
Ed Reppert |

When my college roommate finished reading The League Of Grey-Eyed Women in 1971 or 72, he threw the book across the room. He did so because of a line at the climax of the book. I won't give away the show, but it's worth a read, even if you react the way Gary did. The author was Julius Fast.

Thomas Seitz |

I could comment on reading good horror novellas, but the only one that comes to mind deals with something that mixes the Jersey Devil with Shub-Nigguarth but never mentions her specifically. I really wish I could remember the title and/or the author.
Also I wish people would be more specific and/or better about informing me when they want me to come look after their pets. I get telling me before hand when it's like three weeks away...but I feel like if I was to have known it was tomorrow...this should have been better conveyed.
Also I'm not longer going to ride along with my neighbor four houses up because I feel I'm putting my life in the hands of a less than competent person that shouldn't be driving, ESPECIALLY when she has macular degeneration...

Orthos |

I have considered that the general lack of drugged-out-of-their-minds folks in the business has put a bit of a damper on the creative forces in the music scene, yes.
The other downer being, of course, the Industry itself and the need to chase hits and their general penchant for making everything as cookie cutter as possible.

DungeonmasterCal |

Oy, it's gonna be a long night. I pulled a muscle in my back bending over to pet the neighbor's little dog Tuesday afternoon. I can barely walk upright and every step causes me to catch my breath in pain. I've taken one more pain pill than I'm supposed to take in a 24 hour period and nothing.
Add to this the aggravation that I pay for 25 Mbps internet service and right now it's hovering at right about .9 Mbps on the internet speed test I just used. It's causing buffering issues while trying to watch or listen to anything that might help take my mind off the discomfort.
Yeah, I'm whining and complaining. Just had to vent somewhere.

Ragadolf |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Me: "Will this cure my migraine?"
Doctor: "No, but you won't care."He was right. :-)
Oi this is SO true.
I was in the hospital once, in pain due to (stuff) and they gave me morphine.
Not only did it NOT dull the pain, it gave me a headache as a bonus. :(
BUT,... I did. Not. Care. ;P
(Yeah, I made them take away the morphine and give me tylenol instead. Judging by the nurses reaction, that was the first time THAT had ever happened!) ;)

Ragadolf |

Ya know...now that I think about it...not to detract from the seriousness of the opioid issue, but has anyone considered just taking the entire current supply of opioids and shipping them to Nikki Sixx, Ozzy, Willie Nelson, Keith Richards, etc?
Honestly, I know I am weird and all, but I do NOT get the 'opioid crisis'.
I have had 2 (minor?) surgeries, both times the Doctor prescribed opioids for the pain during recovery.
I do not like the way they make my brain have to swim through mush to have a coherent thought. Both times I took myself off of them in a day, (2 max) and switched to tylenol and Advil.
Honestly? The over the counter stuff worked better than the prescription stuff for me. So I dont get why their using all the opioids in the first place! ;P

Ragadolf |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Oy, it's gonna be a long night. I pulled a muscle in my back bending over to pet the neighbor's little dog Tuesday afternoon. I can barely walk upright and every step causes me to catch my breath in pain. I've taken one more pain pill than I'm supposed to take in a 24 hour period and nothing.
Add to this the aggravation that I pay for 25 Mbps internet service and right now it's hovering at right about .9 Mbps on the internet speed test I just used. It's causing buffering issues while trying to watch or listen to anything that might help take my mind off the discomfort.
Yeah, I'm whining and complaining. Just had to vent somewhere.
Sorry to hear that, feel better soon!
Just remember, one of my old bosses had 2 signs behind his desk.
Sign #1- The right to b!#ch is paramount to survival
Sign #2- NO WHINING
Apparently, there is a fine line there somewhere. ;)

