missoula notebook

Sweet Mother Lortab

By Sutton Stokes, 7-23-08

	Ahhh... I can feel it working...

Judging by the mental feebleness of some of the regular commenters here at New West, I’m guessing that a few of you are believers in so-called “intelligent design,” so can one of you please explain to me what is so intelligent about the human neck? I ask because I’ve apparently caused grievous injury to mine with nothing more than pillows, which seems indicative of the kind of bug that never should have made it past beta testing.

It all started last week when I was down in Flagstaff visiting my wife, the Bird Woman of the Coconino. We stayed on San Francisco Street in the hotel Monte Vista, where parts of Casablanca were supposedly filmed and the rooms are named after celebrities who once passed through. In the past, Amy and I have had the Robert Englund and Michael Stipe rooms (yeah — disappointing!), but this time our room’s namesake had a more satisfying nostalgia quotient: Alan Ladd. (Think “Shane, come back!”)

Our first night there, we noticed that the pillows were exceptionally thick.

“Ooh, luxurious,” I thought, before turning in.

“Ooh, ouch!” I thought upon waking. I had a crick in my neck and, in certain positions, a pain that shot down under my right shoulder blade. There was plenty to distract me all week, though, and the pain was never that pronounced, so I was able to ignore it.

Until this morning.

I was lying in bed, trying to decide whether it was more important to sleep for another hour or get the trash out in time for pickup, when I made the mistake of commencing a langorous stretching of my lithe, catlike muscles. Suddenly I was shrieking with pain and twitching like an electrocution victim as I desperately tried to find a position in which I could escape the sensation of someone carving out my cervical spine with a filet knife while sliding red-hot knitting needles up under my shoulder blade. I finally found a somewhat neutral position and lay there gasping, thinking profound thoughts like “what the fuck was that” and “guess I should probably go to the doctor.”

I dressed and dragged myself out to the car for the drive to Northgate Medical Center, where the staff is friendly and helpful, but — it has to be said — the waiting-room-magazine selection is just about the worst I’ve ever encountered: three copies of Model Aviation (for a second, you let yourself hope that one of these will include photos from a party on Ron Burkle’s private jet, but, alas, not that kind of model, apparently) and a two year old Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

The doctor wondered if I’d been in an accident or maybe fallen down, but when I explained the pillow theory she thought it sounded plausible. “The neck is really easy to injure,” she said. “If you end up needing physical therapy, the therapist can show you all kinds of exercises and how to improve your posture. It’s all about prevention,” she finished, cheerfully, apparently not having considered that — if it really were all about prevention — our doctors would have us all in for some posture analysis and medicine-ball work before the debilitating spasms commence.

She started explaining what the course of treatment would be. Waiting to hear what kind of painkillers I’d won been prescribed, I tried not to look shifty. I’ve been reading the fascinating Missoulian series on painkiller addiction all week, full of harrowing tales that almost make you never want to grind up and snort an OxyContin ever again, and I worried my treatment would suffer if they thought I was faking my pain, “doctor shopping,” another junkie just looking to score.

I was half expecting her to hand me a writ for “Coast Guard penicillin,” i.e., the 800-milligram Motrin pills the military doctors gave out for everything from sprained ankles to leprosy. But no: Flexeril for the spasms, and good old Lortab for pain as needed, and when isn’t it? They also gave me a “c-collar,” one of those foam neck braces you wear to court after you’ve been in a car accident.

I wracked my brain trying to remember if I’d seen mention of Lortab in the Missoulian series, but I didn’t think I had. I forgot to ask the doctor if that means it’s safe to snort it, although a quick Google search for “Lortab abuse” just now found that it is supposed to be “slightly less” addictive than OxyContin, which — I guess — makes it slightly safer to snort. (Disclaimer: The preceding statement is for entertainment purposes only.)

I left the clinic wearing the collar but took it off in the car so as not to frighten my fellow drivers as I made my cautious, pain-brightened way across Reserve Street to the Wal-Mart pharmacy. (Hey, did you hear that Wal-Marts don’t hurt small businesses after all — depending, as always, on just where you draw your regression line.) I turned in my paperwork and was told the prescription would take about 25 minutes to fill, which seemed like a long time for scooping some pills into a bottle, but at least the wait gave me the opportunity to slump on a bench by the checkout lanes and scribble most of this account in my notebook.

Now I’m finally home, after swinging by the video store for some horror movies (the only truly relaxing form of cinematic fare, I find, much to my psychologist’s concern, although he says he’s almost certain I’m not going to have any more “episodes") and the grocery store for some frozen pizzas. I popped a Lortab about a half hour ago, and I can feel it starting to spread its soothing warm tendrils down along my veins. The Missoulian isn’t the only publication with good drug stories this week: David Carr, the New York Times columnist who has just released a fascinating-sounding memoir of his own crackhead past, wrote in an excerpt on Sunday that “drugs… do not conjure demons; they reveal them.”

I’ll let you know if Lortab reveals anything to me. See you in rehab!

For more like this, read the rest of the Missoula Notebook.

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