My psych, who is a lovely crusty old dame of about 70ish, gave me some meds and said “Take these if you have an anxiety attack or insomnia; but if you have to take them at work you’ll need to go home. They’ll knock you out.”

Yeah.

I’m beginning to believe she’s a mistress of understatement.

As in, I took it at 11PM one night, thinking it was supposed to be back out of my system in about 8-9 hours. I had my alarm set for 8. I wanted to get up and do work on the commissions in my oh-so-copious free time. Instead I was woken by my husband at 10 AM, who had to *shake me to get me to wake up*, and for the rest of the day I felt like someone had slipped me a ‘lude. Hard to get anything done when that happens. The only upside was that I had a ton of weird and vivid dreams. As it was, I spent all day in an utter fog, feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all.

Guess it’ll be the last time I mess with that. Being a fibromyte means that my sleep is a touchy and special thing. I need a specific type of sleep, and a certain length of sleep — and if I don’t get it, life is difficult and sad until I do.

Medicines have always hit me oddly. They gave me morphine in the emergency room once; I still don’t understand why some people take it for fun. It acid etched my veins before it knocked me unconscious. Thinking back I can still feel that awful sensation, in arteries I didn’t even realize I had. It was a frissioning boiling feeling, a very uncomfortable trip.

Percocet, however, has been a godsend for me. It’s the only thing that really cuts through the pain, with no side effects that I’ve been able to notice it. I can use it sparingly because it is effective. I don’t have to stack eight or twelve or even 16 ibuprophen and do some unknown amount of damage to my innards.

The biggest medication to affect me was Metformin. I was put on it because there was a possibility at the time that I had Poly-Cystic Ovarian Disease, or PCOD. My general practitioner let me know that there was a severe side effect called lactic acidosis but it was so rare that the likelihood of me getting it would be very small.

A week later I went back to my doc with a complaint of acute chest pain and all over muscle soreness. I asked my doc if there was a possibility of this being the rare side effect. They gave the answer of “Oh no, it’s much worse than this.”

Two months later and they were right — it *was* much worse!

Lactic acidosis is part of what happens to the body during the process of rigor mortis; in a way I was living and dead all at once. (A very novel feeling, but I do not suggest it to others.) It felt like my lungs and chest were turning to stone and set on fire and wrapped tightly in barbed wire at the same time. My muscles hurt all over; I was taking four and five percocet a day just to sit upright. But a day after stopping the Metformin, the symptoms began to fade and in four days they were gone.

Lactic acidosis has a hilarious fatality rate; I feel that I came very close to dying because of several misdiagnoses of the situation, and numerous doctors who failed to listen to me and my appraisal of my symptoms. Later that year I got a tattoo because of this experience — a human heart wrapped tight with barbed wire, with phoenix-wings of flame shooting from it. It got it out of my head and on to my skin, where I didn’t have to think about it so often.

Saint Cloth says that tattoos fade; I hope this one does.

Ever had a medication give you a higher effect than you were told it would, or a horrific side effect that causes you harm?

Tags: courage, dead, illness, medication, medicines, sleep

I’ve never participated in a seance, but I think I’d like to as a lark. Usually when I talk with the dead (or more often, they talk TO me) we’ve done so under much less formal circumstances. Sometimes it’s been someone opening the door for me when I have my hands full; sometimes it’s been someone using the shower and taking up all my shampoo/conditioner and breaking my soap; sometimes it’s been something as simple as knowing where the grave yards are, feeling them as I go past. Bottom line, I’ve had dealings with people that other people can’t see but who still manage to make their presence known — but they’ve all been pretty off the cuff. (At some point I’ll explain the above references, I can assure you.)

Who would I summon if we had a seance? That’s a difficult question. Assuming in mortem veritas (and pardon my probably atrocious Latin), who WOULDN’T be good to call? Death leaves so many questions unanswered to the living. Michael Jackson (or Marilyn Monroe, or Anna-Nicole Smith, or Janice Joplin, or Elvis, or any of those that died young under odd circumstances), was it an accident or did you mean to do it? Shakespeare, did you really write all these plays, or was it someone else? Lee Harvey Oswald, were you the only shooter or was someone out there on that grassy knoll? John Lennon, seriously, Yoko? Seriously?

If seances were real (and I’ve never heard of one that was), they’d be incredibly useful. Very few murders would go unsolved; very few wills would be challenged. There could always be one last goodbye.

Although I think it best that some things are allowed to *die*, and that some relationships come to an end. Being married several times in a very Southern Gothic sort of way will do that to a girl. I know that there are definitely some people I would not mind never hearing from again, whether in this life or the next.

On this All Souls Day, I’d also like to mention my two fur-children, Midnight and Dusk. They are both male black cats; Midnight is around 8 years old and Dusk is around 2 1/2. Dusk was a shelter kitten, Midnight was an “oops” by a co-worker’s indoor/outdoor not-yet-quite-spayed-but-we-were-planning-to-do-so cat. No matter how they got here, they have been so worth keeping. Nothing makes you feel more loved than a good cat. A good cat is what a dog should be: smart, independent, but loyal to the end, affectionate, gentle, and delighted just to be with you.

Two black cats cross my path every day, but I don’t believe it’s affected my luck at all unless to improve it. I don’t know what I’d do without my boys. Their unquestioning, unfailing love and devotion has saved my heart more than once.

And if I had more space in the house (and if the husband had someone else to help with the litterboxes), I’d get at least one more black cat because since people are stupid and superstitious, black cats are less likely to be adopted. I’d like to give as many black cats as I feasibly can a good happy long and loving life. And I know that when my cats pass away (may the gods delay that day for many many years), they will be followed by a long line of more black cats — the brilliant, insightful, fuzzy terrible toddlers of my world.

They’re currently curled up on the couch, not destroying anything (for the moment), asleep and SNORING delightfully. I love my boys.

So there’s this bizarre idea that I might actually have an entry that only talks about *one thing* at a time. I don’t know where anyone got that idea…

Tags: cats, dead, dusk, midnight, seance, vox mortuum