Orthos |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

Vanykrye wrote:Ya know...now that I think about it...not to detract from the seriousness of the opioid issue, but has anyone considered just taking the entire current supply of opioids and shipping them to Nikki Sixx, Ozzy, Willie Nelson, Keith Richards, etc?Honestly, I know I am weird and all, but I do NOT get the 'opioid crisis'.
I have had 2 (minor?) surgeries, both times the Doctor prescribed opioids for the pain during recovery.
I do not like the way they make my brain have to swim through mush to have a coherent thought. Both times I took myself off of them in a day, (2 max) and switched to tylenol and Advil.
Honestly? The over the counter stuff worked better than the prescription stuff for me. So I dont get why their using all the opioids in the first place! ;P
Having literally just gotten off opioids today for both pre- and post-surgery pain, I'll basically say: your pain was simply not bad enough.
I had a fractured tooth over this past weekend and was at first simply taking ibuprofen and acetaminophen as well. By Friday that was no longer sufficient, the pain was too unbearable to sleep through and basically made me completely nonfunctional.
Saturday I was given a low dosage of hydrocodone. This relieved the pain for about an hour to two hours per dose. Unfortunately there was an 8-hour wait prescribed between doses and, even bolstered by ibuprofen, this did very little outside those 2-hour windows to make my life any less of a living hell.
I have never broken a bone or given birth, so the past weekend was easily the most painful experience I have had in my entire life.
Monday I finally can get in to visit my dentist, get a proper dosage of hydrocodone (double the dosage of the last, and on a 6-hour cycle instead of 8), and schedule surgery to remove the fractured tooth. That day was immensely relieving and I spent most of it catching up on sleep,but there were still times in the cycle when the pain returned full force and ibuprofen did nothing at all (nor did any other remedies - heat or ice, salt water washes, oragel, anything at all except opioid doses) and all I could do was suffer and wait until the cycle ended and I could take my medication again.
Come Tuesday, I get into surgery and get out and everything is wonderful. One single dose of post-surgery opioid as soon as I got home and one more before bed to ensure a full night's sleep, and otherwise I haven't had need to touch it at all. I should be fully sober today and ready to return to work tomorrow.
All of this over a single fractured tooth. I have ZERO trouble imagining someone with a worse injury like a broken bone or badly mangled limb, or someone with extreme chronic pain, getting no relief from anything except full doses of opioids and having to be on them long enough to get addicted.

DungeonmasterCal |

I've been on Hydrocodone for chronic pain for over 5 years now. Am I addicted? I dunno. There has been the random month when I couldn't afford them and had to go without but I never experienced any sort of withdrawal symptoms, just the return of the pain.
Now Talwin, that one did mess me up when I quit it. I was prescribed that not long after my wreck and I did get hooked on it. This was before they put limits on opioid prescriptions and I could get it filled "as needed". I realized after about 3 months where that was leading so when the last one was taken I told my son (he was 11 at the time) about withdrawal and what I might expect to happen. He was staying with me that weekend and I began craving sweet stuff. So whenever I needed something he'd bring me a frozen banana pop from the fridge. That was a terrible experience (and to this day I can't eat banana pops).

Scintillae |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

Yep. Add that to a culture where we heavily emphasize "take medication rather than time off to heal," and you get a result of doctors over-prescribing. Add that to pharmaceutical companies downplaying the addictive properties of some of their products...
It's a perfect recipe for addiction, which gets compounded by the fact that it primarily affects working-class in manual labor positions and therefore easy to file off into the good ol' "poor = lazy" mentality, and the problem then gets ignored until it reaches the point of an epidemic.
I'm lucky. I've never been prescribed opioids though I don't remember much about my wisdom teeth. Maybe then?, so I've not been affected. And the worst injury I've ever gotten on the job was a staple in the finger don't lean on the office supplies, which is treated with a quick yank, bandaid, and "don't do it again, ding-dong." But it's very, very easy to see how the situation came about.

Orthos |

It really is a tough balance admittedly. There's the cases where if you could just have the time off without worrying about losing your job or not earning enough money to survive, healing naturally would probably be the better option.
Then you have cases like mine this week where medication is literally the only option that works.
Its a difficult needle to thread.

Scintillae |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

Yep! Sometimes, medication is needed. Sometimes, doc has a choice between "you can take this medication and go back to work tomorrow" or "here's a lesser painkiller, now take a week off to recover." And the way things are now, it's going to be the harder meds, now go operate heavy machinery nine times out of ten.

Orthos |

Pretty much. I'm already losing out on three days of work pay due to my pain and surgery and recovery. Even being scheduled in early tomorrow and Friday will only make up about 4 hours out of the 30 I've missed this week. That's a huge hit to my paycheck, and immediately after adding a very large surgery bill to my list of due debts.

Ragadolf |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Oi, 'pain'ful stories all around! :)
Quick and full recoveries to all! :) (Both recent and long ago injuries)
to be honest, I dunno if my surgery-after pain wasn't bad enough (is possible, it was easily the worst I've ever had, (that I can recall) but i've also never broken a bone, so,... nothing to compare it to) ;P
But I DO know that the morphine didn't dull the pain when I was given it, (Different from surgery) just as I said, it gave me a headache and made me not care. O_o
I also do have a strange (or at least unusual) lack of reactions to certain meds compared to other people. My father and I share a positive resistance to some things, like laughing gas. Takes a LOT just to get a small effect on us.
(SOmetime when your bored, I'll regale you with my tale of how I had my wisdom teeth removed,... WHILE I WAS STILL AWAKE THE ENTIRE TIME despite multiple medications and giggle gas) ;P
So, as I said, maybe Im just weird. ;P
Between lack of effect/reaction to certain meds, and things like I do not like the feeling that opioids give me, (apparently most people like that feeling? Or maybe it just dulls their pain better?) I dont think that I could ever use the stuff enough to get addicted to it.
And I have decided that 'there but for the grace of' go I.
(I can easily see myself getting addicted to something, but I would have to at least enjoy the feeling it gave me for it to happen!) ;)
Yep. ALways go with the simplest answer.
Old Wizard is just weird.
I can live with that. :)

Pillbug Toenibbler |
6 people marked this as a favorite. |

DungeonmasterCal wrote:Betty White is older than Keith Richards and does NOT look like she's in her 90s. I need to find the elder being she made her pact with.She is the elder being.
{adjusts knob on foil-lined colander of conspiracy piercing} The White vs Richards showdown is likely coming before too long. She took Dick Clark's head back in 2012 with her claymore during the freakish electrical storm on top of Hoover Dam. Richards nearly had Matthew Broderick back in April, but he ran onto holy ground (which prompted Richards to set the cathedral on fire). So far, Paul Rudd has wisely avoided both White and Richards.

Dizzydoo42 |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

I was in terrible car wreck in 2005 and broke my leg in two places. I had also torn the tissue lining my chest beneath the muscles loose from the jostling about. I was in some pretty extreme pain and they gave me a lot of morphine at the hospital. I fell in love with that stuff immediately.
I think it's like you are given a number of spell slots and the number is different for everybody. The more often you use your slots the closer you come to paying the Devil's due.

Thomas Seitz |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |

Keanu didn't make any deals. He just DL himself into the Matrix and beat Death in games of chance.
Also, I need to find a way to get people that I don't want to be hassled by to stop calling me. First it was a telemarketer, then it was my neighbor four houses up who has her daughter staying with her...but apparently they think I'm the better dog care person. Which is good in some ways...but still!

Ragadolf |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Yeah I'm with you on not enjoying the feeling. It's nice when it makes the pain fade so I can sleep, but I can definitely live without the mental fog that comes during the waking part. I think likewise that's helped me avoid getting stuck on any kind of mind-affecting medication.
Oh good, it's not JUST me! ;)
Although 'mental fog' is putting it politely. ;)
To me it's more like a 'mental swamp'.
I can SEE where i want to go, (vaguely), but getting there is like wading through a thick, hip-deep swamp.
With snowshoes on. ;P

Thomas Seitz |

Sorry to hear that Cal,
I still wonder why people that have indoor/outdoor cats don't a) have cat doors and b) automatic feeders. I'm okay with scooping out litter boxes. I just am getting a little tired of every morning and evening driving on a two lane road that is a) not the best road and b) makes me wonder if I'll get hit driving on it... Plus you know I don't want to run over the wild life...