First of all, thanks to all of you for the kind words and well-wishing you’ve extended thus far. I have continued to improve exponentially; I feel so much better one day than I did the day before that it’s amazing to chart the progress. At this point I’m reduced to feeling some mild discomfort from the incision whenever I stand or sit, and that’s the extent of it. The pain in my hips is completely gone. Beginning tomorrow I’m going to see if the discomfort is tolerable while cutting back on the Percoset. The last thing I need is to turn into Rush Limbaugh and get addicted to this stuff (although I think it would take a bit more than that to turn me into Rush Limbaugh.)
I also appreciate all the folks who have written me privately about their own medical conditions and history of fighting difficulties. I have to say, with everything that can go wrong with the human body, it seems a miracle that anyone is ever in good health at any time
And last of all, thanks to my good friend, Mel Gibson, who took the time to call me and scream profanities and blame my people for being the cause of all wars.
PAD
• 
Glad you’re feeling better. (I’m not sure where the Mel Gibson thing came from; a weird side effect of the medicine?) Hope you’ll be up on your feet and bowling again soon!
Mel’s been in the news a fair bit today, James — he seems to have let his inner loon out again. Take a quick minute on your favorite news site to see the details.
.
And to PAD — glad you’re feeling better at such a rapid rate!
I’m happy that all is well PAD (for you) and your family.
As for Mel, maybe he’ll wise up to his emotional and mental problems and seek the help of specialists.
Not holding my breath.
I hear Tom Cruise is calling Mel up hourly offering to help.
.
Glad to hear you’re getting better so quickly, PAD!
And last of all, thanks to my good friend, Mel Gibson, who took the time to call me and scream profanities and blame my people for being the cause of all wars.
.
Aw, man. I was going to do that. Now I’d just look derivative.
.
Seriously, I’m glad you’re doing better. I remember when my father had a herniated disc, and it sounds like you went through something worse. Glad you’re recovering relatively quickly.
I’m glad you’re getting up to top form again.
Turn you into Limbaugh?! Nothing short of a full frontal lobotomy.
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
.
PAD
Dammit, Ebonstone, you took my retort! 🙂
.
(A lobotomy and a hypocrisy implant.)
Glad you’re feeling better. But yes, in all seriousness, now that you’re feeling better please cut down on the pain medication as soon as you can. While it may be fun for many to take a jab at Limbaugh I have personally known people who became so addicted to pain medication – who had been legitimately in pain and not because they were looking for a high – they died from it eventually. The addiction can become that strong. So please take that possibility seriously. The world is a better place with you around – happy and healthy, PAD. So I hope you continue to make progress.
It’s true. I think pain medication may be the most addictive things out there–certainly they have been responsible for the addictions of some of the smarter people I have known.
.
The basic rule to follow is this; the body does not want to do more work than it has to and the brain loves certain chemicals. Many of those chemicals are made by the body. Put 2 and 2 together and you see how so many addictions work. If you supply the body with chemicals it A-wants and B- can make on its own it will stop making them and perhaps nudge you along to keep providing more and more.
.
For some people once the cycle gets going it never goes back. An good friend of a family member, a young man who was a stellar light in Hollywood, one of the most popular agents working, was never able to get back to normal once he stopped taking cocaine. The drug mimics the chemicals that make us happy–apprently his brain shut down production and, for whatever reason, never turned it back on. Imagine life without he possibility of happiness. Nobody could live with that…and he didn’t.
.
So much of what we call “psychological” is actually physical, but because it affects emotions and feelings we miss that fact.
.
So yeah, wean yourself off the painkillers but listen to the docs on how to do it. Chances are they didn’t give you enough drugs anyway (a whole other issue–pain management in this country has problems. They worry about a man with terminal esophageal cancer getting addicted to morphine. Let him! There are worse fates than an overdose of morphine and esophageal cancer is way up there as one of them!)
.
(As a further aside from Doctor Bill* here, anyone who is addicted to painkillers, DO NOT go cold turkey. Get medical advice on how to quit. This goes for uppers and downers in general. Too much of a shock to the system can be fatal. You can quite heroin and tobacco cold turkey, it’s no fun but you can do it. Don’t try it with prescription medication. Thank you. My bill will be arriving shortly.)
