Don't Take Drugs Unless You Plan to Make it a Habit

I was in a bad car accident last October (100 percent the other guys fault), but I was t-boned at an intersection and suffered head, neck and foot trauma, including the inability to remember my date of birth, or my name when asked at the ER. I wore a thin silver necklace around my neck at the time, nothing too gaudy, and it snapped in two at the moment of impact. I later searched the intersection and the remains of the car - it was never found.

Before I was discharged on my shiny aluminum crutches, the doctor told me that my body was still in shock, but the next day - the day after a major auto accident - can be extraordinarily painful. They wrote me a script for Oxycodone or Hydrocodone or something and sent me home. The next day did indeed hurt, and I missed two days of work in all. I never took the pills. I don't like pills. I don't like any medication.

However, last night I woke up at about 4:30 AM. My right arm was in such exquisite pain that it was hard to think straight. Either I slept on it in a really, unusually painful, brand new manner, or Claude went to sleep on it. The pain, coupled with the normal confusion of waking up at 4:30 AM in horrific pain, got me out of bed and toward the medicine cabinet for an Advil, which I take perhaps twice a year. I'm serious, it really hurt.

Of course, our bathroom is nothing but plaster and lathe, and the beginnings of tile - they've been redoing it for 2 weeks and all the medicine cabinet shit is in a box somewhere. Great. I went to my dresser, and reached in the back, and found the Oxycodone, and a full bottle of Xanax that had expired in December of 1995. I dry-swallowed one Oxycodone. My head still too fuzzy to do anything else, I sat down and watched an episode of House that my wife TiVoed. It was pretty good.

Then I went outside, and smoked two cigarettes and then I went back in the building, stripped off my clothes and went to sleep. What happened next is a second-hand recollection - I was not present for this. I will say that my wife doesn't lie, and I generally trust her to give an accurate picture of events. We had a lecture this morning at 8 AM at the hospital on (ironically enough) pain management during childbirth - you know, spinals, epidurals, all that.

Apparently, to her, it had appeared that I had died in my sleep. She lifted my eyelids, yelled in my ear. I am a deep sleeper, in fairness, but this was really scary. Eventually, I reached some form of consciousness. I slowly got out of bed, fell, got up and fell again. I put on a Black Power t-shirt, no pants, and one whitewater rafting shoe and headed for the door. I took my keys and put them in my pocket - since I had forgotten my pants, they simply slid down my leg, forgotten. This is all second-hand. For my part, I woke up about a quarter to one. I was sitting in a chair in the auditorium, watching a slideshow about cervix dilation. No idea how I got there. My arm felt okay though.

So don't take drugs unless you plan to make it a habit. Once in a while doesn't seem to work so well.