Sep. 23: And now I need more Xanax

Warning: I’m going to complain about my back pain again.

I saw my doctor again after he did some chiropractic adjustments a couple weeks ago and said adjustments helped not even a little tiny bit. He told me to see my rheumatologist about my back, because he’s “certain” (his word) that my back trouble has something to do with my connective tissue problems. (‘Member, I have that weird not-quite-lupus, not-quite-rheumatoid-arthritis thing.)

I’m “certain” (my word) that my rheumatologist will not have the answer. I’m quite certain, in fact, that my back pain is from an injury, and has little or nothing to do with my connective tissue disease. However, I’ll see my rheumatologist because he’s not going to throw up his hands and push me off to someone else like my primary care physician seems to have been happy to do. My rheumatologist is a good guy and will refer me to specialists, if necessary, until this pain is treated. He also knows that while my connective tissue problems may be contributing to the back pain, they are not necessarily the cause.

Dr. Good Guy’s first available appointment, I found out this morning, is in November. Grrr.

I’ve been living with this pain for much of the year now, but in the last three months it’s gotten progressively worse. And in the last week it’s gone from being unbearable only when lying down to being nearly unbearable at all times.

My smile, if you’ve seen one on me? Fakeity fake fake fake.

While I’m on the subject of medical frustrations and general pissed-off-ed-ness, can I tell you how much I hate mail-order pharmacies? I swear, they go out of their way to make their service as inconvenient as possible. You mean I have to physically MAIL written prescriptions? (Is that required for anything else these days? I don’t think so.) I’m pretty sure when they receive these snail-mailed written prescriptions that they sit on them (along with their thumbs) for days before processing them. I would wonder if they played computer games all day, but these companies are obviously run by abacus, not computers. And when they finally ship orders, they send them by tortoises. In rowboats. “Oh, these are going from New Jersey to Oregon, so the fastest way is through the Panama Canal.” Of course, our prescription insurance coverage—yes, the one provided by the friggin’ hospital where we work!—won’t let us fill orders at local pharmacies so we are left pissed off AND unmedicated. Grrr again.

It would be wise for me to stop blogging now. I don’t think y’all need to dirty up your thoughts with the things I am so very tempted to write, unless you have some good drugs that can make you wipe the filth away from your brain afterward, in which case can I be your very best friend?