dr_pretentious | What the Label Really Means, or Rough Weather Ahead

"If condition persists, consult your doctor." Straightforward, right? No, not so much. Apparently, if you follow the dosing instructions on a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol for any prolonged period of time--like, say, three months--you can tox out your liver. Apparently, the doctors who told me that tylenol would do just fine, now that I can't take ibuprofen or any of its NSAID cousins, never considered the possibility that I'd try the extra-strength tylenol. Considering that most people with the chronic pain diagnosis I have take opiates as daily maintenance drugs, I don't know why it didn't occur to them that I'd choose the stronger over-the-counter version over the weaker one. As far as I knew, I had consulted my doctor.

So now, until the bloodwork says my liver is happy, no more painkillers for little me. At all.

Maybe the lab will have something nice to say about my blood, and I'll be in the clear.

Just in case, though, I figured I'd give y'all a heads-up. I may be less useful than usual for a little while. As I discovered back in November, asking for help isn't the end of the world. (Who knew?) It's possible I might have to do that again.

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I'm sorry to hear that. May your liver be nice and detox quickly, so you cen be relatively pain free.

And in a desperate search for some sort of silver lining (or even brass, at this point), at least now you can have some sympathy for any characters you write about who have a chronic pain!

Yeah, I've been looking for the good in the situation, too. Chronic pain's old news for me, but it does have a couple of weird little benefits. When the fibromyalgia flares up, all my senses get keener. The photosensitivity's a real inconvenience, and it's not so much fun when loud noises map over as pain in my skin, but then, good food becomes Euphorically Good Food, and I have a sense of smell fit for blending perfumes with. I figure, I can sit in a nice dark place and mix up some anointing oils while I wait this out. Synesthesia's not such a bad deal, then. Feeling the scent of sandalwood in my skin is almost worth the price of admission.

I have to be really vigilant about the chronic pain worming its way into characters who don't have it. Anytime a character is weary, or spends an entire scene flat on his or her back with any sort of debilitating condition, I have to ask myself, am I writing this because it's one of the things I know, or is it actually good for the story? "Weary" is one of the words I run searches on when I'm revising, to make sure that not once instance of weariness occurs unnecessarily. That word is almost as pernicious a tic as "pretty much."

So I have all of this soap stuff and I am fishing for some smells to put in soap. Just a suggestion. Want some soap?

How do you feel about candlemaking? Dan won so much spiffy handmade soap in the Yule gift exchange/extreme musical chairs game, we're pretty well stocked over. [Insert joke about self-cleaning coven here.] But, believe it or not, I am actually running out of tapers.

Tapers, not tapirs. Anytime I need tapirs, I just look here (http://community.livejournal.com/tapir_time/).

...I recall that the last group of tapers I made, much less wax actually burned than ended up all over the table. I shall have to troubleshoot this batch of wax. I think stearic acid should harden it up a bit. This cannot be done soon. And folks tend not to like smelly tapers so much.

It's the old problem of clashing smells. How dare they discontinue unscented deodorant! You can smell like anything you want as long as it goes with "Powder Fresh". Bleah.

Jar candles are just fine though. I already have the jars.

Justin and I went to the Bronx Zoo and he must have spent twenty minutes communing with the tapir in the jungle house. I think it was trying to get Justin to relax.

I think every organism Justin ever met has tried to get him to relax. Dear Justin. I wonder what he's up to these days.

Your condition gives you synesthesia? Wow. Of all the conditions I've heard about, that one is the one I'd probably most like to have. Although I've heard there are some really awful versions of it, like tasting sounds, where most of the tastes are pretty nasty. But I'd love to be able to see sounds.

Admittedly, it sounds like in general you'd trade that in for a day without pain.

Was this just from the messed up ankle?

Nope, I've always had it, though it wasn't diagnosed until I was a couple of years into grad school. Before that, my doctors told me it was all in my head, and that everybody else was in just as much pain as I was, and I believed them. I really thought the synaesthesia was normal.

Most of the time, I can keep the fibromyalgia in remission with low doses of unexciting medications, with a bit of Tai Chi and yoga on the side. Most years I have a week or two of crash-and burn when something knocks me off my equilibrium, but I have a repertoire of skills now that allow me to pull out of flares in fairly short order. Getting by with no analgesics will mean more Tai Chi, more yoga, more massage, and more care to avoid little injuries and catching colds. It's the disruption between one stretch of equilibrium and the next that's always a bitch.

I draw the group's attention to one of my favorite singing groups, "The Bobs," and their song "Synesthesia":

As a baby in my mother's arms
She would croon and I'd see pink
And when she'd bathe me in the sink
The radio would play red or green or lavender
When the Beatles sing it's a yellow thing
Yeah, the Stones are always purple
Every melody that I hear
Fills my mind with colors bright and beautiful

SYNAESTHESIA
If everyone could see the things that I hear
SYNAESTHESIA
A giant box of Crayolas in my ear

(the rest of the lyrics are at http://www.bobs.com/Lyrics.cgi?Synaesthesia or listen to the song by following the link at the bottom of the page at http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/index.html )

What the Label Really Means, or Rough Weather Ahead

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Smells

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Tapers

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