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Not only did I NOT get much done today, I never really intended to from the get go. I've been feeling my body all day to see if the pain comes back due to my stopping the prescription drugs. Well, not all of them. I still take the hydroxychloroquine sulfate once a day. I still take lots of pills though.
Many of the pills/capsules are supplements. I've been a supplement freak for a long ti-me. Presently, I'm taking 400 mg of alpha lipoic acid. 600 mg of Acetyl L-Carnitine, One gram of calcium. 500 mg of magnesium oxide. A gram of Milk Thistle in a capsule. One selenium 250 mcg tablet. Usually at least one or two 600 mg caplets of ibuprofen.
I take two humongus horse pills of fish oil every day, if I remember. An assortment of vitamins including one mg of B-12 that's way over the top. I've been taking the sublingual 500 mcg tabs and went crazy with my last replenishing purchase and bought 2500 mcg tabs instead. They are the sublingual type though. Sorta sweet tasting.
There are days when I feel like my only real reason for living is to take pills. The most recent prescribed drugs were very powerful, and lowered my immune system to ridiculous depths that exposed me to runaway infections that would literally eat me alive. I don't know if I can do any better at dealing with rheumatoid arthritis than the trained professionals can, but at least I can choose not to murder myself to deal with the pain.
I'm not hard and fast with such an attitude. I know when to cave to pain. I know about when I'll cave to pain. Your milage may vary. I'm acquainted with some ideas about whether human beings can remember actual pain or just the situation or the set and setting in which pain occurred. I don't think I remember pain. Well, until it returns for real, and then, in that moment, I realize we have more than a nodding acquaintance.
Call me crazy... again... but, I'm thinking about a life of acceptance rather than fighting a fight I can't win using the U.S. medical system. They admit they don't have a cure. I don't either. My lower legs broke out in sores that didn't heal until I stopped taking the prescribed drugs that was basically prescribed for dealing with pain.
I've been lying about the pain to the doctors without a real good reason except that I've been taught to give them a number that will result in me getting a prescription somebody else wanted for recreational purposes. I know enough now about the disease I'm dealing with to realize that catering to that kind of friendship costs more than it's worth. At this juncture it's being truthful with myself that counts.
Some of these supplements, in particular one I didn't mention, N-Acetyl Cysteine, are written about to be good for the eyesight as a mentionable side-effect. Its supposedly good for a lotta other things like schizophrenia and/or mental states that have a lot of mood swing to them. Manic-depressives. Bipolar.
It also gets used intravenously to help people poisoned by Tylenol-3. There's more. It's supposed to be one of the only across-the-counter products that actually help deal with hangovers.
There's a lotta hype associated with biased sites that offer up the drugs they review for sale, but some of it comes from respectable sources like research university hospitals. True, they cop to the same crap about such OTC products not having enough blind tests for across-the-board approval by the FDA, but they sorta mention that some of the claims seem not to be exactly fraudulent.
Perhaps they intend to condemn it by faint praise, but when they suggest combining it with the Alpha Lipoic Acid and Acetyl L-Carnitine it sure seems like they really like this stuff. It's probably too easy to manufacture to go to the trouble of seeking FDA approval.
Milkweed Thistle? It's been used for liver problems for thousands of years. I ran a web search on it. Even modern medicine men believe it still helps as an aid for detoxing the liver. Who couldn't do with a little liver detoxification in these days of processed foods?
All the prescribed drugs I took for RA worked through the liver, and most of their side-effects are related somehow to the liver in a not-good way. It's just not a good business to destroy one's liver in order not to destroy one's bone joints.
Granted, it's not a wonderful either/or situation, but destroy my liver to avoid horrible, devastating pain? Maybe I'll go senile soon and won't remember why I'm pissed off the best the medicos can do is to risk killing me in order to save me. I know. I know. I'm running as fast as I can.
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
