Stumbling in Flats

A couple of days before Christmas I was booked in for a thyroid appointment.

I’d injured my back quite badly the day before (long story, pesky foot drop).

Blinking back tears of self-pity, I begged the doctor to put me out my misery, aside from confirming my fears that my thyroid was indeed back to normal, hence my superwoman appetite and sudden fondness for strips of beef jerky. Ewww.

She took in my tragic face, hunched posture and outstretched hand and wrote a prescription for codeine.

I stumbled to the chemist, had it filled, took the precious box home and popped out two. And waited.

Within minutes I was floating away on a cloud of pink sparkly bubbles; the pain had all but disappeared and I was gently bobbing along, sighing from absolute bliss. I floated on to my sofa, snuggled down and decided to have a quick kip.

I woke three hours later, drugged and mumbling incoherently. Oops.

The pain returned the next day, and the next. On Christmas Day, I limited myself to two (out of a possible eight, eek). My mum gave me The Dangers of Codeine Lecture, which I half-listened to while stroking the packet in front of me. Pain? Or codeine? Hmmm.

The Big Day was wonderful. Me and my cousin popped out for a couple of hours, and I dragged Santa Clause away from the hotel lift where he was desperately pushing the up button ahead of a horde of kids following him. ‘Yay! Santa selfie!’ You can see his, um, friendly reaction to my ambush.

Back at my mum’s I started to feel odd(er). Whoozy. She took off my Santa hat and tucked me into her bed (bless) and told me to sleep. Another three hours went by, meh. After waking, groggy, puffy-faced and semi-coherent, I reluctantly agreed to wave goodbye to my Codeine frenemy. MS meds and codeine don’t mix plus I was getting a bit fed up of floating in and out of reality, however tempting.

So now, a couple of days after Christmas, I am semi-pain-free, but taking every opportunity to say ‘oof’ every time I move, i.e. a metre to the left to grab the box of Quality Street I’ve hidden from The Teenager under a throw (breakfast).

I miss the codeine. I miss the oblivion. I just hope Santa isn’t telling his Elves, ‘honestly, this weird Glaswegian, like, attacked me. Thank goodness it’s over for another year.’