Not myself

To say the last week has been strange would be an understatement. As the carbamazepine takes hold of my body it seems that normal function, on all levels, has been suspended. Lala called me at lunch time today to check on me—“How you feeling?” she asked. “Shithouse”. “Your legs?” “Nah actually my legs feel fine, it’s the rest of me that doesn’t fit.” It was then that the irony occurred to me: to kill the pain in my legs meant killing the (remaining) feelings of normality in the rest of me.

Would you want me when I’m not myself?

I’m still feeling totally spaced out and just not myself at all. It’s been an interesting experiment in who knows me well, actually, because those who do know me well have noticed the change. I now use slow, slurred speech and sluggish movements and everyone else doesn’t see any change. Should that worry me? The other night Lala was convinced that I was upset about something because I was being so quiet and evasive of her constant ‘are you ok’s. The truth was there was nothing on my mind. At all. I was a total blank slate: no thoughts, no emotion. But no pain! The drug is working!

Wait it out while I am someone else?

So yeh, on the up side, the shooting and tingling nerve pain appears to have gone—“for now at least” says the pessimist in me—and even the ever-present muscle ache has lessened considerably during the day, only rearing its ugly head at night. So who knows, it may just work yet. The question will be whether the current feelings of crapulence are my body getting used to having carbamazepine in the system, or whether this is how I am always going to feel while taking it. If it’s the latter then there’ll be some hard questions because while I love the whole no pain thing, there is no way I can live like this on a long term basis. Hey, “crapulence” is in the dictionary…no squiggly red line. How cool is that!?

Would you want me when I’m not myself?

I have to say though, this experience has given me a new respect for people who have to take hardcore pain killers on a regular basis to control their pain—the only thing getting me through this is the knowledge that it’s (hopefully) transient. I just wish it would hurry up and fuck off—I have homework to do!