October 16, 2002
Poppin Pills Like Candy.. I'm a Druggie
*Rubs Booty*
I always feel like I'm in trouble when I holla at ya'll after being MIA for a while. Like a school aged kid whose teacher just caught her forging momma's signature on a bad report card… minus the deer caught in headlights look, not that I would know anything about doin su'thin like that. I know ya'll been spending these last months checkin The Bitter Truth page for an update and leaving the site muttering obscenities about me under ya breath. I'm a lil zoned out right now so I ain't taking responsibility of how this shit is gonna turn out, all the medicines I'm on right now, turning me into one of those kids on the school bus that stares out the window with they mouth wide open. Zoned out is an understatement.
I been getting e-mails forever asking where I been, and I wanna apologize for being gone for so long. I decided ya'll deserve an explanation of why I been MIA for so long, so here it go.
And it Starts...
Most of my loyal readers know I been had problems with my back since the beginning of fuckin time, but now this shit is a pain in my ass… literally. Back in February, I started having regular ole back pain, but the shit had gotten so normal to me I ain't think nothing of it. Fast forward a few months. The pain began to spread to my hip, leg, and foot. My back hurt, my ass, my leg, down to my toes. But But But Wait….It Gets Worse. A month later the pain increased and now my leg and foot is numb and tingly too, sometimes it burns, and hey, even better.. sometimes my whole leg just shakes and gives out while I'm walking. *Jumps for Joy* So I know ya'll are again talking shit and asking why I ain't go to the doctor and get the shit taken care of. Unfortunately us po folk don't have shit like that. Without medical insurance you ain't getting no kind of quality medical attention and if you do get su'thin… expect to receive a $25 bill in the mail for that Band-Aid you stole from the nurse's cart - to say they overcharge you is an understatement.
In New York when you're without medical insurance, you're referred to a free/gubmint subsidized clinic, they don't have doctors just nurses and who knows if they qualified or not, you don't have a choice but to go there. The amount you pay for a clinic visit is based on your income, which still doesn't make any fuckin sense to me at all. I wasn't working mainly because of my back, so my income was 0 dollars and 0 cents yet I still received a bill for $150 from the clinic. They should pay us to go to these got dayum clinics, if you ain't been to one in your life...do whatever you can to not ever have to be there. I could have prolly carved my name in the dirt covering the floor in that joint. After making your way through 2 sets of bulletproof glass doors and checking in, they toss you a gown to change into that has stains on it from god knows what and god knows who. They then got the nerve to look at you like you're trippin when you decline to use the gown, since it could very likely be hazardous to your health to put the dayum thing on. All that I got outta tha clinic was the $150 bill and a fat ass nurse telling me to suck it up and take Motrin or Advil cuz, "everybody deals with back pain, it just ain't that bad".
Pickin Bugs with Cletus The Slack Jawed Yokel
So I moved on to the joys of applying for government health insurance. If none of ya'll have ever spent a day at your local social services office…I advise you to go as soon as possible. To sum it up:
- 30% of the people there look like prostitutes and/or crack fiends, the kind of people that go there every day to get emergency food stamps and to get their free AIDS test. There was a group of chicks with this dude that obviously had em on lock down. They hadda ask permission to use the restroom and one even called dude "Daddy" when apologizing for stepping out of the food stamp line to use the phone.
- 30% of the people are dirty trailer trash looking people, these are the people who brought their kids with em, all of the little bastards. I was fully expecting a toothless dude named Cletus to bust in, adjust his pack of Marlboro's rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve, belch and crush a Budweiser can on his forehead. Sounds of a banjo playin in the background, the full nine. Nuff said.
- 20% of the people are senior citizens who are there to see about continuing their Meals on Wheels service. Their cat, Morris, is borderline anorexic cuz they been eating up all his canned cat food on saltines for dinner.
- The remaining 20% are a mixture of 10% unemployed people like me who are only there as a last resort and are hating every minute of it, and 10% grown folk livin at their momma's house who don't feel the need to work. They come to Social Services every Monday and wait for their caseworker patiently while talking on their cell phones in their $200 Sean John velour running suits, just hoping to get a continuance of their cash benefits, since they seen a hot pair of Air force 1's they wanna cop. *shakes fist*
So after waiting 2 hours to see a caseworker, while sitting behind an old woman who had bugs jumpin rope on the back of her shirt… I was called. I hobbled my ass up 4 floors of stairs (of course the elevators were malfunctioning that day) to find a 5 x 5 cubicle where my caseworker asked me every question under the sun, tell me your life story kinda shit. I was fully expecting the nugguh to ask me my bra size and how many times a week my man dicks me down. The shit was regodamndiculous. So blah, blah, blah, I get approved… 2 months later. It was now August, almost a full six months after the shit started and I was given the go ahead to finally see a real doctor. Eff Cletus.
