The Reluctant Addict

Dr. Wong, my acupuncturist, told me that the pain patches I am wearing are ten times stronger than morphine. Okay, I knew they were strong but I never quite equated them with morphine even though I knew they were in the same catagory and it really struck me when he told me this and I thought NO WONDER I am emotional a lot of the time. I'm an addict! I not only wear these patches, I take pills to up the usefullness of the patches and we're talking about a person who hadn't even taken aspirin in thirty years, for pete's sake. So I now have the mind of an addict and that's why when I sit down to write these blogs I am writing from a different part of my brain. Not the light hearted funny part that always looked at the world with wit and irony but the person who looks at the world like The Man with the Golden Arm. (That's a book and movie about an addict, by the way. I believe it starred Frank Sinatra.) Remember that guy, I think his name was James Frey...Or something like that...Anyway, Oprah picked his book about addiction as her Oprah pick and when she found out he made the whole thing up she humiliated him on national television by saying he was a liar and a fraud. Well, I'M MORE OF AN ADDICT THAN HE WAS so maybe I should write something that Oprah will pick as her book of the month because I am an addict. A real one. And I could write about anything as long as I talk about being an addict. How about the housewife addict. The woman with cancer addict. The middle aged ex actress who slept with Robert DeNiro. (Remember him?)

I seem to be getting carried away but you kow, I want to NOT be an addict. I would really like to know what I'm feeling when I'm not using. Would I feel as weird as I feel right now? I think these patches are why I wake up feeling a bit unsteady. After all, I have 175 milligrams of morphine shooting into my system all day long. Isn't that a lot? There must be some kind of natural pain reliever with no side affects that I could take. Got to look into that.

Which reminds me that tomorrow I am going to a new kind of doctor recommended to me by the oncologist who took care of me last week in the hospital. This doctor believes in the miracle of vitamin C. And other supplements. And the oncologist told me I would feel so much better after going to see this new guy. As you know, I was already taking vitamin drips from another doctor but what the hell, I'll try this new one and compare and see what I feel. I remember at the vitamin drip place I used to go to there was a woman there who swore by the drips and were sure they were why she was still alive and had been for quite a long time. Now this woman took very long drips. Like four hours longs. Hey I'd take a drip for twenty four hours if I knew it was going to keep me alive for a few years.

And here's where I should mention that I DO think they are going to get this little bugger of a tumor. It's not that everything suddenly came to a crashing halt. It was just me and my addled brain that went to that place when the tumor reared it's ugly head. I think I mentioned that nothing has spread anywhere else and my liver is perfectly clean and my vital signs are perfect and I am a strong girl so there is no reason to think that they can't keep this tumor at bay. Magic Johnson has been living for years because they keep coming up with new treatments. So I want what he has even though he has AIDS and I don't but there must be some equivilant and I'm going to find it.

Oy, am I tired of talking about my problems. I used to have this life. It was interesting. I worked with these wonderful kids. I laughed a lot. Oh haha.

Actually, I am laughing now but not for a great reason. I happen to be wearing my Florence Henderson wig. That's why I'm laughing. It's the cheap one. The Brady Bunch wig. Will sort of named it for me. It does this little flip on the ends. Doesn't look like who I really am at all but I sort of like it. It's silly and ridiculous and makes me want to make pancakes and tuna casserole but you feel like you're going to live forever if you're Florence Henderson and so will the entire Brady Bunch. They never got cancer. They got chicken pox and miss the prom and I like those problems a lot better than my problems. Mr. Brady would never leave Mrs. Brady for another woman. There's just too much to do at home. There's the garage to clean up and the front door latch to tighten. Who has time for an affair. The kids are always having some kind of mini crisis.

So I'm just going to stay Mrs. Brady for a while. It's very comforting. Unless, of course, Mrs. Brady is really an addict. Maybe that's why she's so calm. Well, I'm just going to wear her hair and cook up some hash browns and I think everything is just going to be A OK.