don't mess with me

don't mess with me

I need to vent. I was just talking online with a friend of mine, who recently met someone roughly my age who was in a car accident and had a lot of broken bones below the waist. I don't know how long ago this person was in an accident, but now she's addicted to narcotics and evidently needs them in order to function on a normal level. My friend brought this up because of the obvious parallels in age and physical injuries. That must mean we're exactly alike, right? Since that woman needs drugs to function, obviously I will too, right? Okay, now I don't know much about addiction, but I do know that I was addicted and went through withdrawal once already. It was really hard to wean myself off the drugs, but I desperately wanted to be done with them. I don't understand why people think painkillers are "cool". They're awful. They mess your body up in so many ways. Withdrawal was really difficult to go through, and I knew that I would feel much better if I just took another pill, but I didn't want that. I'm not the type of person to give in and do the "easy" thing versus what's best for me in the long run (see: physical therapy), and it makes me so angry to think that this friend of mine is mistaking me for that type of person. I am not weak. As I told my friend, I've overcome much more difficult things already. I'm not saying that the person he met is weak - I don't know her situation - but I know that she and I are different. It sucks because I have to keep going back on the percocet, but I am following the advice of my doctors very closely. My knee surgeon was disappointed with the range of motion in my knee and said he wanted me back on the narcotics so I could work really hard. He said he'd rather have me on the drugs now and I can worry about weaning myself off them later. It's so important for me to regain motion in my knee now because I have a limited window of time before a permanent disability could form. And in case anyone is worried, I'm taking 1-2 pills a day (a little more today since I just had surgery), versus the 12 a day I was taking for a while following the accident. The person I'm talking about probably won't read this, and if he does, so be it. Maybe I'm a bad person for not telling him I'm upset, but whatever, I don't care right now. He wouldn't understand anyway.

Wow, that was a huge paragraph/rant. Anyway... I had surgery this morning and it went fine. If you're just tuning in, it was just a minor surgery to fix an old incision on my ankle that just wasn't healing. I've decided that ankle surgery hurts more than knee surgery. I feel like such a wimp because I know it was just a minor thing I had done today, but it hurts a lot. Knowing my doctor, he must have cut out a lot of scar tissue while he was at it. I wonder if he cut stuff around my metal plate, because it hurts like it did when I had that stupid thing put in. I was a little annoyed after the surgery because the nurses seemed like they were in a hurry to get me out of there. I had a different type of anesthesia - I don't really understand it, but it made me sleep like general anesthesia did, but I didn't need a breathing tube and it didn't take as long to wake up afterwards. I think the surgery will set me back a few days because I can't practice walking or do exercises like I normally would, but I elected to have the surgery done this week before school started. I figured that would make life a little easier.

What else is new... I got my school schedule sorted out. It's weird being all signed up for classes, like I'm just starting a normal semester. I'm looking forward to seeing my friends on a regular basis again. I wish I didn't have so many appointments, or I wish I had another week or two of winter break. I'm going to be pretty useless the first few weeks of school because I have so much to do and I'm going to be really tired. I have one or two appointments a day next week and probably for the week after that, too. By the way, I have an appointment to see a counselor next week. I don't really want to talk about that, but I'm mentioning it because everyone keeps asking me.

Yesterday I went out to lunch with my mom and her friends. They go out every week and I join them when I can because I like going to restaurants. I was so tired and crabby after yesterday's lunch though. That group has already seen me a few times since the accident, but yesterday they decided to bombard me with questions. It was almost more than I could handle. I don't mind answering questions, but when all of them, at the same time, are asking me a thousand questions I've answered a thousand times already, it makes me really tired. I have a blog so I can avoid situations like that, but not everyone knows about my blog, and I like it that way. I guess the downside is that sometimes I have to deal with being bombarded with questions.

Nicole stopped over to see me last night. It's really nice when people come to see me because I don't get many visitors anymore. That won't matter soon though because when I'm back at school I'll see my friends more often. Nicole and I have a class together this semester, yay!

On a side note: Charter interweb is crap and I miss the DSL that I use at home.

Sorry if this post is a little random, I blame the drugs - which I am NOT addicted to, thankyouverymuch.