Don't you know I have the INTERNET?

Last Friday I saw my gastro.

We have a very formal relationship. I come in and sign my name at the sliding window, write out a check for my copay, page through a couple magazines, and then he summons me to the last office on the left. His office is very cold and clean, and it smells like freon even in the winter. He sits down behind his monstrous bare desk, which takes up half the room, and thumbs through a single manila folder with my name on it. On the window ledge there is a pop-out rubber model of a liver squashed atop a pile of intestines. A medication brand name is painted in pink across the liver. Otherwise, the ledge is bare.

This is good, I tell myself. This means he's probably not prone to leaving instruments inside patients. Which wouldn't matter since he won't be operating on me any time soon as he is not a surgeon. He turns some blank pages and looks up at me. He never smiles. If I make a joke, he pulls the non-laugher trick from Seinfeld. Oh. That's funny.

"So how are you feeling?"

I explain the sedated feeling I've been having for...well, for a while now.

"Hmm. I've never heard of that as a side effect." He steeples his fingers and stares off behind me. "Well. You could always drink a lot of caffeine. Coffee, Mountain Dew."

I tell him that once drunk, coffee spends a nanosecond inside me before bolting, and that I'm trying to stay away from soda as it is soda.

He writes me a new Imuran prescription, I go to the pharmacy downtown and spend fifteen minutes finding necessaries such as flip flops and Yuengling. I drive home and rip open the prescription bag and read the side effects blurb:

All I need is Google! That's all I need!*

(Granted, it is a ways down the page, under What side effects may I notice from receiving azathioprine (imuran)? Side effects that you should report to your prescriber or health care professional as soon as possible. Yep, that's it: unusual tiredness or weakness.)

On the positive side, he was encouraging about my idea to gradually lower the dosage of Imuran from 150 to 125, whereas my previous NP pretty much bitch-slapped the thought away.


*Okay, so as the Eckerd link is no longer happy, I've posted a new one.

Side Effects Vacation

I've been feeling extremely tired lately. Part of me blames the increased sunlight, while other, snarkier parts cough and point to the nightly congregation of parking lot yappers our apartment complex attracts. Finals are wrapping up, so kids are partying. But ultimately I'm pretty sure the culprit is the Imuran.

I read other UCers' medication testimonials and no one seems to be on more than fifty milligrams of the stuff, while my doctor started me on 125 and moved up to 150. The sleepiness would bother me more if I could remember when the hell I last had energy (as I am by inclination a proponent of La-Z-Boys and ice cream comas), probably in high school when I was still actively interested in batting tennis balls. I was under the impression that higher levels of Imuran fuss with liver function and pre-cancerous thingums.

Speaking of pre-cancerous thingums, A. and I have plans to drive down to the city this weekend. I am rehearsing my mouth-cancer images for after the first margarita and the scratchy smell of matches. However, my reasoning breaks down right about then:

A Typical Progression as the Second Pitcher of Belchfire Margaritas Sloshes onto the Table

1. This margarita has more alcohol than my whole apartment complex
2. Alcohol is bad for the liver - oh, hey, chips
3. Liver, liver, liver...paste? Bah, rich bitch food
4. Liver function! My liver is rotting. I should probably finish this anyway. There are dry drunks on the street, for godssakes
5. Perhaps a cigarette will counteract liver damage?
   
6. No. Mouth cancer!
   
7. Yes.
8. No. Mouth!
   
9. As long as it's a Dunhill. Because they're expensive. Might be some pharmaceutical shit in there.

By this point, any unusual bleeding or bruising will not be noticed. Also, sleep will be foregone, so of course I'll be sleepy. Plus our friends live next door to a restaurant that plays top fortyish dance stuff at eight a.m. Side effects will become reality!

I would like to take an actual medication vacation someday soon. As this blog entry shows, it is getting awfully hard to concentrate...