Hip Blog Day Four

A more clinical blog entry on a damp and drizzly day.

What you've heard about arthritis and the weather is true: the damp days are the damnedest. Cold and wet ones are the worst. The chilly wet air creeps into one's bones, and pain is that much more difficult to control.

I took, as today's mission, the actions I needed to get some better results. Having been advised on Friday to discontinue the ibuprofen therapy my surgeon suggested, of three tablets three times a day, I called Harvard Vanguard's Somerville location. For the past week or so I've been finding that Vicodin just wasn't cutting it, and phoned my primary care doc's office to explain my pain predicament. The result: a prescription for Percocet, a stronger combination composite pharmaceutical of oxycodone combined with acetaminophen. But, as oxycodone is a narcotic, the prescription couldn't be faxed to my pharmacy, and I trekked out to Davis Square to pick it up.

Last night I was woken by leg pains at 2 am (these wee hour awakenings are becoming more common). The Ambien no longer gives uninterrupted sleep. And the nightly ritual of watching infomercials and newscasts are becoming a drag. The bulk of the day becomes a combination of trying to accomplish tasks and chores, with cat naps and Facebook and brainstorming blog posts. So now I'm on Percocet, as (pardon the visual) constipating as Vicodin, but much more pleasant for the pain.

As is far too common for me in times of stress, the moments before rushing to the red line to pick up my prescription were fraught with foraging for my insurance coverage cards, my Charlie card, and my keys. Needless to say to any who knows us, this is not my more prepared partner's Modus Operandi . He's always ready with time to spare, whereas I'm always "late to the gate". (when I used to travel to NY before living there, and almost any time I traveled anywhere for business or pleasure, I'd joke, with more truth than exaggeration, that I'd board the planes, buses, or trains, and as soon as I got seated, they'd move).

Arriving at the Harvard Vanguard pharmacy at 5:55 (it closes each weeknight at 6), I paid for the meds with the last of my funds, then skipped to the loo. To frost the icing on the frustrating cake of today, my iPhone slipped out of my grip and into the sink. I buried it in basmati once I got home. It's doing okay, though the right side of the screen has a swath of bright light, the signs of abuse shining through.

Kind of like the x-rays of My Right Hip.

Now I'm composing this post on the type face of said iPhone (my laptop keyboard is kaput: for weeks now, all my writing is an exercise in patience: emailing myself messages to cut and paste into the computer's web browser, and editing them by hunting and pecking individual character corrections. Repairing or replacing it will have to wait).

I'm now ready to dub this day "over". The burst of ideas this that flowed forth this morning for a blog post parody of a cinema classic will have to wait till tomorrow.
After all (he wrote, plagiaristically), tomorrow is another day.
Or so I've read.