.
* (Bill is not an actual doctor and, in fact, once tried to superglue a cut instead of getting stitches. He ended up getting the stitches, plus the added cost of having to use acetone to dissolve the superglue. Which stung. A lot.)
Well, I have cut back from two Percoset to one. Consequently there’s a mild increase in pain, but nothing that I would rate beyond mild discomfort which I can endure with no difficulty. So I’ll be staying with my current planned regimen of one Percoset alternating with two Advil. The next step from there, which I’ll be implementing by no later than Tuesday, will be spreading it to one Percoset every six hours instead of four. All things being equal, I figure I’ll be off it completely before the week is out.
.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had to face the possibility of an addictive pain killer. A few years ago, when I blew out my right knee, I was on vicodin with the pain. As the knee healed, I weened myself off it and eventually actually wound up throwing out leftover vicodin because it was beyond the expiration date. So there’s no doubt in my mind that I can avoid the more addictive qualities of pain killers.
.
PAD
When Kathleen said you’d had outpatient back surgery, I didn’t think it was this bad, but your account quite honestly scared the šhìŧ outta me, Peter. If you hadn’t gotten help in time, you might’ve been dead, and who woulda been my Evil Twin then?
Clara read over my shoulder when I was going through the entry. And I saw something she didn’t. You were in such a state that you made all manner of typos, something you never do.
Anyway, we’re both worried, and want you well and strong pretty dámņ quick.
My biggest fear prescription wise was being on Oxycoten (Limbaugh’s alleged pill of choice) for over a month when I first got out of the hospital following being operated on for an aortic aneurysm.
Talk about a bad trip!
A lot of my early post recovery days is a blank space in my memory to me. I was told there were a lot of times I would just stare off into space, unresponsive to anyone and anything.
I know I never felt like doing anything more difficult than breathing, which was no fun at times after having your rib cage cracked and spread open to work on your heart.
And the times I did try to concentrate upon something were extremely difficult.
But even when the doctor took me off that dang pill, it was still over another month before I felt anything close to my normal self mentally.
Why anyone would WILLINGLY do something like that to themselves is beyond me.
Take care and hang in there Peter.
Better days are coming.
Are there pretty colours and stuff on Percoset, though?
I try to keep mine to one Percoset daily. Usually in the a.m., because when I wake up that’s usually when it hits me the hardest.
I don’t like chemicals in general, but Percoset has been a sanity-saver on this current go-round.
Ibuprofen is what I use to take the edge off.
TAC
Glad you hear you’re doing better! Hope you continue to improve.
Glad you’re doing OK, PAD. Now, though, at San Diego, you can share your experience and then somewhere as the killer say, “I yanked Harlan’s crank”
Oh, and so there are no mistakes, I LIKE Harlan.
I guess Mel Gibson really is a nutjob if he thinks comic book writers are the cause of all wars. Everyone knows it’s those lousy inkers.
Don’t you mean tracers?
CHASING AMY: possibly Ben Affleck’s best movie.
You know, PAD created a villain named Tracer. I don’t know if it was meant as any kind of reference to Chasing Amy or not.
In terms of his best movie, although he was only a supporting cast member, I loved his work in “Shakespeare in Love.” His bombastic Ned Alleyn was just brilliant. Audition? You must be joking. “What is the play and what is my part!”
And “Dogma” was a close second.
PAD
I LOVE Dogma.
Glad you’re feeling better, Mr. David.
I’m glad you’re better now, PAD. Hip trouble is no fun. I don’t have it, but a colleague at work does, and I know that it can be a bìŧçh to change positions from sitting to standing. I’m glad the surgery worked fine.
As for Mel Gibson, don’t get me started. The unwritten rule of celebrity gossip is that female celebs are persecuted, while males are protected. A guy must work hard, must do stuff of epic proportions to lose this protection. And Gibson is surpassing Michael Jackson and Tom Cruise and Tiger Woods.
I just can’t buy that. How many chances have Britney Spears or Lindsey Lohan gotten? Whether to be protected or villified by the media is a individual thing.
Joel, the idea among people who work in the gossip industry is that the reading/watching public (mostly females themselves) enjoys seeing famous women being debased, while feeling protective of male stars.
