“How bitter were
the Prozac pills
of the last
few hundred mornings”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

As today was the birthday from hell, involving (as the worst, but far from the only, thing) my father yelling at me literally for no reason and to the point of reducing me to tears, only one of the thee posts is going up. My family has officially declared my birthday to be tomorrow, instead of today, and hopefully the others will be up then.

So. The pills. I was going to take a picture of all of my pills that I take in one day, but after I had fifty out and was not near done, I decided to just put the pills back into their bottles.

I feel that statement makes the same point that a picture of all the pills (and bottles of liquid medications) would.

Fifty pills out on the table, all of which I need to take to keep living. And that not being all the pills I take on an average day. Liquid medication that costs $1,000 a bottle, and which I am always a little concerned, in the back of my mind, that the insurance company will one day decide to stop paying their share of the cost for it. Medication for Lyme, for bartonella, for babesia. For my adrenal system, which is basically destroyed at this point. Medications to help get the toxins out of my system, medications for pain--and that's plural, because no one pain medication works on all the kinds of pain I have. Though they're not all what you think of as "pain medications". Some are muscle relaxants, some are anti-inflammatories, and some alter how my nervous system perceives pain--oh, and yes, I'll be needing treatment for damaged nerves at some point, too, but we can't do that until we get these other diseases dealt with.

Yes, I ended a sentence with a preposition. It's not a sin.

Medications for depression, and that's plural, too--I'm on two, technically, but only one of them am I on continuously. We pretty much constantly try to find a second one--because the depression caused by the bartonella chemicals is just that bad--which will help without negative side effects.

Medicine to help me fall asleep. Medicine to keep me from falling asleep during the day, and not only to keep me awake--because that's one thing--but also to give me energy to get up and go do things, which is another thing entirely. The first one we tried just kept me from being able to fall asleep--but it did not give me any energy with which to go do things.

That was pretty much hell.

Pills for nausea, pills for migraines. Pills and creams both for when it feels like I'm walking on broken glass when the bartonella flares up, so I can at least walk to the bathroom from my bed without wanting to scream.

I haven't even gotten into the vitamins and supplements yet.

You're getting the idea, yes?

And that's the first half; the pills, and how many there are. I can take more pills at once without choking than you want to think about.

But the second half of this entry--and the dangerous part, the part I have to fight against--is pill fatigue.

You see, you reach a point, after months and years of taking dozens of pills every day, you reach a point where you go to get your first pills for the day...and, well.

The mere sight of them makes you run and throw up.

You just can't take any more pills. Your stomach rebels. Your mind rebels. I don't know why it happens, but I do know it happens to everyone I know of who has taken large amounts of medications for long periods of time.

And the logical thing to do is to give yourself a break from the pills. Not a bad idea. Doctors agree it's not the end of the world and that sometimes you just need to not swallow those capsules and tablets multiple times every day for a bit.

The dangerous part? Is remembering to end the break. It's so very easy, even if you decide on an exact date on which you will begin taking your pills again, to let that break just...sort of not end.

Which means your infections build back up somewhat.

I've managed to get that under control with a system--managing the lengths of breaks, I mean--and even the longest ones I've had haven't come close to, like, undoing all the good work I have done for getting rid of my infections. But it was time lost, and it frustrates the hell out of me.

Except at the time, I just. Could. Not. Take. Those. Pills. Or at least not all of them, to be accurate; I never go off all of my medications, even when I need a break. Just some. But still, each time, it was some time lost on the path to being healthy again. (And, by the way, people who say Lyme cannot be cured, only go into remission? Are wrong. The problem is that their doctors a) did not treat them long enough and/or b) did not address the issue of biofilms. Which I won't go into explaining in detail, as that isn't my point. Or, sadly, c) the person was bitten again by a tick nymph, which is invisible to the human eye and may not cause a rash...but can still re-infect them. But, again, not my point. What is my point is that yes, I can and will be cured of all three diseases. I know of people, patients of my doctor, who are actually, truly cured.

Which is why I do, in fact, put up with the dozens of pills.

But I hate taking each and every one of them.

[Words: 976]
 

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