Lost Time and Elusive Memories

...and then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun.

Having something stolen from you is never a good feeling. You feel violated and often scramble trying to replace what was lost. What does it look like when more than ten years of your life is what was robbed from you?

I was demonstrating a chest press machine to a client while working as a GM and personal trainer at a gym I managed over two decades ago when I injured myself. I couldn’t move at all and had to be carried out to the car in the sitting position I was in at the time of injury. I’d first gone to the emergency room where basic X-rays were taken, but I received a pretty general diagnosis: damage to my lumbar discs. With little to work with, I made an appointment to see a chiropractor and one to see a spinal surgeon. I was able to get an appointment with the chiropractor much sooner than with the surgeon, so I decided to seek treatment there first.

After a few weeks of the chiropractor all but killing me with his “adjustments” and me leaving in tears each week, he suggested physical and aqua therapy. Physical therapy never seemed to help and yielded no pain relief, quite the opposite. Aqua therapy seemed pointless for the same reason. While it wasn’t nearly as painful as the physical therapy and “adjustments” at the chiropractor, I never saw any difference with the aqua therapy. It was interesting to enter the pool twice a week in my two-piece bikini while I was surrounded by women who were 70 years old and up attempting to maintain what bone density their aging bodies had left them with. The contrast couldn’t be ignored and I felt not only extremely out of place, but a bit of hopelessness and dread began to slip in, growing with each visit.

After several months of rotating between physical and aqua therapy, the appointment with the surgeon finally opened up. He looked over my X-rays and ordered an MRI. The results weren’t good. Four fractured discs (L3-S1) and advanced degenerative disc disease, which answered at least a few questions I’d had over the years regarding my extreme back pain and lack of flexibility after a certain age. I’d been dealing with back pain since middle school and had trouble bending at the waist but chalked it up to growing pains associated with puberty and never pursued any medical advice. Not that my family could have afforded to take me to be seen anywhere, to begin with. Growing up there were long stints of time where my father would be in between jobs and insurance was far out of reach.

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So what is degenerative disc disease (DDD)? It’s a chronic condition where the discs within the spine continually deteriorate over time. This can cause numbness, stiffness, and pain, and is incurable. DDD isn’t a disease, but rather a condition where once a disc has been damaged it begins to leak the fluid within the nucleus pulposus causing pain. Without the ability to repair itself, this starts a downward spiral affecting other discs surrounding the damaged disc(s). This has and will continue to get worse the older I get and future mobility is always a concern for me.

Most patients with DDD tend to be over the age of 60, but in my case, according to the surgeon, I’d sustained an injury before the age of 12 months old and the rest is history. He said I probably hadn’t noticed any pain until my body went into warp speed during puberty and I began to grow taller. When I asked him what kind of injury could have caused such damage he said it could have been from something as simple as a sneeze or cough, or something more violent like a car wreck or physical abuse. I’ll never know exactly how I was first injured, but I’d already earned the right to say that I felt old considering according to the surgeon I had the spine of a 70-year-old. Add in the car wrecks, children, and injuries over my lifetime and we’re talking about a lot of strain on my ever-deteriorating spine.

Pro Spine & Pain

I found myself sitting on the exam table (now unemployed after being labeled a liability at the gym) one Monday morning at the surgeon’s office at the ripe age of 22, newborn in tow, having to make the difficult decision between scheduling surgery for that upcoming Friday or entering a pain clinic to manage my pain. After consulting with the surgeon about the types of surgeries they could perform that would help with both flexibility and eventually take away some of my pain I wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to be sliced open.

The surgeon explained to me they could fuse my spine which had a not-so-great success rate and came with many complications including having to return for repeated adjustments, the body refusing the material, and up to 12 months of bed rest. The other option for surgery included total disc replacement which required 6-18 months of bed rest depending on a myriad of variables. I had a newborn child and no family to help tend to the child while I would recover from either surgery so both were immediately taken off the table. The only other option I had at the time was to begin a regimen of bi-weekly epidural blocks at the same chiropractor I’d been seeing and a visit to the local pain clinic. I chose the latter and left the office that day with a prescription for hydrocodone to help until there was an opening at the pain clinic.

