Posted by pinksharkmark (196.3.74.235) on June 15, 2000 at 14:09:50:
In Reply to: Well Well ....well? posted by Carl D on June 15, 2000 at 08:28:24:
Carl, you are right on about the sleep deprivation making you nuts.
Probably the worst two weeks of my life was in the fall of 1989. I managed to get third-degree burns over part of my left upper body through an act of idiocy I will not detail. Some of the burns got infected.
The pain was enormous, and constant. The only way I could kill the pain enough to get any sleep at all was to swallow enough paregoric (tincture of opium, readily available here in the Dominican Republic) to knock myself out for half an hour or so. After a week of virtually no sleep and MAJOR constipation from the paregoric, a cluster cycle started, and I had NOTHING on hand to combat it with.
It took another few days to get my parents to Fedex in a supply of Fiorinal C... Imitrex didn't exist in those days, as you all know, and Fiorinal wasn't available on the island... still isn't, as far as I know.
Anyway, by the time the infection cleared up enough to allow me to sleep, I was loopy as hell... MAJOR emotional swings, crying jags, babbbling like a loon.
Even though the pain from the clusters was bad, and the pain from the infected burns was bad, the worst part of the ordeal by far was the sleep deprivation. I understand perfectly why some of your posts read the way they do. Hell, in my condition back then I doubt if I could have strung together a series of words that made even a fraction as much sense as yours.
By the way... I know that they say clusters are the worst pain known to man... but I am here to tell you that infected third-degree burns run a pretty close second.
I'm very glad that you seem to be climbing out of this cycle from hell. I keep my fingers crossed for you, sir.
pinky