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Welcome to my Lyme blog where you enter the world of Lyme Disease and get a firsthand glimpse of what Lyme can do to a person!

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Life from a Prescription Bottle

Life from a Prescription Bottle
Dorcas Annette Walker

I never used to be one to take pills for an ache or pain. In fact growing up pills scared me as I often would choke trying to get one down. I can remember my mother arguing with me to try and get me to take something for relief for a headache- I would rather suffer it out than to face swallowing a pill. As a teenager I had low iron levels so I got used to taking the small iron pills. When I was expecting the large prenatal pills were a nightmare until I discovered that breaking them in two and putting them in a spoonful of applesauce made the pills easier to swallow. After the birth of my daughter I hemorrhaged badly and was underweight so finally consigned myself to taking a daily multivitamin with the faithful iron pill to keep me going. When I got my first tick bite that triggered Lyme I swallowed the antibiotic pills- anything to get back to normal.

Then pain started flaring up that ibuprofen no longer controlled. My doctor had me take Advil. Soon that wasn’t keeping my pain under control, so he added Celebrex and then Neurontin. My dosage kept getting increased until I was bedfast. Once I realized that Lyme’s had come out of remission, I was put on a daily regiment of antibiotic pills that lasted nine months. The only way I could tolerate taking the antibiotic pills was to take them at night as they make you wretchedly sick, despite popping Phenergan. Pain pills tend to destroy your stomach lining so my meals are eaten with a handful of pills. Shopping trips on good days or visiting with my daughter and grandkids has to revolve around remembering to take my pills so that the level controlling my pain will not bottom out. From past experience (of landing back in bed due to intense pain) whenever I go out I grab my pills in case we run late. I live with chronic pain. Unfortunately the narcotic to keep severe pain under control makes you feel sleepy and drugged. Some days I dither back and forth whether to choose a pain pill or try and ignore the pain so I will have a clear mind.

Pills have a way of multiplying and overtaking your life- you daren’t think about all the side affects or you’d go crazy. Popping pills is a love hate relationship. I hate the fact that my life is tied to yucky orange-tinted bottles decorated with strips of paper for dosage, directions, number of refills, narrow labels for warnings all topped by a white cap. I feel vulnerable realizing that my life is controlled by pills. Yet I gladly swallow them down every day in order to be able to stay on my feet and partially enjoy a normal life. And when I start to feel independent all it takes is a shifting of my pain to a high level to find myself heading back to the mini pharmacy in my kitchen cabinet and reaching for a bottle of pills. Speaking of which, I have to bring this to a close. It is time for me to go and pop some more pills.