The epidural blocks were extremely painful and resulted in more pain afterward, not less. I would lay on my stomach and watch a small screen in the corner of the room which helped the chiropractor guide a massive needle into my spine. These epidural blocks are meant to relieve pain in isolated areas of the spine, rather than full epidurals that remove all feeling waist down as well as the ability to use your legs. After each session, I had to be helped to a chair in the “recovery room”. A timer for 45 minutes was then set and I wasn’t allowed to drive home until that time had passed while they watched for any adverse effects and feeling came back to my lower body. You had to prove you were able to walk by yourself before you were allowed to leave the office. The pain not only during this procedure but also afterward was almost unbearable. I tried to push through it, but after a few months explained to my surgeon that I wasn’t getting any relief and the epidural blocks were removed as part of my pain management plan.

B. Braun | CSE Needles

By this point, I’d already been a patient at the pain clinic for a few months. On my very first visit at the age of 22, I went from taking a few 5 mg hydrocodones a day (from the surgeon) to fentanyl patches and 10 mg Norco pills for breakthrough pain. The doctor at the pain clinic prescribed me 25 mcg transdermal fentanyl patches that I was to change every 72 hours and I was to take 10 mg of Norco every 4 hours if the fentanyl wasn’t being administered through my skin effectively during that time period. Additionally, I would be prescribed different medications to help with the numbness and neuropathy including Lidocaine transdermal patches, Gabapentin, and many others throughout the years. With transdermal patches, the amount of medicine you receive can be vastly different from hour to hour. If you begin to sweat, your pores open up and more medication seeps through to your bloodstream than if your body temperature was normal.

This would unknowingly be the day that while I put my trust in the care of physicians, specifically pain management doctors, I had signed away my normal life and arguably my soul for the next decade +. I had no idea what fentanyl was and after looking it up I realized this would be something I would quickly become dependent on. I would return to the pain clinic every 30 days to receive my monthly prescriptions which would quickly be elevated due to my body’s tolerance. Within the first few months of going to the clinic, my doctor would increase the dosage of the fentanyl patches to 50 mcg every 72 hours and the amount of Norcos I’d receive went from 60 a month to 120. Then 75 mcg every 48 hours, 240 Norcos, and so on. I would continue to climb the ladder of pain relief options for the next 13 years.

Prior to the pain clinic visits and post-evaluation with the surgeon, I had been taking 5 mg of hydrocodone as needed, rather than taking something for pain every 4 hours. After no more than 30-45 days of only taking the hydrocodones my body was already conditioned to need the opiates and I would begin to go into sweats if too many hours had passed since I’d taken one.

This was nothing compared to the slavery I would endure while at the pain clinic. Fentanyl is a different beast altogether. Your body doesn’t allow you to forget to change your patch out or go beyond 4 hours before taking one of your breakthrough pills. There were periods that I would be working and not be able to get to my Norcos and my body would quickly punish me for it.

The opiates also caused me to have trouble sleeping and I felt extremely groggy when I awoke each day. I’d never mentioned either to the pain doc, but when asked I explained both had become an issue for me a few months in. This discussion resulted in the doctor prescribing me several different kinds of sleep aids including Elavil and Ambian as well as Provigil to help “knock off the spiderwebs” in the mornings. Side note: no one should ever take Ambian, it’s a nightmare. Many times throughout attempting to take this medication I woke up in places I don’t remember journeying off to in the middle of the night. Luckily I never got in the car to drive, but often I would wake up in a different room or in different clothing than I went to bed in. You completely blackout with no memory of anything 30 minutes or so after taking it. Amazingly, it’s still on the market.

Each month when I would go to pick up the stack of prescriptions I’d dropped off at the pharmacy I would leave with two large brown paper bags. I tried to find a medicine dispenser to hold my daily pills but wasn’t able to find one deep enough for the amount of pills I was taking daily. Plus, I was getting three boxes of fentanyl patches each month which had to be stored elsewhere.

I would go through many iterations of the fentanyl patches too. While I was started on Duragesic, I was having allergic reactions to the adhesive so after months of using the gel patches, they switched me to Mylan patches which had a different adhesive that didn’t irritate my skin.

Tom Gannam/Associated Press | CBC

By the time I picked up my last batch of medication (more than 10 years later), I had been elevated to 150 mcg of fentanyl every other day, Dilaudid, Roxycodone, Oxycontin, and Percocet, as well as medication for sciatica and neuropathy, and something to help me sleep and then wake up. I was on doses of opiates on par with terminal cancer patients and I was in my early 30s. And I must not forget the psych meds I was on during this time after life had gotten so hopeless I’d attempted to take my own life a few times over. Each day seemed like torture, and looking back on things I think it’s fair to say it was.

