When I left off last week, I talked about falling and breaking my arm in San Francisco. I broke my arm and then was very sick on the long plane ride home. I felt sorry for the people around me. The next morning my Cancer Doctor had already arranged for me to have surgery.
They would put a metal rod from my shoulder down to my elbow to stabilize the broken bone. The broken bone was my humerus. This bone was the same bone that had multiple rounds of radiation and had already had a surgery to remove the cancer; thus, it was already weak. It basically crumbled when I fell.
Little did I know that breaking the bone would actually be the easiest part. The Doctors put me on percocet to relieve the pain from the surgery. If I remember correctly, I think I was supposed to take the percocet every four hours. I ended up sleeping an incredible amount. After several days, I felt like I was sleeping my life away. Therefore, I decided that I did not want to take this drug anymore. I basically quit taking it. I might have taken it two more times.
Little did I know that this would be a HUGE mistake. No one had instructed me on how to stop taking the pain reliever. In hindsight, I wish they would make you and your caregiver sign a piece of paper that says, “I understand that when I do not feel like I need this pain reliever, I need to wean myself off of it slowly or else I will experience major side effects.”
I stopped taking it cold turkey. This was a huge mistake as I would become incredibly depressed all within 24 hours of “quitting” this drug. I have had a lot of things happen in my life, but I have never been a depressed person. This was so foreign to me. I remember thinking about Robin Williams and thinking maybe this is what happened to him?
As luck would have it, my parents were out of town and my boyfriend had a major work project so to make matters even worse, I was by myself with just my two kids. My son had football practice and my daughter had a volleyball game during this horrible weekend. I went to pickup my son from football practice and I’m sitting in the parking lot waiting for him to finish… Tears are streaming down my face. This is the most depressed that I have ever felt. Why am I depressed? What is wrong with me? C’mon Courtney, hold it together. Then I go to my daughter’s volleyball game. Once again, tears are flowing down my face — I make my son hold my hand! I am watching my daughter play and crying my eyes out and hoping that no one notices. Maybe I can go for a walk and everything will get better? Why is this happening?
Monday morning I wake up and I know I need help! This is the most depressed that I have ever been in my life. I call my sister and tell her there’s something wrong with me. We end up meeting at her house and she sees me and is probably wondering — who is this person?? She calls our family Doctor. He asks if I quit percocet cold turkey? Yes, I did. He says we need you to get on an antidepressant immediately. By quitting this drug, you have stripped all the serotonin from your brain. Serotonin is what makes us feel good. The problem with an antidepressant is that it takes awhile to finally affect your brain — approximately seven days. I was in horrible shape.
This whole time I am just thinking — I would really like to find a way to exercise my way out of this depression. However, I have a chunk of lung missing and my arm is still healing from the spiral break. In next week’s article, I will share how I finally conquered this situation.