Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Itchy Blood Leg Pouring

A GYNORMOUS BABY ITCHY came trotting past in the street earlier. He was so furry and sweet I wanted to pick him up and squeeze him... no! I just remembered "he" is a "she". Yes! Baby Itchy is an all-scrabbling pink petalled-eared Big Baby GIRL! She will never father baby robbies for me. Whatever "bits" I presumed to have seen previously can only have been leftover umbilical cord.. or visions of my mind's own invention (what's new?). Itchy looks just like a sand-coloured pompom from a wooly hat crossed with a furry baby gremlin with miniaturized pink rose petals as ears. You can see the light through them. They are awfully cute.

Seeing as people said they DON'T mind my lurid drug tales, let me tell you about my lumpy blotch-ridden legs. I've an abscess on the left hand side. When the pus-bag's filled up the whole gruesome apparition's relatively numb. It even goes slightly itchy, probably from dead skin, rubbing against dead pus. I can push the pus from side to side like leg egg yolk. And I've resisted all temptations to slice open and squeeeeze as I don't want the staph (or whatever it's called) grossing all over the place.

And these veins that are going down so badly I'm reduced to pushing half of 1ml insulin syringes into these remaining broken threads and hoping that they'll bare up to the onslaught. The blood in the legs is famously slow. For example, standing still for long periods results in a pooling of blood in the lower legs. That's why the statuesque bearskinned soldier e.g. at Windsor Castle is apt to faint if he doesn't flex his toes frequently enough on guard duty. That's why when the WWII PoWs in the Burmese jungle got tropical ulcers they afflicted more often than not the legs. The blood simply does not flow quickly enough to rid them of all toxins. That's why the drug service advise against IV injecting in the legs, labelling it a "high risk" occupation. Of course, I'd already made a frequent habit of this activity by the time I received this advice. And I had precious few alternative "sites" to prong with my trusty needles by then anyhow...

One dusty morning as I woke up in the squat I used to reside in thankfully alone (what a luxury to be away from all other druggies!) and being as my arms, after years of hammering, appeared not to be playing ball that morning, I found a welcoming raised vein in my foot. So literally a minute after waking and without so much as stretching my legs I pushed the entire acidified brown "hit" into it and thought no better of it until a couple of minutes later rather than experiencing a pleasant dizzying sensation a nasty burning pain took to stabbing me in the ankle which on inspection had gone bright red with a gross archepelago of raised white bumps emanating all around. i tried running about to get things moving but it was too late. The entire hit had burned its way into the tissues of my ankle, effectively turning an IV "hit" into a "skin pop".

I nowadays have learnt to point my feet at the ceiling after such procedures, thereby "pouring" the drugs quite literally down my legs and closer to my heart. Once they do reach there, they are pumped quite vigorously to the brain through the far more effective arterial system. (Arteries have a pulse (and should never be injected into for they take blood away from the heart to the body's extremities) veins have no pulse and their blood is darker, deoxygenated.)

And there goes the anatomy lecture of the day. What relevance that really has to anything or anyone I've no idea but there you go.

I found a Sarah Vaughan CD in the Post Office bargain rack this afternoon and hence her two starring videos:
#2 Send in the Clowns
#3 Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Plus #1 by Amy Winehouse, who's always credited Sarah Vaughan a major influence on her vocal style.
#1 Love is a Losing Game (Mercury Awards 2007 live performance).

TV Licensing are after us as per usual. More of their presumptuously threatening epistles come pouring daily through our front door:

"Extra Enforcement Visits are underway... shceduled to... your address... any day now... you can still cancel your visit," - woo! - and, "if you do not need a TV Licence, please call blah;... a TV Licence currently costs £135.50 for colour and £45.50 for black and white.

Even if I do write and tell them (truthfully) that I don't need a Licence they STILL insist on visiting - so what's the point in writing?

11 comments:

  1. It's very educational reading your blog, gleds. It's hard for me a non-drug-addict (almost) to comprehend how totally life-sapping a habit is. Saying you injected as soon as you woke, hardly knowing what you were doing, is very revealing. How desperate a situation. Keep battling, lovely boy.