So, You Went to Medical School Huh…and Passed?
Hmph, first doc I saw told me to go to physical therapy. Sorry, but fuck that. During the time I was waiting for my med. insurance and etc, I had been researching back problems and related info. The shit was not even lettin me walk right, and this bitch doctor tried to tell me it was nothing, sayin, "it's a backache, you need to stretch it out." No, I don't think so you fat bitch…fuck you. No, better yet let me see your medical degree and the Cracker Jacks box you found it in. For one thing my lovely government insurance doesn't pay for physical therapy, what I look like paying out-of-pocket for them to fuck my shit up even more? I didn't think crackin my back and applying a heating pad was gonna do shit for me but further fuck up my back, so I said nay. These people got to be out their minds, I took the prescription for Vicodin pain meds and kept it movin.
The end of August shit was outta hand, I couldn't sit, stand, lay…nothing comfortably. This is around the time that I stopped sleeping except for 3 hours at a time with the help of some pain medication; if I did fall asleep it was sitting up on my couch. Imagine sitting up at a 90 degree angle with your head resting on your hand, and being able to sleep like that? I would be walkin around for days with an imprint of my fingers and nails in my grill, and my neck started creakin when I moved it. Shit was uncomfortable. I said fuck it and went back to the hospital. They hooked me up with some morphine, which…I advise all ya'll to have at some point in your life, it's some good shit.
So after having x-rays and some other tests that you will prolly never want to have in your life…they tell me I have Lumbar Radiculopathy. Word? What the fuck did you just say? You talking bout my momma? Turns out it's a pinched nerve in my back. They tell me to find a neurologist or spine specialist who will most likely want me to go to physical therapy
*shakes fist* but they hook me up with some more prescriptions for both Vicodin and muscle relaxants and send me on my merry way…in a wheelchair.
Tha Second Opinion
So, enter September. I find a new doctor to get a second opinion and make sure I get some tests or su'thin. My new doc sent me for a MRI that's the test where you lay flat on a table in that long skinny tube. Not the best idea for ya'll claustrophobic heads but I was straight in that aspect. The worst shit was the pain of laying flat on my back (get yo minds out tha gutter.) You have to lay completely still for the whole time you're in there, which for me was over an hour - 70 minutes to be exact. I'm prolly one of the only people who ever screamed for morphine during a MRI. You're on a hard metal table in extreme pain, pretty much in the dark nonetheless and trying your hardest to remain still while you have muscle spasms, a sharp pain running from your back, down your ass, and out your foot. The diameter of the tube is about 2 feet, but inside is smaller and they also put a plastic tube over your body. Your face is 3 inches from the ceiling of this tube that is vibrating and making a noise like a trash compactor. So a few days later while I was still trying to shake the painful memory of that test from my mind, my doc called with the results.
I have a large disc protrusion at the L4-L5 level causing compression of the thecal sac. Hmph, I guess I'm in the minority of people who do NOT walk around carrying a medical dictionary and anatomy textbook. They talk to us using these fancy medical terms and big words and shit, obviously trying to make us feel stupid as a bitch when we hafta ask em to translate that shit in English. The translation for all us illiterate summamabitches…"large disc protrusion" means herniated or ruptured disc, it means that the disc (padding) between the vertebrae has been damaged and is now sliding out from between the bones and is protruding into the spinal canal. The disc material has ruptured out of the disc's outer shell and is pressing up against the thecal sac, which is the thing that contains the nerve roots and nerves that run down the leg and foot. Hence the leg and foot pain. I knew this shit was bad after peeping the MRI itself, shit looked terrible. After peeping my MRI's my doctors promptly moved up all my appointments and put a rush on everything, which of course made me more nervous. Every form I filled out, every medical form, every lab work sheet had the word emergency written on it in yellow marker. "How bad is this shit?"
*Bites Nails*
Fuck a Happy Place
So now I had the diagnosis, which relatively shed light on the level of pain I've been in. And explains the months of continuous drug use. You know the shit is good when you go to the pharmacy to pick up your meds and 3 or 4 red and yellow stickers are stuck on the side of the bottles declaring them "CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE" or "NARCOTICS." When I was first put on Vicodin it would kick in within 20 minutes, make me woozy and put me to sleep. After a while I built up tolerance to em and now I hafta take 2 and wait an hour to feel any effects. During this time I was sent to a pain management "doctor" who, among other things, made me laugh and roll my eyes more than anything ever before. She prescribed more Vicodin and told me to take Advil or Motrin 4 times a day. She then gave me "techniques" of dealing with the pain when it gets especially bad and if the pills don't have any effect on me. To her, dealing with it meant going to "My Happy Place."
