I remember one summer at camp well before I got my diagnosis I was sleeping in like I did everyday because my sleep was so shitty. While that was going on a couple of friends decided to wake me up by pouring shaving cream on me. It was more than just annoying because when I don't wake up naturally it essentially means the rest of my day will be awful. I was angry enough to chase after them but with my legs I of course couldn't catch them and then the pain made me regret running at all in the first place. If I remember right I got my revenge by putting shaving cream in their shoes, but it's just an example of something lighthearted that can be made worse by the situation you're in. I also remember being verbally jabbed at when I was lying down and listening to Eminem's Till I Collapse song but as that person's own health issues developed they understood why I did it. As my situation worsened though, I started listening less to Till I Collapse and more to Beautiful. The music I listened to depended on my mood and Beautiful is a depressing song. Speaking of my mood, at some point still before my diagnosis (we had no idea what was wrong) I reluctantly agreed to try another psychologist. She was probably the worst health care professional I've seen to this day. She literally gave me homework to do. They were little exercises where I answer questions and write about how I'm feeling. That's absolutely all she did. We never really talked. I don't think I saw her more than 3 times.
I was finally 18, which means it was time to get my wisdom teeth out. The procedure went fine, though my jaw hurt as part of my joint issues since it's kept open for a long while while they are poking around. The interesting part is that the anesthesia for the operation got rid of my pain completely, temporarily of course. This was the second time since my pain started in 2009 that I was pain free even for just a few minutes, the first time being when I intentionally overdosed on painkillers and sleeping pills. It's not a nice memory to attach being pain free to, so I'm glad I've had more opportunities of respite. This occurrence would take place one more time, bringing the total tally to 3 occasions.
Then it was summer, which means, you guessed it, camp again. This year was defined by one hectic, terrifying, stupefying, and nightmare inducing incident that we realized had occurred while I was literally
stepping on the bus to leave for camp. I had been having severe stomach issues, a feverish feeling, strange nightmares, and irritability. It all felt too familiar, and so I eventually realized I was suffering from serotonin syndrome
again! As you might remember, serotonin syndrome is a life-threatening drug interaction that occurs when you have too much serotonin in your system. We never realized that the medication I had started a few days earlier (the opioid Tramadol) had serotonin it as did the Mirtazapine medication I had been taking for months. Mix 'em together and you've got a real crisis, especially considering I was about to head to camp. Due to my familiar symptoms I looked up if Tramadol had serotonin in it and it did. We emailed my neurologist doctor who prescribed it asking what's going on and he confirmed it was serotonin syndrome. That meant I had to stop taking Tramadol immediately, which meant I would be going through opioid withdrawal for the beginning of camp. I was out of commission for a few days but thankfully my co workers were very understanding. This is a prime example of when you have "too many cooks in the kitchen," as the saying goes.
At this point my sleeping problems were still completely out of control. We had managed to shift my sleep cycle to more normalcy (waking up at 11 am rather than 2 pm) but I was not waking up rested in the slightest. Sleep studies showed my sleep was very fragmented with multiple arousals (no, still not the sexual kind) and waking up earlier isn't helpful if you can't function while doing it, but then... it happened. The secret sauce, the holy grail, the blunt bomb, the dank dope, the hippie lettuce, the herbal refreshment the... the weed. Yes, since the Tramadol experiment was a fantastical failure we needed something new to treat my pain so I can do important stuff like maybe sleep and go to school. Since we had legitimately tried everything there is to try, he refereed me to a cannabanoid specialist. I had purposefully never used weed before because I thought it would help my case in getting a prescription to demonstrate I'm no stoner. The things I had heard made me pretty hopeful. Having something to deal with the pain at night so I could sleep would make all the difference in the world. Better yet, the side effects were almost non-existent, at least relatively so. This referral would be my first step in the newest journey of recovery.
