By George, I think we've got it!
Today was Payday. Payday happens twice a month and despite my being better at budgeting than I was when I married Bear (necessity being a very sharp teacher) payday still often feels like a spendthrift blowout, never mind that everything is on a list. Which meant that today I got my medications refilled, and got the new one that I was given for the probable Meniere's Disease today. Thank all the gods for the discount pharmacy, is all I have to say. It cuts my drug costs by about half to two-thirds. And I am also fortunate that my second-most expensive drug just became available in generic. I am not compliant with my most expensive drug because, duh, it is expensive, and while I need a sleeping pill we cannot afford better than three hundred a month for the stinking thing.
But anyway. I got the Antivert and lo and behold, it seems to work! Fancy that! I don't know if I am going to have any of what I term "type 2" side effects (Type one being the sort that are immediately obvious and are a problem)...you know, the ones where you realize, "Oh, the shaking is really a pain in the ass, and it started when I started taking Suchandso....this is not going to work", since I've only taken it for a half day. But I am cautiously optimistic.
The one bad thing I have noticed is that being an antihistamine it does the on-off switch thing. It does not trail off the way pain meds do. Like a cold medicine, one moment I'm standing at the salad bar wondering why the hell everyone assumes everyone eats dressings on their salads, and the next minute I am DIZZY! and grabbing the bar to stay upright. Right, I guess this has a six hour duration. Memo to self: take drug after five minutes fortyfive seconds, because that really sucks. This may be something where I need to discuss it with my doctor, but I'll hold off and see how things go.
I got to thinking that maybe I'm close to having everything either medicated or worked around, and it's kind of unsettling. You get used to the fog. You get used to the disability and its demands. Everyone around you does. And, I've been sick a LONG TIME. I have had one problem or another and sometimes multiple since I was thirteen years old. In other words, I've been sick longer than I've been well. I've been sick longer than I have been with Bear. I've been sick longer than I've been a mother. I've been sick longer than I've been pagan. So this notion of being normal (albeit held that way through a lot of pills) is...well,it's a change. And like all changes it's simultaneously frightening and exciting.
I know how to be sick. I'm not sure I remember how to be well.
But anyway. I got the Antivert and lo and behold, it seems to work! Fancy that! I don't know if I am going to have any of what I term "type 2" side effects (Type one being the sort that are immediately obvious and are a problem)...you know, the ones where you realize, "Oh, the shaking is really a pain in the ass, and it started when I started taking Suchandso....this is not going to work", since I've only taken it for a half day. But I am cautiously optimistic.
The one bad thing I have noticed is that being an antihistamine it does the on-off switch thing. It does not trail off the way pain meds do. Like a cold medicine, one moment I'm standing at the salad bar wondering why the hell everyone assumes everyone eats dressings on their salads, and the next minute I am DIZZY! and grabbing the bar to stay upright. Right, I guess this has a six hour duration. Memo to self: take drug after five minutes fortyfive seconds, because that really sucks. This may be something where I need to discuss it with my doctor, but I'll hold off and see how things go.
I got to thinking that maybe I'm close to having everything either medicated or worked around, and it's kind of unsettling. You get used to the fog. You get used to the disability and its demands. Everyone around you does. And, I've been sick a LONG TIME. I have had one problem or another and sometimes multiple since I was thirteen years old. In other words, I've been sick longer than I've been well. I've been sick longer than I have been with Bear. I've been sick longer than I've been a mother. I've been sick longer than I've been pagan. So this notion of being normal (albeit held that way through a lot of pills) is...well,it's a change. And like all changes it's simultaneously frightening and exciting.
I know how to be sick. I'm not sure I remember how to be well.
posted by Alexandra Lynch at 8:53 PM
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