Struggling Along

Thursday, December 17, 2009 - 2:15 PM   Everything seems to be going in slow motion, and nothing much has been accomplished. There have been some frustrating complications in my life during the past week, but I am trying to get beyond them.   After I saw my doctor last Friday, and arranged for him to begin prescribing the medications I had been getting at the mental health clinic, I thought that everything would go like clockwork. I was wrong.   When I saw my doctor, he said that he would have all four of the prescriptions faxed into the pharmacy at the mental health clinic. I called the pharmacy yesterday afternoon, but they said they had not received the fax. Then I had to call back to the doctor's office and speak with a woman named Jackie, who does all the work for the prescriptions. She said that she had sent the clinic a fax last Friday while I was seeing my doctor. I told her that someone from the pharmacy told me they had not received it. I then said that I would call the pharmacy and speak with them again, which I did even though they maintained that they still had not gotten the fax.   I called Jackie again and she insisted that she had faxed over the information. Then I had to call the pharmacy another time, and they still said that they had not received it. I told the person at the pharmacy that the prescriptions had been faxed to them, and I gave her the fax number. She said that she did not know who that number belonged to, but it was not the pharmacy. She then gave me their number, which I wound up having to relay back to the doctor's office. Jackie was not very happy speaking to me one more time, but she did agree to send another fax yesterday afternoon.   To make a very long story short, I called the pharmacy this morning and they still had not gotten the prescriptions. That meant another call back to Jackie at the doctor's office. She sounded quite perturbed with me, but agreed to send one more fax to them. I called the pharmacy again and received a voice mail. I left a detailed message regarding what I had done that morning, and told them that Jackie had called me and said that their fax machine confirmed that the prescriptions had indeed gone out. I later received a phone call from someone I knew at the pharmacy who told me that they had gotten the prescriptions, and that they had been filled. They were waiting to be picked up. My sister will pick them up this afternoon or tomorrow morning.   That was a frustrating ordeal for me to have to go through, and it seemed to trigger my anxiety, and gave me a craving for drugs, but I was able to withstand that.   I have been taking my pain medication just as my doctor wanted me to do. I am still not very happy about it. Up until the past two years, I never had very much pain to deal with. It only really started when a man was trying to get me out of bed and into my wheelchair, and got my foot twisted in the process. My scoliosis had hurt some throughout the past years, but I never had the pain that I do now.   The possibility that I might become addicted to the Percocet never really entered my mind until it was mentioned to me by my niece. At the time she talked with me about it, she was practically adamant that I not take any. Because of that, I tried to avoid taking the Percocet whenever possible.   When the pain reached the point that I really was suffering, I gave in and began taking the medication, although I took as little as possible. First, I took one tablet a day, and within half a year, had increased it to two. I was afraid that was too much, even though my doctor had prescribed as much as eight tablets a day if needed. (He later told me that he knew I would not take that much because of my fear of becoming addicted to it.)   I usually try to hide all of my feelings from my family and those working with me. For some unknown reason, I feel weak, ashamed, and guilty about taking the medication.   After seeing my doctor, I have tried to change my thinking on this subject. There have been days when my pain has increased, and I have now had to take as many as three pills a day. That seems to be the level at which I now find myself. I am not happy about it, but am unable to come up with any kind of practical alternative.