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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

drugs.

i had a headache today. this isn't unusual...i get headaches kind of a lot. so i took three pills with my dinner. well, technically four. three excedrin - migraine pills and one multi-vitamin (thanks mom!).

the label on the (excedrin) bottle says to take two. but let's be real. i get bad headaches, and in the past when i have taken two, it doesn't really help. three usually does the trick, and tonight it did.

so what's the big deal? let me tell you.

last week, i was sick.
i don't ever get sick, so i didn't really know what to do.

on thursday (the 7th) i was starting to feel sick and i remembered my mom told me to take some ibuprofen. so i took some of those.

on friday (the 8th), i spent the night at rachael's and was still feeling sick. she gave me some cold & flu pills. took a total of 4 of those.

on saturday (the 9th), i was totally stuffed up. i remembered that i had some liquid dayquil from last winter so i took some before bed.

on sunday night (the 10th), i was feeling worse, so emily offered her nightquil (also in liquid form and equally yucky).

on monday (the 11th), i was at the grocery store, still feeling miserable. i called my mom, wondering the difference between generic and name brand drugs (since i obviously have no idea). she gave me her advice and i came away with some new drugs...this time in liquigels (thank goodnessss) -- with options for both day and night.

i used those pills throughout last week, along with some "vitamin c added" cold pills that i also found from last winter (but not expired...no worries). i had a headache at some point and took some excedrin. probably i took three of them at that point too.

by thursday night (the 14th), i decided that i'd had enough. i had spent an entire week sleeping a ton and taking a cornucopia of different drugs that were supposed to help me and i still felt totally awful. so i decided that i wanted to stop taking drugs and just feel better.

today is the 19th...i'm still not totally better. i continue to find myself running for tissues every so often and feeling kind of icky a lot. but at least i'm not giving myself any more excuses (or drugs). humans have survived plagues and diseases (well, SOME people survived them anyways) and i feel confident in the science of the human body, even though i have no idea how it works.

let me conclude by saying three things...
-NUMBER ONE: i drank some diet root beer with my pills today and i have not stopped burping since then. seriously...ridiculous.
-NUMBER TWO: in retrospect, i took a ton of medicine in the past week and a half. holy cow.
-NUMBER THREE: i continue to have no idea how drugs work. how does the ibuprofen KNOW where you are hurting? how does the excedrin find the parts of your brain that are in pain? i have no clue. ah...the magic of science. it will always be a mystery to me.

4 comments:

Jon said...

The human body is amazing. When you feel sick or feverish, or just have a headache, it's because your body knows there's something wrong, so it uses this enzyme called cyclo-oxygenase to help create prostaglandins, which cause the inflammation when you're hurt, or make you feel pain when you have a headache. By taking drugs like ibuprofen and acetaminophen (in Excedrin), you're basically blocking the cyclo-oxygenase from working, so the prostaglandis aren't there to trigger the pain or inflammation like they normally would.
Hope you feel better soon!

anna. said...

...i have no idea what you just said...

Anonymous said...

i have less of an idea than anna of what u just said

hope ur brain feels better

Anonymous said...

oh drugs.
i've been having similar problems this past week with intense intense headaches. almost daily, and always right after dinner.
i took advil for awhile, and it always made it worse.
then i bought some tylenol extra strength (!) and it's worked miracles since i've taken it. i haven't had a single headache.

my headaches probably having absolutely nothing to do with which drug i take, but maybe its just some placebo-mind thing. i tell myself that a new medication will work better, and it does. miraculously.

hope you have similar luck (: