"May cause drowsiness"
posted in Illnesses, Injuries, NaBloPoMo |Some thirty years ago, I got sick. And sicker. And sicker. So I finally hauled myself off to a doctor somewhere (I do not remember where, or how) and got diagnosed with mononucleosis. And tonsillitis. And strep throat. All at once. It hurt like hell. So this doctor prescribed antibiotics for the items that were bacterial, lots of rest for the mono, and some kind of painkiller so that I could actually swallow the other items.
I was supposed to pop the painkillers every four hours.
By the time a day had passed, I was having psychotic delusions that there were giant white rats and cockroaches crawling up the walls of my apartment.
This was not, I am guessing, the intended result. I ended up calling a friend in the middle of the night, sobbing, and asking that she help me walk the stuff off, or at least keep me company until it wore off. We flushed the remainder of the pills down the toilet.
This was my first introduction to the idea of idiosyncratic reactions to drugs.
Last Thursday, I got a sudden backache in an unusual spot–mid-back, right below my ribs. I’ve had an on-again, off-again urinary tract infection, so worried about kidneys. When the backache didn’t go away, and I kept getting sharp pains in two points directly over where my kidneys should be, I decided to haul my butt off to the doc-in-a-box Monday morning. (The DIAB offices were quite full and it took forever.)
No bacteria showed in my sample (?!), but the doc decided to treat it empirically: if I felt like it was my kidneys, probably the best thing to do would be to do some antibiotics and some UTI drugs.
Oh, and while we’re at it, here’s some Tramadol for the pain (”non-narcotic pain relief” quoth the doc).
So I sashay off, get the prescription filled, come home, and pop some pills.
Fifteen minutes later, I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open. I staggered into the bedroom with a book, and the next thing I knew it was time for dinner. I sat at the dinner table in a daze, ate a bite or two of food, then wandered back to bed. At 7:30 a.m., the phone rings, it’s my wake-up call for the day from OmegaDad…I spend an hour awake–in a daze–getting the dotter up and breakfasted and out the door and realize it might be a good idea to email work. I open up the email program, start typing my boss’s name. Except I can’t type; it’s gibberish. I take a deep breath, reposition my hands, and start typing again. This time it’s only half gibberish. I take a deep breath, reposition my hands again, and start typing one. Letter. At. A. Time.
And then I went back to bed.
The end result: One pill. Twenty-one hours of deep sleep. Four hours after that of space-y zoniness; awake, but totally unable to be, say, productive or coherent.
Oh, I woke up here and there. Let’s see: the pain-killing portion ran out about six hours in, I know, because I came to enough to think, “Hunh. It hurts again.” And I woke up around 11:30 p.m., rested my zoned out eyeballs on the clock, and thought, “I really need to get up to write a filler post for NaBloPoMo.” Fifteen minutes later, I did the same thing. Obviously, nothing got done.
So now I know: no more Tramadol–or related items–for me.
Maybe next year I’ll actually complete NaBloPoMo. So close! Wah!
The antibiotics seem to be helping, though.
(And I am totally amused that no-one commented on my defiant liking of Lady Ga-Ga. I must have stunned everyone into awed and appalled silence.)
