After more than a week of narcotics and steroids, I decided to quit this morning — the fog and haze and insomnia were too much. It wasn’t quite cold turkey, because I started dropping the dosage a couple of days ago, but still, this is my first day totally drug-free.
It’s not going real well so far. The pain is back (but still much less than last week), and now I get to deal with diffuse feelings of nausea, and I’m still foggy and slow. It’s one of those lose:lose situations and I’m not having a grand time. I also keep getting reminded that classes start in a few weeks.
I will get better. Next doctor’s appointment is early Monday morning.
I had a hip replaced last summer, my appendix removed this January, and an inguinal hernia repaired two days ago. I avoided opioids like the plague because of the constipation. Another plus is that the pain tells me when I’m doing something stupid.
I hope things are resolved soonest.
Having had two separate fractures the last three years, I feel your pain.
Or maybe not, the bone spurs are after all embedded in the muscles in a more invasive way. Ouch! ☆☆☆
As long as you don’t start thinking you might vote Republican, you’re not that far into the nausea and delirium.
This sucks PZ. I’m sorry! My issues are minor compared to this.
Best wishes and hoping you recover completely soon with as little pain aand as much progress as possible. Respect.
Warm turkey (tofu-turkey?) can be nice & work well especially with some good Cranberry sauce & sides.
Ahh, man. Sending (good) thoughts your way.
No prayers, though; because…
The fog from narcotics doesn’t go away in one day. But it will go away. Best of luck in your recovery.
Off topic, but maybe this will cheer you up a bit. Evolution demonstrated in a laboratoy. Checkmate, creationists,
Seven years ago, researchers showed that they could strip cells down to their barest fundamentals, creating a life form with the smallest genome that still allowed it to grow and divide in the lab. But in shedding half its genetic load, that “minimal” cell also lost some of the hardiness and adaptability that natural life evolved over billions of years. That left biologists wondering whether the reduction might have been a one-way trip: In pruning the cells down to their bare essentials, had they left the cells incapable of evolving because they could not survive a change in even one more gene?
Now we have proof that even one of the weakest, simplest self-replicating organisms on the planet can adapt. During just 300 days of evolution in the lab, the generational equivalent of 40,000 human years, measly minimal cells regained all the fitness they had sacrificed, a team at Indiana University recently reported in the journal Nature.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/even-synthetic-life-forms-with-a-tiny-genome-can-evolve-20230809/
Off topic, but maybe this will cheer you up a bit. Evolution demonstrated in a laboratoy. Checkmate, creationists,
Seven years ago, researchers showed that they could strip cells down to their barest fundamentals, creating a life form with the smallest genome that still allowed it to grow and divide in the lab. But in shedding half its genetic load, that “minimal” cell also lost some of the hardiness and adaptability that natural life evolved over billions of years. That left biologists wondering whether the reduction might have been a one-way trip: In pruning the cells down to their bare essentials, had they left the cells incapable of evolving because they could not survive a change in even one more gene?
Now we have proof that even one of the weakest, simplest self-replicating organisms on the planet can adapt. During just 300 days of evolution in the lab, the generational equivalent of 40,000 human years, measly minimal cells regained all the fitness they had sacrificed, a team at Indiana University recently reported in the journal Nature.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/even-synthetic-life-forms-with-a-tiny-genome-can-evolve-20230809/
Here’s hoping your recovery goes faster than expected.
@ PZ Myers I posted this on Discord, but it might cheer you up:
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-zebrafish-research-included-us-postal-service-s-life-magnified-stamps
Also: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2023/0810-usps-celebrates-wonders-of-the-microscopic-world.htm
I’m sorry for your travails, PZ, and I hope you are well and truly out of the discomfort zone soon.
Opioids are crap and dangerous in general, but particularly useless for inflammatory conditions. What was the outcome of the joint aspiration?
The aspiration revealed no infection at all, but the presence of monosodium urate crystals. Very goutish.
I was taking prednisone for the inflammation, the opioids to deal with the excruciating pain.
Hang in there, PZ! Wishing you a speedy recovery!