WHAT? UH? O! Whatever: I have to remember this vital appointment is tomorrow morning. Doesn't feel that close... On close and distant and reflexion I've realized the guy I saw yesterday, whatever class of doctor he was, basically did not know precisely what was wrong with me or why it was blistering (which is unusual) or what was going on. So I am particularly thankful for tomorrow's consultation with a Consultant Dermatologist.Illustrated is Google images reply to "necrotic" that is NOT the appearance I conjured or the guy seemed to be saying yesterday. From my experience necrotized flesh tends to look white, dead. It's open, like an open sore and may be weepy or wet but isn't pussy to any great degree. It looks and more to the point smells like what it is: dead flesh. My exhousemate had what he claimed to be a shotgun wound on his leg the third time he told me. The first time: it was an injecting "miss" ~ and that's precisely what I thought it was... The other person I knew with "necrosis" or chronic ulceration was a guy who'd already lost one leg (OK: technically half of one) he was a beggar on crutches... I remember walking past him one day and nearly puking... he smelled so bad. The worst smell ~ no exaggeration ~ I have ever smelt in my life. I've never smelt a dead body but would infer that they smell the same. Necrotic number one actually volunteered to inject me (he was a raving crackhead who'd lost his own veins, so he said through injecting speed)... something in his cavaleer attitude made me draw back... when two of the local prostitutes stayed in his room for a few weeks (and he would have me believe they'd left him "exhausted" through their indomitable bixexual lesbian threesome "services" they moaningly "bestowed on him"... as if! :~you haven't seen the guy) I asked one of the girls whether he had injected her (yes) and whether he butchered her (yes) so my instincts as per normal were bang on. In fact nearly everyone who I've let near me has butchered me up: missed, blown the vein by pushing in too quickly, partially missed (because when skin is rimpled up and the needle fully in-vein, the pressure of skin may eventually lapse, pushing the needle out, even though the needle hasn't moved a nanometre) and so on and so on. So whatever these problems of mine are caused by, bad injection technique is not it. As the man said yesterday it is bad (more to the point heavily "stamped on" ("cut") drugs that cause the trouble as well as the low-grade "number three" brown heroin: it never has been meant for injection. It's more popular with dealers than the higher grade "number four" white because it can be "smoked" (off of tinfoil: through a rolled up tinfoil tube:~ the socalled "chasing (the "dragon": though I've never in my life heard an actual user say "chasing the dragon": that is a press and media phrase...) Of course a smokeable drug is more saleable than one effective by snorting or injection only (heroin smoking isn't quite like smoking crack: unlike crack which vapourizes all at once the moment a flame touches anywhere near it ~ allowing considerable doses to flow straight to the brainbox; heroin (which also vapourizes rather than "burns") takes ages to "chase" along tinfoil line after line after line... I only used to smoke at the very beginning of my habit... then I realized "skinpopping" that is injecting subcut (subcutaneously) or IM (intramuscularly) had a double-strength effect and took about as much time (about ten minutes) as my then-tiny smoking habit to affect body and brains...
I only STARTED to inject myself because I was by this stage in a relationship with a 10-year junkie who had left works, citric acid (for breaking down the crappy brown heroin), swabs... all I needed to make up a hit. And because when I had been hit up before the junkies doing it had almost perversely made me cook up my own gear: I had no problems judging how much water/heat/citric/timing were required (well it's hardly rocket science)... anyway...
... so I find myself (many years ago) alone: fully-made-up "hit" in hand. I made some half-hearted attempts to plunge it into the crook of my arm but was basically too scared to hit up intravenously... and so I took up injecting but by skinpopping.
Skinpopping compares to IV injection as trickling warm water into a bath over ten minutes or so... over plunging straight from a cold pool into hot at an Icelandic sauna... skinpopping (at the time this meant an SC/subcut/subcutaneous injection which means pronging the needle just under the skin at a 45 degree angle...) with acidified brown heroin what happens is that within about five minutes (if not straight away: it is dreadfully low quality gear ~ almost as bad as that West Coast American Mexican crap)... a welt starts to appear: like a giant mosquito bite... walking around will move the drug faster through the system... within ten minutes I felt like I was fully immersed in a hot bath; totally relaxed... and free enough to contemplate what a "terrible habit I had and how I needed so desperately to come off"... in the one compelling heroin memoir I have read the author states the same point in different words:
I was never so determined to get clean as when I was dirty...
If this sounds counterintuitive or contradictory then bear this in mind: in withdrawal ALL ANYONE: that is YOU or ME will think about is HEROIN: how to get it. As quickly as possible. Into the body. To stop feeling this bad.
BTW: the above procedure only worked for me with pracically NO tolerance... at my very worst I could take heroin even in quite big amounts and literally feel next to NOTHING... an utterly despairing predicament...
Of course NOBODY in withdrawal will want to get clean... if this were so the AVERAGE length of a heroin habit would not be 14 years! No! You only WANT to get clean (at least anywhere but the very end of a habit) once you are HIGH... and have the luxury of jazzing about in a mindwandering space where you can judge life rosetintedly from afar "my problem is so bad... I really must stop. I HAVE to stop... tomorrow..." (cannot stop now you are stoked up and high!)
The IV injection takes about 30 seconds to come on (unless administered ultra-slowly into an exceedingly narrow vein); peaks in about two minutes... within 6 minutes (so I hear) the heroin has transferred into morpine... but not before the superior (and more addictive) heroin buzz has (in the not over-tolerant individual) suffused body and brain...
