Archive of ‘new drugs’ category

Droplets

It’s surprising how just the smell of alcohol swabs, the taste of saline in my mouth, is enough to make me scared. Not scared of the actual infusion of a 1/4 dose of minocycline. What makes me feel ill before the medication actually is even hooked up to me is the knowledge that in hours, or days I am going to be feeling terrible. Or if this tiny dose doesn’t do much to make me herx (ie: all my symptoms will get infinitely worse because of the toxins released from the bacteria dying in my body), when we increase it to 1/2 a dose, and work our way over a few weeks, or a month to a full dose…well, then I will start to feel lousy.

It is really, really easy to get used to not doing IV meds. Because when you are on them, you feel terrible and ill all the time, and when you go off them, you do go downhill a little, but gradually. It’s nothing like this burning pain that started up in my chest 5 minutes ago. And we’ve only dripped in about 1/8 of the 1/4 dose I will be doing tonight.

I only was infusing for less than a minute before I could feel the cold hands of the drug sizzle out through the end of my peripherally-inserted-central-catheter into my heart. The best way I can describe it is it feel like heartburn, but literally in your heart. It feels like butterflies flapping around the cage of your abdomen, but instead in your rib cage. It is a cold feeling that seeps over you, kind of like what I imagine it feels like when those humans in the ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ get taken over. This feel creeps over you and then suddenly it’s all around you, all in your lungs and your head and your heart and you feel like you can’t get enough air. It makes me want to cough until I can clear my lungs, but that won’t happen. You can’t get out what you’ve put into your veins. Only your organs can filter it out as best they can.

On the bright side, I only have to infuse ever 3 days or something like that. So basically when infusing, it feels scary and painful, and after that I just have to wait for my worst symptoms to peak. Easy peasy. Beats an IV every day!

You know what makes infusions fly by? The Halifax Comedy Fest. And coconut ice cream, with frozen raspberrys and chocolate chips. Pick your chocolate covered poision and put it together with your favorite CBC show, and basically that’s the making of a fantastic evening. And I can trick myself into thinking this ‘invisible’ clear fluid isn’t all over my body, trickling under my skin.

It is going to be fine. It will be fine. It was fine before. I can do this again. That’s what I need to remember.

I can keep doing this until I’m better or at least until the world runs out of Coconut Bliss ice cream. ~

The Lakehouse

The past few days have been really nice. It’s been in the 60’s (like 18 C ish) which is just duckie by me. And no mosquitoes yet, which is a bonus! (I am not a fan of bugs … especially the ones that bite. I’ve probably had a grand total of 3 bites in my life, so I’m not looking forward to bug season, not gonna lie). 

The past few days we’ve been out and about exploring the big city of Lakefield and Peterborough. Pretty sure we’ve cased all the grocery stores, and the Wal-Mart and Costco so far! There seems to be a lot of space here, which makes it harder to feel like you know where you’re going. I haven’t been here in like….probably 10 years so everything’s changed a whole lot, except the lake, which probably/hopefully wont dramatically change (the shape/view I’m talking about) for a few millennia.
I started a new drug recently (or actually switched to a generic) and I feel super-dee-duper nauseous, but its not like a I-think-I-ate-some-spoiled-meat-and-may-have-food-poisoning nauseous, its more like a I-swallowed-toxic-chemicals-and-now-I-feel-sick kind of feeling. Which is more or less accurate, unfortunately. 

Mo’ Drugs

I feel VERY strange today. I haven’t actually given that much thought to the feeling, but I suppose it feels like somebody pumped a whole shitload of drugs into me and then spun me around ten times like they do at birthday parties before a pinata  and then asked me a bunch of really brain-hurting questions. 

I changed my own dressing today again. And I’m quite proud of myself actually! Its really hard to do one handed- I can attest to that. I feel strongly about doing the things that are remotely possible to do alone, alone. I apparently all the time say ‘I can do it myself’ which, annoys some people *cough* *mama* *cough*, but you couldn’t understand the crazy need to do some things for myself, until you cannot walk. 
I started on another antibiotic  drug a few days ago called ‘Doxycycline’ or something that sounds an awful lot like that. It is working, no let me rephrase that, its getting where it needs to get because I feel so UBERLY shitty that it only means that I could have pissed off the Lyme bugs, which hurts now alot! Short term loss, long term gain don’t they say? It makes me feel like somebody put a few weights on top of my head (I should add that to my list of metaphors for how I feel today – please see above)
I feel like I’m getting sick, which is quite ironic cause usually all the times I say that nowadays I mean like I’m getting sick-er, from the Lyme. In this case, I actually mean I feel like I’m getting a cold. I forgot what it feels like to get cold-like-sick. It seems laughable that I used to complain about getting a cold. I still hate colds. They are annoying in the way that Lyme hurts.
We went out for Thai food tonight, which is obviously like the BEST kind of food ever. Especially curries! I love curry! It’s like the only thing I can taste. And spicy food is supposed to be good for pain. Thats what they say! 
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