A collage about drugs, sort of

Remember the angst ridden poem I wrote the other day? The great thing about this stuff is that it can be as ironic and cliched as you want. Doesn't matter! I took my angry rhyming poem and made a collage. This is difficult for me because I think that it always looks undone and without enough texture or layers. I worked on it while watching a couple of movies. It's my first entry in an art journal that I just started and I'm trying to be gentle with myself and say "good job" rather than "This sucks!" Art journals aren't supposed to be about the end product, anyway. It's good to have a place like this to document a collage.

I'm also having a very bad Lyme Disease flare. This happens right before my period but usually I can weather the storm. Last night I lay awake tossing and turning. My bones hurt in my legs, and all my joints felt like they were on fire. There was no way I could do a pain hypnosis from Dr. Sadie. I started to cry. I hate trying to get pain medications. The last time I did this was in December during a flare. I went to an urgent care and they were very nice to me. I did not go to my PCP because last July I did during a flare and he said, tough, weather the storm. With your drug history, you will not get any painkillers other than tramadol (which usually works fine.)

So, I avoid my PCP now. I ended up going to three urgent cares at 3am and they were all closed. So, I followed a sign that said "H" to go to the ER. I didn't want to do this. I just needed pain relief, not an ER. Well, I got what I needed. My blood pressure was 154/105 and my heart rate was 127. I guess some of this was anxiety around the whole "pain relief" thing but some of it was from pain, too. During the exam my reflexes were very, very brisk - way stronger than they usually are. I also had clonus. This worries me because my right eye is also getting blurrier (the Lyme attacked my eye last year and I wear glasses now.) I could tell the doc wanted to run more tests on me but I was insistent that the Lyme doc (in another state) says that this is expected with the new medication and I don't need any tests. I got a percocet prescription and it's helped a lot. I think it depresses me, though. I just want to get my period and not need the painkillers. Probably nobody in my support group would ever have believed that (or Dr. Sadie who always has some reason why my pain is aberrant, or my response to it sub-optimal, or some other reaction to it that makes me feel unheard) but it's the truth. Even ex-drug addicts deserve compassionate pain relief. I'm glad I have this blog where I can say this and not have people rant back at me about denial, drug seeking, poor pain tolerance, trauma history causing pain, yada yada. That gets so invalidating I want to scream. This blog is nice and silent and lets me have the space to say what I want to say. Thank you, blog.