All Shook Up

Today is the 29th anniversary of the death of Evis Aron Presley, the King of Rock and Roll. He died due to heart problems, not to mention his addiction to prescription pain medication. I had been taking some pills of this type the past few days as part of my recuperation from Friday's surgery, and they were pretty effective at alleviating the pain. The pills are known as Vicodin, generic name hydrocodone, and they don't eliminate the pain so much as they make you not care about it. It's almost like the pain is there and you are aware of it, but it's like it's happening to somebody else. I had taken these pills following a wisdom tooth extraction in 1995 and I had known from researching them that they were addictive (sending off to rehab the likes of Matthew Perry and Courtney Love, who is nearly indestructible when it comes to narcotics). So obviously I was going to follow the directions and discontinue their use the moment the pain stopped. Being a recovering alcoholic with nearly 16 years of sobriety I wasn't going to take any chances.

As it turned out I took my last pill at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday (yesterday). I had to decide whether or not to run that evening with TFK at 6:45. I didn't think running while medicated would be a problem, I was worried that my jaw might not be fully healed and all the shaking and jostling of running might cause the wounds to open anew. But I figured since it had been 96 hours since the surgery and I got a clean bill of health at a checkup from the surgeons on Monday morning that everything would be ok. I also knew that on Tuesdays we ran on the softer surface of the bridal path, where the horses run, which would also cause less bouncing and impact on the jaw. I also resolved to run with people in slower pace groups which would also help matters. So I figured I had a good plan on my hands, and off to Central Park I went!

I ran with a girl on my team who is doing her first marathon, Diana, and we ran the first circuit nice and slow, and I felt no pain. The second time around, when we got to the "race" pace portion of the workout, she started speeding up, and I started speeding up, which I think all got started when some other people from our team passed us. At the end she pulled up lame and actually had to leave the practice early and head home. She told me later that she was feeling fine, which was a relief. At the time I was shaken up for a bit, but then our buddy Mr. Vicodin reminded me that things were going to be ok, so after giving her $20 for cab fare so she wouldn't have to do any walking to get home, I ran off to find some more people to run with.

I joined the 9:00 pace people, who are closer to my speed, and ran with them for a bit, before speading up and catching (and passing) some of the members of my 8:00 pace group. So the running was working out ok, and even after the drugs wore off I didn't have any extra pain in my jaw.

This morning I was exhausted, even though I went to bed at a pretty reasonable hour, before midnight. I could barely keep my eyes open and contemplated just leaving work to go home and go back to bed. I'm not sure if this relates in part to getting off the medication (I had 10 or 11 pills from Friday night to 4:30 on Tuesday, surely it couldn't be that addictive?) Or maybe it was just a function of doing all that exercise in a still weakened condition.

Well I am feeling better now, I had a couple of Tylenol 8 hour pills this morning which are doing their job, so thankfully I am done with the hydrocodone and don't have to worry about getting hooked. I often wonder why a guy with so much going for him like Elvis or Matthew Perry would get involved with pills, but with the Vicodin, at least they do tend to alter your consciousness in a pretty interesting way. I found this hard to believe, but I read online that the Friends star was taking over 30 pills a day. Pretty shocking, and I imagine Elvis must have been doing something equally horrifying if not worse in the late stages of his life. Well anyway, I'm glad the pain is over and I don't have to worry about going down the road Elvis went down, at least for today. Have a great night and long live The King!