Yesterday sucked giant festering donkey balls. Matt took me to the hospital. They prepped me. I got the impression that I was on an assembly line. This particular medical establishment must do dozens of these injections per day. I'm still not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. What really made the situation worse was the fact that I couldn't find my klonopin anywhere before we left, so I didn't even have that as a backup.
Anyway, the procedure itself was about what I expected. They numbed me up, sort of. Lidocaine never had much of an effect on me, honestly. Then the needle went in, and I could feel it piercing each layer of tissue. Skin, subcutaneous fat, muscle, coming out the other side of the muscle, and finally into my spinal column. The medication push felt kind of like someone was filling my nerves with peanut butter. The solution isn't quite that thick, but it does actually fill up the space pretty tightly.
As they wheeled me out, I felt pain shooting down my leg. I also felt light-headed, a little tingly and weird, like the beginning of a panic attack. I pushed down the feeling as much as I could, telling myself it was probably just my anxiety acting the way my anxiety does when something suddenly changes in my body. We got out of there as fast as we could. By the time we were in the car, I was a sobbing mess, and I had no idea why. Maybe it was just a meltdown from all the stress lately. Maybe I had gotten tired of pretending I didn't feel the pain when the needle went in. Maybe I was just tired, in general.
Whatever it was, it sucked. I sobbed for almost an hour, to the point of almost causing myself an asthma attack. I sat on my bed and just cried and cried. Luckily, my klonopin refill had already been filled. I asked Matt to go out and get that. While he was gone, my mind whirled with thoughts that maybe I was having some kind of reaction to the drug. Oh, gods, this stuff was inside me now, and it wasn't going to just go away as soon as the pill dissolved or whatever. This stuff was going to be with me for weeks. I did start panicking then.
But I called on my gods. I called on Thor and Loki and Odin and Sif. I repeated to myself, over and over again, "I am in control of this. I will not listen to my fear. I will make it help me. I will make it help me. I will make it work for me." In the beginning, I was still sobbing, but I kept repeating it until I was almost shouting. (If anyone had heard me, they'd have thought I was a complete loon.) But it worked. It leveled me out. And by the time Matt came back with my klonopin, I was resting, if not comfortably, at least not in active distress.
I'm proud of the way I conquered that fear, and I am deeply grateful for Matt and my gods, as usual. But today... today I am still in more pain than I was when I went in for the injection. And I'm angry at everything. I feel like I'm going through puberty again, and I just hate everything and everyone just for existing. I'm snapping at Matt when he's just trying to help, and that is just not okay. I don't like this feeling and I am convinced that it is entirely chemical, entirely the result of the steroids in my body right now.
I need to do a cost-benefit analysis of the injections at some point, but I need to wait until I'm not feeling like She-Hulk on her period. As of this moment, I don't think it's worth it. My pain hasn't improved and my mood... well, I started crying again just writing this, and then I stopped, and then I started laughing... you get the idea. It's like my psych meds are switched off.
I do feel better once I'm focused on something, and the action of writing this entry has helped. I didn't say all I wanted to say, but there's always more time for that. And now, I'm off to therapy,.
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