*rolls eyes*
First you choose a place that you imagine to be your most happiest, for some reason they always use a beach. She says "Imagine the sound of the waves crashing up on the shore, the warm breeze soothing your face. Are you relaxed?" Wait, why my happy place gotta be a got dayum beach? "You're losing focus here Tricia," she said. If my happy place is a beach I'm betting I got sand in my shoes and there's little kids splashin water in my hair. When I catch em, I'ma beat them lil bastards till the white meat show. "Okay Tricia, maybe the beach is NOT your happy place. How about a concert of your favorite music artist?" Hmmm. Word. That just might work. "Imagine being in the crowd and hearin…" Wait, wait, wait, crowd? So most likely I'm thrown out by security after I slap the bitch with the jacked up weave who stepped on my shoes. I got pieces of horsehair hanging off my rings and, got dayum it I broke my nail! "Okay Tricia, how about a park?" Is there bees at this park because if there is then I aint… "Maybe visualization isn't for everyone." Shut that stupid bitch up.
I don't know about ya'll but I don't wanna deal with pain or manage the pain, I want the shit gone…yesterday. So obviously pain management wasn't for me, on with the drugs. I was given stronger pain medicine called Percocet and some Valium and continued living in my drug hazed world. Both of them make me woozy feeling and tired as a bitch. They don't do much but dull the pain and allow me to sleep 3-4 hours at a time…in the bed instead of up on the couch. So I been sleeping for 3-4 hours at a time, taking naps and shit and being up half the night. It beats sleeping sitting up on the couch though, fuck a happy place and fuck that lady who tried taking me there…
You're Gonna do WHUT?
So finally I had a diagnosis, but now what the fuck do I do with this information? See a neurosurgeon, of course. "A what ?!?!" I'm pretty sure I heard the doc right, but that word "surgeon" was echoing in my head and not sitting well with me.
*Laughs* Nevermind ya'll, my back is fine.
*Gets up and dances on one foot while holding right ass cheek*
See I'm fine, I don't need to see a surgeon. Needless to say I was scared as a bitch. The thought of having surgery never really crossed my mind. I don't know why surgery bugs me out so much. It could be the thought of being put to sleep for hours while strange people cut me open and operate on a part of my body that is dangerously connected to my brain. It could be something as small as eating delectable hospital food and walking the halls in the gowns that will no doubt fashionably flash my booty to non-suspecting visitors and non-paying customers. I don't know, the shit just bugs me out.
So I go see my neurosurgeon, I was told that this doesn't go away on it's own and that I've waited so long that I could have permanent nerve damage in my foot and blah blah blah. Without the surgery the nerves will just keep dying and I could lose feeling and use of my leg and or foot. The burning pain I've been feeling is the nerve endings basically fizzling out. The neurosurgeon gives me some stronger pain pills and some Valium to help me relax…nice dude. I could hug him. The surgery I will be having is called a Laminectomy and Discectomy and yadda, yadda, yadda. I will be in the hospital overnight and these bitches better have the morphine ready for me when I get there.
*Pops 2 Percocet*
So this is where I'm at, waiting for surgery and going crazy in the process. I think I've read every book I own 3-4 times and could prolly recite lines from them word for word. I've hadda rely on my man to do a lot shit for me, and ladies…we all know how well that works - this nugguh folds clothes inside out.
*shakes head* So this is why I ain't been updating my joint as steadily as I should. Ya'll can stop muttering under yo breath, I wasn't just being lazy, I'm cripple and shit. And ya'll better have read this because writing this took me forever and a day to write, sitting at the computer in 15-minute intervals. Hell, I'm hoping I was halfway coherent writing this; I just took 2 percocets and a valium bout half an hour ago. So If this don't make any sense, then ya'll know why. So yes ya'll, I am still The Bitter Bitch; I will still be spreading my literature for the world to enjoy. For now I'ma hafta leave shit as is though. I'm not sure when shit is gonna go down, not sure how I'ma feel after the surgery and blah, blah, blah. Hopefully after this shit, I'll be back on my game and be able to holla at ya'll on the regular again. In the meantime keep hollerin atcha girl. Now I'm off to find my real happy place…
Until next time keep it bitter and talk much shit!
Smoochies!
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