Case of "The Munchies"

Send chocolate! Send munchies! Send … something to wire my mouth shut with!

I’ve had a good run for almost two years. My pain management regimen has been tolerable and somewhat effective. But … now … I’m having to endure a course of corticosteroids to deal with multiple points of osteoarthritis and Fibromyalgia pain. Pain killers alone can’t curb the muscle/joint/nerve endings that throb, burn, and spasm.

This time, it’s a multi-tiered pain that starts with the major muscle that runs between my spinal column and right shoulder; radiating, pinching, spiking, ice-picking and throbbing its way through the ends of my fingertips like a ricocheting arrow that’s been dipped in a boiling soup of poison sumac, habanera sauce, and mercurochrome. My skin may as well have been ripped away by a rabid raccoon for all the protection it currently affords.

Those broken arrow fragments rebounding to jam up under my fingernails are providing spectacular fireworks in Technicolor. The stars I see are almost pretty enough to take my mind off the pain. HA! I’m positive my elbow will give birth to that baby elephant anytime now.

Of course, it’s the shoulder that was injured in a car accident in 1972, and then re-injured by a mugger in ‘88. My friends on the city council took up a collection to buy the mugger a sympathy card, but that’s another story altogether. Nevermind that my friend Doug Sutherlin, mayor at the time, started the rumor to make me laugh rather than gritch at him to provide more security in downtown Tacoma, WA.

Corticosteroids tend to make me hungry. Hungry enough to eat a cardboard box. The kind a refrigerator comes in. Hubby is keeping me corralled and away from his newly-built garden shed.

This is day one of the seven-day course. Today, I’ll take a total of six tablets. Tomorrow, five. On day six, I’ll eat the last tablet.

If only I could take as many pain pills and muscle relaxers today ...

The munchies will go away in about two months.

Until the pain is controlled, please excuse typos, missed words, etc. My brain is short-circuiting and my fingers seem to have a mind of their own.