I did return to college over these years and was functional for the most part, but I don’t remember many moments at all in this decade beyond the more traumatic events that happened. The more memorable domestic violence events and subsequent injuries sustained, finding my father’s lifeless body, living in the homeless shelter, and trying to take my life a few times are the only events I can clearly remember during this time in my life. The other 4,500+ days are a total blur.

The amount of opiates and other drugs I was on in these years is remarkable, but the lack of memory caused by them is almost more disturbing and painful to me. I essentially went to sleep the day I left the pain clinic and woke up 13 years later while coming off of everything cold turkey. The only time I would “awake” during this time was during violent or traumatic REAL “nightmares” only to quickly pacify myself with more opiates to go back to sleep. The drugs owned me. The withdrawals your body is thrown into any time you are late taking a dose of whatever opiate you’re on is unbearable. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before and unfortunately, I experienced it far more times than I’d like to admit before finally saying ENOUGH.

This was during the height of the opiate epidemic. In all honesty, I’m not sure how I made it through the fog. So many don’t. According to data from the NIH, “Drug overdose deaths involving prescription opioids rose from 3,442 in 1999 to 17,029 in 2017. From 2017 to 2019, the number of deaths declined to 14,139. This was followed by a slight increase in 2020, with 16,416 reported deaths. In 2022, the number of deaths declined to 14,716. Fentanyl involvement in fatalities that also involved prescription opioid drugs has steadily increased since 2014. This data shows that commonly prescribed opioids are no longer driving the overdose epidemic (Source: CDC WONDER).”

NIH

I could have very easily been a statistic during this time. Physicians were writing prescriptions for opiates at an alarming rate. Every time I would go to the pain clinic, without fail, at least one but often two or three different drug peddlers would be sitting in the lobby or being ushered back to go speak with the doctors about their newest product in pain management that was totally not habit forming. *Wink Wink*. They would walk through with briefcases containing fancy brochures and laminated signs for the office as well as financial incentives for doctors to tell patients about this or that new treatment option and write as many scripts as possible to meet the threshold.

Later, the circle-jerk between doctors and pharmaceutical companies would expand to include Methadone and Suboxone clinics, ensuring patients would continue to be patients well after years had been taken from them and their health forever affected. The amount of opiates I’d taken during my time in the clinic resulted in liver failure which I had to manage for a number of months before I was cleared. If they hadn’t killed me outright in dosage alone, the aftermath and damage done to my body attempted to.

The existential dread that comes along with being a literal slave to opiates coupled with looking back on an entire decade lost to time is something that seems almost like a dream. The fact of the matter is, opioid analgesics can cause both short and long-term memory loss and it’s something that affects me today.

The human brain is built to protect one from reliving trauma time and time again, but the subconscious mind has a strange way of leaking these memories to the forefront of your mind when you least expect it. Fascinating really, though torturous and unwelcomed.

Sometimes I wonder if my lack of recall is isolated to the traumatic events that I lived through early (and then later) life, the injuries sustained from domestic abuse, the ungodly amounts of opiates I took for so long, the “sleep aids” that would zombify me or just a combination of all of them. Who knows? Who really cares?

What I do know is I unwittingly agreed to give up more than 10 years of my life in pursuit of pain relief. Not every opiate addict chooses to pick up illegal drugs for kicks or to party. More often than not, those addicted to opiates started by trusting their doctor to help them and took the advice each time the doses were increased. Most of it was simply a money grab while countless lives were lost or forever changed.

Violated isn’t a strong enough word to describe what losing more than a decade of your life feels like. Since going cold turkey I’ve scrambled to make up for lost time. My brain and eventually my body went into overdrive to get on with living. After being surrounded by darkness for so long with no way out of the deep hole you’ve slowly dug for yourself over time, you have to make a decision to lie down and give the world your belly or to dig your nails into the sides of the burrow and start climbing your way back up to the surface.

I chose the latter and am here to tell the story, at least what I can remember of it.

This month I celebrate 10 years of freedom from the ball and chain of opiate addiction and the regaining of my soul once lost.

What a beautiful and memorable 10 years it’s been