Pity Party du Jour

I posted most of this on Facebook, yesterday, but I didn’t get much sympathy.  I’m having one of those days.  You know the kind… if it can go wrong, it will?  I guess I should say that I’m having one of those weekends, because it started on Thursday night.

First, after going so long without a period that I took a pregnancy test to make sure, I am having my second period for the month of October.  If it was just the period, I could live with it.  But I also have a urinary tract infection, and haven’t been feeling well enough to get much housework done… like laundry.

That means that I have no clean clothes.  Specifically, I have only one pair of clean underwear.  I had planned to take a shower, yesterday, and put on the clean undies and then do laundry.

But for the bajillionth time since we moved into this pretty little housing community, our plumbing is backed up.  You may recall that in July, someone came out and ripped up our lawn to replace a pipe that was supposedly the cause of the whole problem.  So the downstairs toilet won’t flush.  When I try to plunge it, sewage comes up in the bathroom sink.  We have two bathrooms upstairs, but being disabled, it makes it hard to get up and down the stairs whenever I want.

Let me recap: I am having a period.  I have a urinary tract infection.  The underwear I’m currently wearing look like a cow has been slaughtered in them, because pre-menopause makes you bleed crazy.  I can’t use my downstairs toilet.  I can’t do laundry, and I’m afraid to use the shower, because if Drew flushes upstairs, I can hear bubbles in the downstairs toilet.

And the other thing:  I think the so-called “Opioid Crisis” is a crock. I know that doctors have over-prescribed them, and that people have gotten addicted.

But the way doctors are treating people with legitimate pain is infuriating. Every time Drew is due for a refill, we practically have to wrestle for it. There is an insurance issue, or a pharmacist who is nervous about genuinely treating his pain.

He has done everything they have asked of him. He submits to drug testing multiple times per month. He’s been given a DNA test, which indicated to his doctors that his body metabolizes the medication faster than most. So what might last six hours for me, would only last four for him. There is no reason to assume that he is doing anything with those meds than treating his own pain. It makes me so angry.

And the reason i think it’s a crock? Their solution is “synthetic” opioids. They are medications that do not work as well, but cost significantly more than the product derived from a plant.

No one is going to convince me that an industry that will let people die because they can’t afford a medication (insulin) that they did not have to develop, suddenly care about people dying from taking too much. Big Pharma and morally bankrupt doctors receiving kickbacks are responsible for the “crisis,” because they could make money off of it. How much more will they be able to make with their absurdly expensive synthetics, and the pocket-politicians severely restricting the prescription of the cheap stuff?

So while I’m battling with all of my issues, the love of my life is upstairs, attempting to sleep until Tuesday, when his next prescription is ready.  It is against my faith to hate people, but it is really hard for me to not hate people who take suffering so lightly.