Which: yes. Around and about and by the houses, I hope has told any miscomprehenders or doubters or people who just don't get it out there precisely what this habit is ABOUT...
PS Following my own intuitions I googled "barbiturates" and "blister" and, eg here, found out that... seemingly (among the near-impenetrable medicinal language...) barbiturate injection CAN cause skin-blistering... which is why I wanted to get treated by a specialist and not someone who did lots of straw clutching... you want to know how I KNOW he was clutching at straws: he pointed out a bit of "inflamed" (just buised) vein and said "knowledgeably" "this might turn into phlebitis" (which is inflamation OF the vein itself... I've already HAD this: it was like a red hot poker stiking up the side of my thigh... and which, all in all along with his "not infected" (then why as well as feeling literally like a hot oil burn at worst of times did it the night before my hospital appearance go red hot and raging with heat?)... I really think this guy didn't know what the hell was going down and just spouted his reflex "scare the junkie" with not-spot on approximations talk... THIS talk is what leads junkies NOT to believe doctors (because they are being lied to: or the facts are surmised rather than 100% surely KNOWN)... likewise doctors don't believe junkies (specially when drugs come into the equation: "I'm in agony dr!"/etc... because junkies, being so used to being fobbed off and dismissed ~ or if given medication, under-prescribed to ~ become accustomed to exaggerating or lying merely to get the meds they genuinely feel they need.
Valium is for anxiety. Zopiclone is for sleep. Morphine and diamorphine are for severe pain. No dr, far as I'm concerned has any reason to withold any of these just because someone is an addict... when to most old ladies the same drugs are dished out like sweets!!
***
RIGHT: I've found some abscess pus youtubes... only nothing as hardcore as I was hoping for... and the bestlooking one some twat had categorized as "login/adults only" how prissy can you get??
Really I was hoping for some general anaesthesia ~ arse-scooping brown fulminating bloody pus multilitre pusbags but only got these... the first one (on some poor guy's back: my video of the day) is the best how it swooshes out! Hold your breath, prepare not to puke and have a beautiful pus-indulgence (ugh what a phrase) everyone!
1. Draining a Massive Abscess (on the back)...
2. Brotherly Love: Lancing a Boil...
3. Infected Abscess Removal
4. Burst My Abscess (in the mouth)...
12 comments:
First of all, just watched that cat/puppet video and was completely baffled.
And secondly, the necrotic picture/story nearly had me vomiting. Good luck w/ the doctor!
Oh that cat I was wondering what was wondering what was WRONG with the mog (was it on mogaDON?)// etc... yeah... that thumb: grotesque... makes me wanna kind of gnaw on it, though, y'know? have a look at my beautiful abscess vids... ;->...
That was some post, talk about real...your descriptions are really interesting..despite having nursed I cant bring myself to watch the videos, maybe down to too many years of watching spotty teenagers twist and contort their faces to burst the latest offending blot on their face..
My youngest daughter was diagnosed with nectorising entro-colitis as a baby and had to be nursed in special care for some weeks..still not sure if this was the flesh eating bug or something different, anyways she is a hale and hearty 22year old now and thats all that matters.
Keep taking the pills as they say. All the best Auds
God, addiction sounds like so much work. I am too lazy for it, nor would I be able to place so much attention on one aspect of existence, then again I have no frame of reference for what you are going through.
Anyhow, just wanted to thank you for almost causing me to throw up in my office. Hope you are able to get some help. Take care.
Audrey: The abscess stuff is pretty gross I was on an abscess roll when I posted it up... that thumb if it were mine I don't think I could stop picking the black bits off ... how gross
Eileen: I don't know why this is but I've seen it time and time again that people who have severe addictions change the relationship to the body so that blood/pus/etc doesn't seem nearly so disgusting... also a kind of reverse-hypochondria can come on where no-one wants to get hospital treatment
EEEWWWW I'm getting off your abscess roll!
I think you should channel your inner hamster.
definition of "God Speed": good fortune; success (used as a wish to a person starting on a journey, a new venture, etc.)
I simply meant plain 'ol good luck with it!
Anonymous: see how contrary you are: having to condescend to nice things then the minute a bit of pus goes sprayin' vomit you go!!
TutTut: my inner hamster is in its burrow: it is 2.46pm
Mfiler: o yeah... i never knew quite what that meant ... didn't the president say it to the nasa rocket staff..?/etc
;->...
HHAHHAAAA I AM an artist!
;->...
Hi Gledwood...
I love the way you write - it really 'brings me back' - I remember having to go to the stupid ER practically every other month because in LA I only had access to the crummy Mexican tar crap and I was ALWAYS getting cellulitis - I lost count as to how many times I've had it. I think because my immune system is so messed up (HepC) I am very susceptible to it. I've even gotten it AFTER I'd been clean for a couple of years - from a piercing! I must say, I don't miss that at all. I remember having an abscess in my finger that got swollen like a sausage - the doctor lanced it and all this green pus oozed out and it SMELLED SO BAD I almost puked.
Eileen wrote that "addiction sounds like so much work" - isn't that the truth! I think I worked harder as a junkie than I ever have in all my life. I really pray that one day you will be able to stop for good. It makes me tired just thinking about it! Lol.
Anyway, I love your hamster pics!
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