JUST FEEL THE PAIN

I am a little afraid of pain-killers. No, let's be honest - I am TERRIFIED of 'serious' pain-killers.

For one thing, my father insisted for years that pain was simply your body's way of saying "Something is WRONG here," and if you take something to knock out that signal, you are missing something IMPORTANT (of course, this is before he got on morphine the last two years of his life).

The other main concern is that my mom for years was addicted to prescription medications. She worked for various doctors and medical practices, and kept all those little samples the drug reps give out. Mom also, I assume, took advantage of a few misplaced prescriptions. She took pills to get up in the morning, and pills in the afternoon to keep going, and pills to help her relax in the evening, and pills to let her sleep at night (well, I take a pill to go to sleep at night NOW, so I guess that was acceptable).

But I have an almost four hour flight this weekend to Portland, and then a four to five hour drive to get where I am going - and a crunched and upset little nerve between vertebrae two and vertebrae three and gives me NO problem at all... until I have to sit down for longer than fifteen minutes.

Wait a minute, that nerve is trying to TELL me something, right? An apology, do you think - maybe flowers? Okay... maybe not flowers... chocolate? Always works for me.

But the doctor writes me this wonderful prescription this morning with (trumpet fanfare) CODEINE - and now I'm terrified to take it. Well, not terrified enough not to try 1/2 a pill when the script is actually for 2 pills every three hours. And I didn't get too extremely loopy - maybe just a little bit silly - and it did take care of the pain.

So maybe just for the flight? Whadda ya think? Okay, I'll make you a deal , since I am so afraid of getting addicted to ANYthing like this, I'll report back when I get home on Tuesday, okay?

Deal!