BACK ON THE SMACK

Tomorrow I am finally, after five and half weeks, and two weeks later than I had planned, going back to work. I was supposed to go back to work on Monday. And I was completely ready to. My leg lengthening was done. My physical therapy was going great, and my leg didn't hurt at all. And because it didn't hurt at all, I stopped taking the Vicodin.

Here's another bit of information to add to the list of information I sure wish my doctor had bothered to tell me: stopping Vicodin cold turkey is about the worst thing that you can do to your body.

First it started out like flu symptoms. Stomach ache, coughing, sneezing, fever, chills and sweats. I thought I had somehow managed to get sick just as I was supposed to go back to work. Then my stomach got much, much worse.

At some point over the weekend, as I was hovering near death in the bathroom, it occurred to me that maybe instead of the stomach flu, I was going through Vicodin withdrawal.

I emailed my doctor (still on vacation, mind you) about my withdrawal. He wrote back that I should have stepped down my dosage instead of quitting cold turkey. Hey, thanks for the information!

By then, I was so deep into my withdrawal that I thought it couldn't get any worse. So I figured, with all I had already been through, that I might as well not take any more Vicodin and just tough it out.

And then it got worse. I don't want to get too graphic, but it was like fire coming out of me. Because of the time difference, I couldn't call my doctor. So we called Kelly's brother-in-law's father, who is an ER doctor. He told me to take a Vicodin. So I did.

Then we called Markus, soon to be MD, PhD, and he helped us figure out if I could take some Immodium, since the pharmacist at Duane Reade suggested to Kelly that in combination with my antibiotic it could be potentially fatal. Oh, let's not be dramatic or anything, Duane Reade pharmacist.

Markus busted out his pharmacology textbook and assured us that I would not, in fact, die if I took some Immodium. So take some I did, and in about an hour and a half of taking that and the Vicodin, I started to feel a little better. I took a couple more Vicodin overnight, and by the morning I felt like life might be worth living again.

So, I'm officially addicted to Vicodin. I now have myself on a step down program (aided in part by advice Kelly found on a Vicodin addicts online forum) which has me decreasing my dosage by half a pill every three days until I'm off of it. Which will be around the end of July.

I could really care less what my doctor thinks of this plan. No way am I going through these symptoms again. Don't do drugs, kids. Those movies like The Basketball Diaries and Trainspotting ain't lying.

Oh, and Heather came by on Friday night for a visit, which turned out to be right before all this madness started to happen. Here she is pointing to the beautiful handmade "Happy End of Lengthening" card she made me: