IV’s are great because a) they keep you alive longer than you otherwise would manage and b) …… well, I think (a)’s pretty convincing so I guess it’ll have to do.
On the other hand, the list of why IV’s suck is much, much longer.
This time, top of my “Why I loathe IV’s” list is the unfortunate and highly rubbish side-effects that my Meropenem (drug) is having on me. Now, I have a bit of a history with Mero (as with many of the drugs I take), mostly that it gives me hugely painful joints and muscles, but we have discovered that a short course of steroids to coincide with the Mero seems to do the trick in aleviating the pains.
Not so much this time, though. Although I am doing better than I have been, it’s still giving me the weirdest and most annoying pain in my right hand. It’s not even that it’s particularly excruciating, it’s just almost permenantly there and refuses to go away. But since it’s only in my right hand, it seems a bit silly to moan about it.
I did check in with my friendly family on-call doc (my all-knowing Aunt) who looked it up on the web and assured me that it wasn’t doing me any harm, but probably lots of good and to persevere with it, which I have.
The hand aside, I’m also suffering the simple and commonly-acknowledged IV slowdown – the high doses of super-powerful antibiotics being a good stimulant of sleep and restfulness. The only issue being my body seems to have set itself on the weirdest clock at the moment, not letting me sleep till the early hours of the morning, then letting me be deceived into thinking I’m wide awake in the middle of the day until it hijacks me and cuts off all brain and motor-function mid-afternoon and forces more sleep on me.
It’s weird this IV lark, and you’d have thought I’d have got used to it by now, after regular courses 5-6 times a year for the past goodness knows how long – but I still seem to be taken by surprise when it knocks me for six the next time I’m on them.
Still, I’m booked in for a week of rest and extra-physio (although I’m not sure the two necessarily go together…) in the Churchill next week, so hopefully I’ll have a storming second week and come out of it in tip-top fighting form for the big Laughter for Life publicity push and the run up to the show.
Not to mention getting the new issue of CF Talk off to the designers and shooting 2 days of video for the Activ8 Youth Theatre show.
IV’s may suck, but in the long run they let you do the things you want.