The week before the Christmas holidays is generally packed with rushing to and fro, frantically scouring the stores for that final perfect gift and a plethora of social events. This year, I spent that week alternating between abject misery and blissed out apathy. I have previously chronicled my beloved's adventures in the land of the heavily drugged, I can now speak from personal experience...Vicodin land is a lovely, happy place.
The week began with a slightly sore throat, nothing major until I awoke in the middle of the night with a throat so swollen I couldn't move air properly and the feeling of swallowing through broken glass. The trip to the emergency room began with a slightly overenthusiastic nurse and a tongue depressor the size of Delaware that resulted in my hyperactive gag reflex scaring the hell out of her along with the added bonus of testing her reflexes. She passed well. The next act included a shot of steroids with a Percocet chaser, this did not have the anticipated result. Far from taking the pain away and giving me the illusion that all was right with the world, I decided this was a good time to attempt to play Angry Birds on my phone. As I completely suck at this stupid, pointless, time sucking THING when undrugged, let's just say I was less than adept and knocking over the stupid pig forts. Who wants to knock over those freakish, bodyless, grinning minions of Satan anyway? Not me, I don't care if I EVER kill another green pig head, EVER! The other revelation of the Percocet dose was that it makes me terribly, terribly mad. As the nurses kept leaving the room, there was only one other person there to face my irrational, weirdly prompted extreme annoyance. My beloved, a patient and tolerant man, informed the nurse that if they gave me another one of those particular pills, he would have to insist they keep me overnight.
After the shot and the pill, I was given an antibiotic, a prescription for Vicodin and a Lidocaine gel for gargling with water. I do not recommend the gargle, imagine that horrible spray that numbs your throat times twenty million. The numbness is instantaneous, but so is the feeling that you are no longer breathing, your body has completely forgotten how to move air in and out. Opted out of further use of the gargle.
The next day, my trip to the land of Vicodin began, it's a lovely place, I must say. One pill and it didn't stop the pain as much as allowing me to simply not care all that much. I would like to say that I was completely myself, just mellow, but that is not the case. We'll go with "happily oblivious" for the better part of the day. I am fairly certain that I could have out-mellowed Jeff Spicoli that afternoon. Once I managed to escape the very comfy chair that was threatening to swallow me whole, I decided it was time for oatmeal. This began as a solid plan to get something of substance into my tummy, it did not work out quite as planned. I ended up with Jello. I don't know precisely when my culinary plan changed midstream, but I never managed to make oatmeal. The Jello was lovely, I just don't really know where it came from, I will have to figure it out one of these days.
My children were delighted with this new mommy, their day consisted of asking me random questions of ascending complexity and watching me try and formulate a semi-coherent answer out of the fluff that was floating on the vague breeze that usually is a working brain. Andrew attempted to take me shopping but was quickly shut down by his father, I shudder to think of what we would have brought home. Charlie simply giggled as he watched me try to understand the remote and my cell phone. Both cats competed for space on and around me as I was stationary for much longer than normal and had a fuzzy blanket on my lap at all times. I swear I saw them flipping a coin at one point.
A day and a half of this marginally functional state and something in my rainbow/unicorn/bunniesandpuppies/fairyland brain decided enough was enough and I switched back to Advil. I sat on the couch and smiled vaguely while the rest of the family carried on around me. All in all, not the worst way to get through that last week before Christmas. Not going to try it again next year, though.
