Day 55 Night - Kicking My Proverbial Ass Today And The Name Of This Game

Oh My! Wow! Crap! And several other declarations to boot. Why? Simply because I have come to realize that I cannot expect everything to be just fine and easy and smooth because this is a difficult process. The treatment kicked my proverbial ass today, and I lay on my bed in the early afternoon with my back cramping and my legs itching and my head spinning and wondering what the hell is going on. Okay, in truth, I know exactly what is going on, but it is a challenge to accept the side effects.

One shot of Interferon a week,  six pills of Ribavirin every day (three in the morning and three at night), and the two pills of the Protease Inhibitor in the morning. Mind you, both could be sugar pills or one could be a sugar pill, but I won't really know that for a while. Instead, I must stick to the regimen and bear the side effects with courage and even a touch of grace here and there. I like the verb "bear" in this context because it makes me wish I actually was a bear and I could hibernate through this treatment, receiving all the drugs intravenously. Plus bears seem to be so tough and willing to take the worse and keep trudging through the snow and the woods with the determination of survival.

In the past decade, doctors started administering an ultra-expensive high end treatment for heroin and opiate addiction, including all the prescription pills like Vicodin and OxyContin, where the patient actually sleeps through the entire detox process, never actually going into conscious withdrawal symptoms. When I got off heroin, I didn't sleep for more than 15 to 30 minutes for 10 straight days, and I thought I was going insane. Such a deluxe form of treatment seemed like a Godsend, but it was far out of my reach and not a realistic possibility. What's ironic is that it has shown to have middling to lousy results because the addict often relapses soon after getting clean. Since they have not walked through the pain of the withdrawal process, since they have glided into a rosy picture of health, it is so much easier for them to forget the cost and ignore past damages and embrace the insanity of a relapse. Still, despite this realization, I am not getting off of drugs and I have been sober for quite a while now and the idea of hibernating like a bear through this treatment sounds awfully sweet.

Alas, the evolutionary destiny of the bear is not mine to share, and I must move on and accept the long road that lies before me. Am I tired? Of course, I am. Am I worn down? Yeah, more than a bit. Am I beaten? No, not by a long shot. The name of this game is perseverance.