I ran out of pain pills yesterday so I had Jared call over to refill my prescription. He asked me to make the phone call while he worked on something else and I flat out refused. One of my many neuroses, I refuse to make phone calls I can get out of.
So he called the pharmacy and they told him they wouldn’t be able to have it ready until 8:00 at night. We figured that would be just fine since I was already properly medicated and we had dinner a cookin on the stove. A few hours later we finish watching The Amazing Race (hooray! The self-righteous couple is gone! Hooray! Joyce was a rock star and shaved her head!) and then walked across the street to the drug store.
Except…duh duh DUHHHH…the pharmacy closed at nine. And I proceeded to have a flaming panic attack right there in the candy isle.
The thought of what a night without medicine could be like was absolutely terrifying. As in made me a crying hysterical mess in public at the thought of being trapped in gut-wrenching (literally) pain and no help in sight. Bear being the good husband that he is calmed me down and reminded me that I had already taken my pills for that night, my mornings are usually pretty good, and all I had to do was walk across the street by myself the next day and it would all be OK. It sounds completely reasonable, but I knew I had no way to count on a pretty good morning, so I was still a wreck.
But I made it through. Jared was right. Thanks to the mystical magnet mattress, it’s now 4:30, I have yet to take a pill, I picked up my prescription and scoured the kitchen. And I’m dressed and ready to go to hang out with the young women tonight. We’re seeing Robots.
It might seem like I completely overreacted, and I probably did, but not without precedent. When we lived in New Hampshire my health wasn’t quite so bad, but I still depended on Bear’s folks to get me the medication I needed. At one point I ran completely out of pills, and we had to wait for them to cross the whole country in the mail before I could find relief.
By the time they arrived I had been in a significant amount of discomfort for a straight week with nothing more than advil to help me out. After ignoring the warning signs for a week, my body went into red alert shut down mode with pain so sharp I could not breath, I was throwing up and crying and screaming and thrashing around. Pain had made me in need of an exorcism. We finally had to go to the hospital, which turned out to be closed. CLOSED! Our only option was the emergency room which I just couldn’t bring myself to do. My mom was an ER nurse and raised us on the nightmare costs you incur from just walking in the door. Luckily, when we came back home the mail had come and there were the pain pills, waiting for me. And I lived to tell the tale.
I have a real love/hate relationship with those dang pills. I depend on them to keep me from ripping out my uterus with my teeth, but I’m always panicking I depend on them too much.