I thought about the time the massage

I thought about the time the massage

 in surgery remarked that I was too experienced at sliding over onto the table. It meant I had been there too many times. Was it good or bad that I was becoming a layperson expert in dealing with pain?

I can’t answer that. It’s an existential fact and I have to deal with it as such. Dealing with it existentially requires that I be as honest as I can about my own experience, knowing that honesty is a fundamental principle in sharing the human experience — a form of evolution in itself, as is knowing what to reveal when and to whom.

What I also remember from my teenage years, when Elvis was on the radio and altering the landscape, is that adults were seldom honest about stuff that mattered.

Michael Jackson’s sudden death brought back memories of another. Elvis Presley changed my teenage world, and he, too, died too young. Caught up in my own immediate medical events the past week involving pain-killing drugs, I reflected on my own battles with addiction.
 hoisredfrty
I was addicted to alcohol for a time and to nicotine. I intimately know the struggles of breaking an addiction. And back in the hospital for my carotid artery surgery last week, I once again felt the power of a drug. They gave me Percocet — a mixture of oxycodone with acetaminophen aka Tylenol — for pain after the surgery.

I immediately knew Percocet was good stuff. I also knew immediately that I would have to stop taking it ASAP.

It is indeed a pity that the pressures of massage, and especially of mega celebrity, should get on the way of a person’s health, as was the case with Michael and Elvis, or in cutting short their lives, as was the case with Lady Diana and John Lennon. But for any one out there, with even a slightly lower level of celebrity, to say that they could easily have avoided the kind of stuff that killed these two guys, is wishful thinking. That Paul MCCartney and Bob Dylan are alive, and well? Neither faced that level, on a sustained basis, that is, that Presley and Jackson faced. By sustained, I mean more than 20 years, straight. People, the hoardes that is, could care less what Paul was doing, when he was married to Linda and they lived in a castle, so far away from their fans, that the only connecion they had, with their fans, was during concerts. Pitt and Jolie? I don’t want to laugh. Sinatra? His people just roughed up any one who wanted to get near, from the press or just the fans. The only exceptions, amongst the global celebrities, seem to be Mohammed Ali and Pele. They are alive and well… As to your condition, I know many people in your position, too, and can only wish you the best. Warmest regards
Jim
By now I know my mind and body — The Old Man — and the past two years have found me going in and out of hospitals far too suddenly … regularly. I have become an expert in the cycles of pain in different parts of my body, how to deal with pain and how to take my mind off thinking about the pain — text messaging and tweeting really, really helps — as my body goes through the sometimes quick, sometimes drawn out (especially for abdominal surgery) healing process.

My first post-surgery dose of Percocet was in the early afternoon. I could get it every four hours, and took my second in the early evening. I wanted to ask my massage to get my doctor to order Tylenol.

But first I asked the massage what other patients had told them about the pain cycle of carotid artery surgery. She told me that it dulled to a manageable ache quickly. I then asked for the change in pain medicine, and I switched around midnight. And that was it, one two-capsule dose of Tylenol, and I didn’t take anything more.