Day 25 (The Return)

I'm feeling much better.  Still got some school to catch up on, but what else is new?  Let's move on.
A picture of my day:

The IV's connected to the IV pole is connected to the AC power is connected to the wall.  The nurses can still hear me saying, "I will never break the chain."

Okay, that's not entirely true, I just wanted to quote two songs in my first paragraph (and I wanted one to be Fleetwood Mac).  I do unplug the IV when I feel like sitting by the window - in that case I go from being chained to a wall via an ungainly yet sensitive apparatus, to being chained to an ungainly yet sensitive apparatus.  Huzzah!

It's not all bad, but it's mostly pretty bad.  It hurts, with a pain indescribable to those who haven't felt it.  People who suffer from migraines are pretty close to the mark; however, I've suffered from some pretty debilitating migraines, and while the side-effects are gnarly, the pain is just not as bad in intensity.

When I'm hospitalized, my day becomes a tedium of sleep and pain and indignity (one unmentionable such is pictured; can you spot it?), and being seriously mindful of the fact that I'm now a recovering addict mainlining a powerfully addictive drug.  The doctors and nurses ask me questions about how much pain I'm in, and how much pain I can tolerate, and seem shocked that - though I am in the hospital to recover from this crisis - I toe the line very close to that upper limit of pain tolerance.  I'd rather have some pain than be lit on morphine these days.  I've played the atavistic Laudanum Patient in the past, and it only brought me more pain - literally, since abusing opiate painkillers hyper-sensitizes the brain's pain receptors.

When I first got sober, I was afraid that life as a recovering-addict Sickle Cell patient would be a constant tightrope walk; this was a thought sprung of despair, and despair came with it.  I was wrong; it's only an occasional tightrope walk, and I have the assistance of many good people in picking my way carefully across when the need arises.  Now, it's a thought of realism, and pragmatic hope comes with it.

I used to watch crap-awful TV during my incarcerations.  As a child, my mother watched ABC soaps; since she was bound by her love to sit by my suffering side all afternoon, I watched them too, without complaint - bound by my gratitude and my love.  (The only possible benefit of this was that I met Sarah Michelle Gellar and Nathan Fillion long before Joss Whedon did; this benefit is dubious.)  Now, Netflix Streaming whiles the hours away.  I watched all of Dollhouse during my hospitalization, and all of Avatar: The Last Airbender during my brief home recovery.

I could write an entire book about the days of Sickle Cell crisis and recovery; perhaps that's a task for another time.  Or another post!