Baclofen, Robaxin, Celexia & Naproxen) but the end result is two key things:

  1. it doesn’t manage the pain as well (I liken it to a broken leg vs a broken finger - if you break both, the leg hurts a lot worse and the finger is negligible, but if you used to have a broken leg and now it’s better but still have a freshly broken finger, the finger hurts like hell despite having experienced a worse pain recently)
  2. As you may have noticed, I’m “foggy” as shit. I got called into work to trouble shoot a problem with a vCenter instance and it all looked like gobbledygook. thankfully we have one sole remaining knowledgeable person who is also “good people™” who totes bailed me out. I can do InfoSec stuff in my sleep - to me that’s easy - but infrastructure requires domain knowledge that if you a) don’t work on it frequently is easily lost and/or b) if you never had the opportunity to master the SysAdm of it in the first place is “learnable”, but certainly not in my current state.

Shit, did it again - my brain is fucking fried.

My fuck today is my fucking fried brain because my new Dr is so afraid of the DEA that I’m “too high risk” (his words) to keep on oxy (and my patient records have been seized by the feds and I’ve been unable to track them down).

Sorry for the babble, but I’m fucking breaking under the weight of this today :head_bandage:

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2051

Over a year ago, the vet told us that one of our cats had late stage kidney disease. The numbers from the blood work at the time gave an average of less than 30 days to live. He told us to take her home, keep her comfortable, love her, and spoil her. I swear I think she hear that last part and decided to stick around as long as she possibly could: these humans are mine!

We just got back from having her euthanized. It wasn’t even the kidney disease that got her, at least not directly. She’d developed dental problems quite a while back, but wasn’t a good candidate for surviving the surgery needed to remove the bad tooth. It wasn’t keeping her from eating and she didn’t act like she was in pain, so we figured we’d just keep an eye on it and try not to worry about it too much.

Last Sunday, my partner and I noticed Keke had some swelling on one side of her face. By late evening, the swelling was to the point that she couldn’t keep her eye open. I called our vet Monday morning, got an appointment for Tuesday morning, and then worried about Keke all day long as she’d demand food, then stare at the dish, before walking away without eating anything. The swelling diminished, but she still wasn’t actually eating, nor drinking water. I knew about the tooth, of course, but she’d actually let me rub her jaw under the swelling and didn’t seem to be uncomfortable about it.

On Tuesday, the vet confirmed the abscessed tooth was the problem, but Keke wouldn’t really let her examine it too much. Since she bit a vet on her previously visit, we decided to play it safe, and give her fluids and antibiotics and hope for the best. Wednesday and Thursday, she was back to her demanding self, and ate quite a bit. We knew it was a matter of time, but then again, we’d known that for a year or more, hadn’t we?

Last night I noticed a smear of matted fur around her jawline. I cleaned it with a wet paper towel, then noticed a few minutes later, that it was a large bit of skin, falling loose and exposing the tissue underneath. She wouldn’t really let me examine it much more than that. My partner and I talked it over and arranged her day such that she could go to the vet with me today. I called first thing this morning and got an appointment for late afternoon.

Once she was on the exam table, with me sitting in a chair, was the first time I could really see the wound underneath the skin flap. It pretty much left an opening into her jaw and partially into her mouth. There was enough of it still attached, that trying to remove it would not be easy and there was enough of a hole left that … well, she probably wouldn’t ever heal and certainly wouldn’t go back to eating or drinking.

We had to make that choice that every pet parent has to make sooner or later, and let her go before she started suffering just because we wanted to keep her around a while longer. I know it was the right thing to do … Hell, ever fucking time we’ve ever had to do it, it was the right thing to do, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. I miss my Keke. (I also miss Bella, Pyrite, Dante, Pixel … and all the other cats and dogs that have be in my life. Some of them have been gone more than 20 years, but still …)

Yeah, fuck today.

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2052

I’m very sorry for your loss, awfulhorrid. It never gets easy, does it?

This makes me think of our cat who had surgery to remove a malignant tumor in her upper intestine. She was 13 and was given 3-5 months. She ended up living 14 more active and pain-free months.

Cats have their own ways of doing things, which is why we love them.:crying_cat_face:

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2053

It’s part of the price of having them … and I know I’m going to get in line to pay it again. (Hell, even if I didn’t think I could stand to get another one to go through it, we still have two others right now who WILL STAY HEALTHY FOR A LONG TIME TO COME dammit.)

Absolutely. She never really did anything that said “Hey Primary Human, I’m in pain over here.” When the vet said that Keke’s tooth was abscessed, I immediately thought back to a few years ago when I had something similar … and remembered several days of agony waiting to get to my dentist. Not a peep out of her, the stubborn little beast! We even napped together Sunday afternoon, her curled up peacefully next to me.

OK, going to go pet the boys now … they still don’t know why their humans are acting all funny and they keep looking around for their elderly sister, but they’ll take the pettin’s.

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2054

<3. I’m so sorry, love! Give T and L some scritches for me!

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2055

OK, so slightly less “fuck today,” then. One of my lovely partners has arrived here. Welcome to BoingBoing, sweetie. <3

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2056

(Bad, eyes @awfulhorrid. I just noticed the new avatar.)

Welcome, CosmicCat!

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2057

Another former Glitch player! Welcome!

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2058

So what you’re saying is that I should switch my icon to my Glitch character?

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2059

This so much. things have taken a turn for the worst for my step dad…

Triple fuck cancer…

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2060

No, no it doesn’t. Condolences. Truly.

:sob:

I kinda squared that mentally as “coping with loss” will be the last lesson my best friend teaches me… time & time again. :pensive:

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2061

Is his name Mario or Luigi, by any chance? :wink:

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2062

I have just spent today with one branch of the family – racist, small-minded, Trump supporters – and then another – racist, small-minded, Trump supporters. And I had to leave our house guests, one of my oldest friends and his husband, behind at our house to do so.

At least I get to end the evening reading supportive loving posts from strangers on the internet whom I’ve come to value as friends to other strangers on the internet whom I’ve come to value as friends.

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2063

Nah, but a fine paisan anyway… Nick Ancona

Can you believe that in this day and age the guy STILL doesn’'t have a web site of his own?!?

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2064

My step dad took a turn for the worst this weekend. He’s jaundiced and not really awake anymore. His mom and sister came down today to see him. My mom is distraught. It will probably be this week.

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2065

Dammit. I’m so sorry for you and yours. It will be a rough, terrible week (which I’m sure you know already) but internet strangers’ thoughts are with you, if that helps even a smidge.

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2066

It does. I just wish my mom didn’t have to go through this.

I also wish I could have gotten my shit together and gotten them into a story corps booth to record their story for posterity. Maybe I’ll take mom to the local one instead.

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2067

From another random internet stranger, much supportive thoughts for you and your family. Times like this suck. :frowning2:

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2068

That’s the worst. This stranger’s thoughts are with you too.

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2069

I’m very sorry to hear this. Cancer really sucks. Here’s a big hug for you:

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