Monday, July 30, 2007

My night with Hydrocodone

A few months ago, I had an ingrown toenail removed. The surgeon did not give the medicine enough time to fully numb my toe so I was screaming in pain through most of the surgery.

As a result, the doctor felt sorry for me and gave me a perscription for Hydrocodone; a stong pain killer that blocks the pain feeling from the brain. It turned out that my toe healed nicely and I never used any of the pills. It was interesting that at the pharmacy, they asked for my social security number because of the highly addictive nature of the pill.

I have kept the pills, since you never know when you may really hurt yourself, but have never used them. I gave some to some friends suffering from neck and back pain that their chiropractor was not able to fix, but mostly they have sat unused.

Saturday night, i decided to take half of one. They are easy to break in half. My justification was that we had driven to Birmingham that afternoon for someones baby shower. The drivers seat in my wifes car kills my back after an hour of sitting in it. In addition, holding a baby can stress ones muscles out more than you would think. I took hald of one at about 10pm and laid down to sleep. Here are some things I noticed about it...
Dreams; I remember NONE of my dreams that night. This is HIGHLY unusual for me. That is no sign of deep sleep for me. In fact, I woke up often hearing the baby cry. And when I got out of bed to walk, I was not dizzy or confusded or 'drunk' like I get with a muscle relaxer.

Thirst; I would wake up with the DRIEST mouth I have ever had. I could have drank a gallon of water if it was near me. My skin also felt very dry.
Dizziness: I wasn't dizzy at all. Nor did I feel "drugged" throughout this period.

Numbness; The interesting thing is that my body did NOT feel numb and it did NOT feel relaxed. As I woke up to pee around 2 or 3 am, I tested its effectiveness. I have a fever blister in my mouth. Always hurts to touch it with my tounge since it formed a few days ago. I touched it with my tounge as I walked to the potty and an immediate 'numb' feeling took the place of the normal pain. When I stopped pressing the sore, the numb feeling went away. I tried to pinch myself with my long index fingernail that I had yet to cut off. No pain, just a quick numb feeling.

It was kind of scary. Got up, went to church, and in church, I tried a few pain tricks again and the numbing thing still happened. This went on till about 10 or 11am Sunday.

So for about 12 hours, half a hydrocodone kept me from feeling any pain. I mean, I KNEW I was hurting myself (relatively) but the pain wasn't there.

So in case you care to take any Hydrocodone for pleasure, I am here to tell you that it really isn;t that fun. And not as relaxing as a muscle relaxer is. Or even an anti-inflamatory for that matter. And no, I don't have any left to give you. All trashed.

7 comments:

Mat Brewster said...

Geez you old druggie, the least you could have done is mailed it to Mullins. He takes like a bottle of those things nightly and still feels nothing.

As I get older I find myself trying to take less and less drugs and rely on more organic remedies.

JS said...

well, i have NEVER been one to take a pill. Even with hard core headaches, i MIGHT take one pain pill when told to take 2. Herbal tea can cure alot more things than people think. I go tmy wife to start drinking chamomile tea before she pumps milk for Tyler. It seems to have calmed him.

However, if muscle relaxers are in my house, I ussually find reasons to take them.

Anonymous said...

that's the stuff i took after my vascectomy....BAD stuff, man. i'll never touch it again.

it also constipated me so bad that i thought i'd die while trying to pass the enormous amount of fecal matter lodged in my lower colon...awful

JS said...

By the way Sip, that is a great story, but I would keep it blog-less because it will lose it great-story-ness. One quality I wish I had is that I kept all my stories and experiences in a memroy bank and never told them to people except at dinner partys or something.

Brian Jurkofski is like that. I take it when you have them over for dinner he had some great stories?

CL said...

Sip, I would love to hear more about your vascectomy experience as the time for me may be nigh. Ugh!

JS said...

it is agreat fire-side story. I have heard it 3 times and enjoy it each time he tells it, mainly I enjoy the reaction of those he is telling

bigsip said...

Chris...it is such a long story to tell...i will try to hash it out for you sometime. mostly, i would say that i will never take hydrocodone again. i would rather have the pain...

also, LISTEN TO YOUR DOCTOR!!!

stay in bed for at least 2 days, then take it easy for a couple of weeks (no strenuous activity).

btw, Jamison, Bryan did tell several stories. he's a cool guy. literally part of the family.