    In our circuit training class, our trainer always makes sure we slow down slowly or get up slowly to avoid all the blood staying in our feet and us making a rapid and unwished-for return to the floor.

    Our church (where I work) used to have a TV licence but we don't use the tv any more for watching television, but try convincing the authorities of that. We keep sending back the slips saying so but they keep on asking.

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  2. TV Licensing are modern day fascists!

    It's right what you say about feet! As I wrote I really didn't appreciate the feet/blood circulation issue until I did that stupid injection 1st thing that morning

    i often forget how life-sapping the habit is... that's why i want to stop so life can come back!

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  3. Wow. yes, I never shot up... Michael, who did, I've always noticed, feels cold..like the circulation in his skin isnt all there. I learned recently that he shoots up his methadone intermuscularly.. I was disappointed to find this out. Agg.... I dont know why. Why should we be disappointed by other users?I am just so tired of hearing about the ways he doesnt take care of himself... wears his fake leg for ten hours running around and then is surprised when he has an infection.. how many times can I tell him to be disciplined, one minute, then two miutes, wear the leg, then increase, ect... And the same this morning when I spent hours working out these really delicately passages about Ruby and then they got deleted because i unplugged the computer instead of shutting it down.

    i wrote a new short story though.. i hope you come leave comments..i'm really looking for feedback in this particular one. If you can, please tell people to stop by if you can..I want to re-write it but I'm not sure where to start.

    hope you are well.. how do you know this baby?why does liz say it is desperate?

    how often are you using methadone vs shooting up

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  4. link them here.. if you can..please.thank you
    very much if you do.

    http://nostoppingplace.blogspot.com/
    2007/09/
    translation-from-one-language-to.html

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  5. Hi there Gledwood, thanks for posting on my blog. I have come here as suggested by yourself and am a little bemused.

    First of all I need to get my head around your blog(s)and try to decide what is going on. Not being mean just need to fathom out what is going on and what you are trying to say if anything.

    I can't relate to your drugs habit although I have dabbled in a fashion and in comparison to your habit I would be like the hair on a large dogs back amongst all the other other hairs. In other words lost like a needle in a haystack.

    I find you very open and I think honest but can you explain if you are proud or revel in your state or have I not read enough and you would like to get off the train and be an onlooker not a passenger.

    Does this make sense, let me know, after all I have been on a few vodkas tonight and some beer and some malibu, I hope it's not addictive.

    Bye for now

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  6. TV license? We don't need no stinking TV license. And will someone please tell the BBC to stop sending shows to the States. We have enough crappy television here already. Now Telemundo. That can stay.

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  7. You really need to get that abscess seen to Gleds; but I guess you know that. What will happen to your Hamsters if you end up with bloodpoisoning or worse!!!!
    Rx

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  8. i switch blogspot, visit if u like.http://wasthatyourreflection.blogspot.com/

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  9. Liz hey I thought i had replied to this FAR earlier typical me not to...
    saying you injected as soon as you woke, hardly knowing what you were doing is very revealing...
    yep i spose it reveals just how much of an entrenched habit it is...

    Ivy the baby is my smallest roborovski hamster... the only one of the three i bought that live together that is tame and will walk on my hand etc

    Oh Liz I DID reply to you ... see i thought i had ... what a blur i live in

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  10. skinpopping methadone... surely that is very bad and likely to lead to abscess... all that sugary gloop!

    unless it is proper methadone amps? there used to be ones specified 50mg methadone in 1ml water that you could get from private doctors they were very popular with longterm addicts ... the govt didn't like them v much though!!

    Peter: anything can be addictive, even sugar in tea! I think lots of people have the same reaction to my blog as you though they just don't tell me!

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  11. Molson: what are these BBC progs that are invading you?? And what is Telemundo??

    Ruth I would kill myself if the hamster got an abscess off me....
    It is going down now so I don't think I will have to get antibiotics... I've been very lucky like that with abscesses

    Anonymous: I had a look, can't remember if I left a comment though, BC I've never been there b4 I didn't know who you were talking about!

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