June 26, 2008

Althouse on morphine.

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I'm still trying to reconnect with my brain after getting pumped full of morphine this morning. (At the hospital, for a test, which I passed.) I was hoping for the side effect of a pleasurable drug experience, but it put me right to sleep. I woke up, got escorted home, and did nothing more unusual than curl up in bed and sleep for 3 hours. I would make a terrible druggie. Quite aside from the fact that I wouldn't do anything illegal, I wouldn't be any fun at all.

28 comments:

rhhardin said...

That's what happens if you skip coffee.

chuck b. said...

Reconnect with your brain? If you aren't connected, where is you?

Ron said...

Wouldn't do anything illegal? You're no fun! :)

If you suddenly feel the need for bags of Doritos, maybe you could be a druggie after all...

Cedarford said...

No buzz on morphine? Drats! Next time you're tested ask for the cocaine and morphine speedball or complain that morphine without coffee was unpleasant and you wish to try snorting a few crushed up oxycontin tablets.

I'd wish to well and that everything came out OK, but as it was some medical test involving penetration, no matter how slight...so..
My best wishes every probe went in OK, and they left none of that gear behind

Ann Althouse said...

Chuck, I wish I knew!

Ron, I hadn't had any food since yesterday at 10 a.m., and I'm only just now eating a bowl of cereal to break that long fast.

Roger J. said...

Damn, Professor: you wouldnt even get the munchies or get horny? You have surrended your baby boomer credential for an AARP card

paul a'barge said...

You have your drugs confused. Addicts of drugs that derive from heroin are not fun to be with.

MadisonMan said...

Did they give you i.v. caffeine? You must have a wicked withdrawal headache if not.

Ann Althouse said...

Doesn't heroin make you thin?

And Roger, I think young junkies just lie around too don't they.

MadisonMan said...

Never mind my 4:15 -- I just read your other comment.

Zachary Sire said...

This might cheer you up (or it might make you hallucinate more):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G9jA-FGGd8

AllenS said...

I'm so glad that everything turned out ok. Will there be pictures?

KCFleming said...

Next time, try Fentanyl.
"Ask for it by name!"®

Ron said...

Eat well, Ann... and we're glad your tests came out ok!

Vlog that meal!

KCFleming said...

Worst medical job?

The tech doing defecating protograms.

Now you can watch it on YouTube. But why??
I mean jeeeezus H. on a half shell.

William said...

If you feel an urge to take photos of dessicated flowers on weedy graves and then decide that no, nothing really matters and you lay in bed in the fetal position with the covers over your head listening to Billie Holiday recordings: this is not an epiphany, only a hangover.

Ann Althouse said...

William: That is actually a living flower at the botanical garden. It just has a chaotic shape (and I made it brown).

kimsch said...

Colonoscopy? I had one last Wednesday. My birthday was last Tuesday so I had nothing but liquids on my birthday.

Sedation was nice for the procedure though...

Chip Ahoy said...

I had morphine once. I complained to the nurse the stuff wasn't doing a darn thing, then realized I wasn't feeling any pinch whatever from the needle she was inserting into my arm, which looked as if it had been taken from a farrier.

chuck b. said...

"drugs that derive from heroin"

The word is opiate (not to be confused with opioid), and, including heroin, they all derive from morphine.

Fentanyl, a surprisingly simple molecule, is a generic and should not be capitalized or trademarked unless you're referring to a commercial preparation, e.g., Actiq.

I'm a molecule snob.

So sue me.

amba said...

I'm just getting the horrors trying to imagine what test is so painful they give you morphine. Yikes! (Colonoscopy is not that painful, and they knock you out with what's it called? Versed? reversable sedative.)

amba said...

On second thought . . . I could have used some morphine for that mammogram . It was excruciating! Talk about having your tit in a wringer!

Ann Althouse said...

I think they said it was morphine and valium...

Did I get that wrong? Yes, it was for a colonoscopy.

William said...

Much like baptism and marriage, a colonoscopy is a rite of passage. You have not really reached the fullness of your middle years until your first colonoscopy. Consider those two a.m. trots as the final purging of youthful dreams and hopes. Consider that anal probe in the company of strangers as the final reductio ad absurdum of your pretensions to immortality. Dressed like a sacrificial victim in that gown with the opening to the back, you wait to learn what the priest has devined from reading your entrails. If the reading is positive, you put on your clothes and rejoin the living but with a slightly altered sense of mortality.

stoqboy said...

I had morphine once, too, and it was nothing like the bottle of cough medicine I drank when I was 14. Of course, the morphine was to relieve the pain of a kidney stone and it worked like a charm for that, but no "pleasurable drug experience." Its probably a good thing they don't put codeine in over the counter cough medicine anymore, because that was a pleasurable drug experience.

kimsch said...

Ann, did they do the one down your throat too? They did for me.

I don't remember much of it at all. I remember saying ow, ow, ow, ow, for a bit then nothing. In recovery the blood pressure machine couldn't find my blood pressure.

Ann Althouse said...

All I remember is them putting something in the IV, me saying something along the lines of "So this is supposed to put me to sleep?" — said because I didn't feel the slightest bit sleepy — and then waking up in the recovery room, feeling perfectly fine.

And the "prep" the day before wasn't bad. The worst part was quickly drinking a gallon of something that tasted salty. Having fasted since 10 in the morning, I found my late meal of white grape juice and chicken broth incredibly delicious.

As for mortality, Althouse laughs at death. But my father died as a consequence of a colonoscopy. Interestingly, I'd blamed the doctor for the past 20 years, but after a discussion with the RN yesterday, I don't anymore.

kimsch said...

I wasn't allowed solid food after midnight the night before the night before. Then it was clear liquids only until midnight the night before to include that gallon of Golytely. It's better cold.

They say Jello is okay, but not red.