A female star involved with drugs will have her life exposed and will be judged in a way that the males won’t. Heath Ledger and Robert Downey Jr. have “problems” with “substance abuse” that are deserved of our sympathy and support. While Britney Spears is an irresponsible, dumb skank that deserves everything she is getting.
The coverage of a male star’s life is always more distant and respectful, with a little more respect paid to the dude’s privacy.
There are exceptions of guys that live such weird lives, or screw-up in such big ways that they become fair targets. But they are the exceptions.
A part of it may not even be the gossip industry’s fault. I have wondered also if it isn’t a sort of moral judgement, because it seems like lots of people subconsciously feel that women who dress skimply and use their bodies to gain fame have forfeited any rights to privacy, while a “tasteful” actor like Heath Ledger is dealt with sympathy and restraint when/if he has personal issues.
Great to hear you’re doing better. I know how debilitating back and hip pain can be and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy… all right, maybe I would.
Heath Ledger and Robert Downey Jr. have “problems” with “substance abuse” that are deserved of our sympathy and support. While Britney Spears is an irresponsible, dumb skank that deserves everything she is getting. The coverage of a male star’s life is always more distant and respectful, with a little more respect paid to the dude’s privacy.
.
Well, I think it may be a bit more than gender based, if we’re going on your examples. First of all, Downey’s problems were covered in incredible detail; there was nothing distant or respectful about it. Second, Downey is seen (and Ledger was seen) as formidable actors with incredibly promising careers that were in danger of being cut short (as Ledger’s was). What Spears does is simply accorded less gravitas. I don’t see it as gender-based since her male equivalents aren’t given a whole ton of respect either that I can see.
.
PAD
One would hardly consider the coverage of George Michael or Boy George or Bobby Brown to be distant and respectful. Pop singers in general are not going to be accorded the kind of respect someone like Ledger was unless, like Ledger, they are seen as some kind of troubled genius. Which is not a description often given to Ms. Spears. Nick Drake, Janis Joplin,Gram Parsons, sure. Tia tequila, Lindsey Lohan, Sid Vicious, not so much.
Okay, point taken.
Good to hear that all is well, PAD.
.
I’ve just gotten back from 2 weeks of vacation with little time spent online, so I’m still playing catch up and hadn’t heard about any of this yet. Again, it’s good to hear that you’re on the mend.
.
It sucks that we’re all just guinea pigs for medicine though. Just before we left on this vacation, my wife got put on a combined medication for a stomach bacteria that had been bugging her for months. The bacteria was causing nausea and stuff, and the medicine was causing nausea and stuff, and we’re on a cruise… which was causing nausea and stuff. 😛
Glad you’re getting better. I don’t know how you tolerated that level of pain, and the fear (initially) of not knowing what was happening to your body. Thank goodness the surgery was straightforward (even with the extra fragments) and you’re recovering. Your description of the pain, and the events leading to your surgery is astounding. Yeah, you are one of the best writers around, but still.
Do the doctors have any idea how you herniated your disc in the first place? It just happened gradually over time, from repeated stress? Is there some way of sitting, walking, or some activity that put extra pressure on your spine, that might have caused a disc to rupture?
In any case, thanks for keeping your readers up to date!
Peter,
I am so sorry you had to go through that. I had MRSA infection that ended up settling into one of my disks (damaged in a fall). I went through 8 months of increasing pain before the doctors diagnosed it correctly. By the time surgery was finally scheduled, I could not walk and was really hoping I’d just die. I spent 7 hours in surgery. They had to open me up in front, move everything out of the way, scrape the infected bones, flip me over, replace the disk, build a cage to support everything and install some rods. I am – internally at least – the Titanium Man!
I was on some pretty potent painkillers afterwords. Like you, I took myself off them as soon as I could. It just took me a bit longer. I admire your dedication and will.
I hope your recovery continues at the great pace shown so far.
Warm regards,
Mark
Gotta love good ol’ Mel and his drunken ways. It’s good to know that you’re recovering well. It’s, also, good to know that you were able to do “X-Position” and answer my question. Do everyone a favor and don’t strain yourself, Pete.