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BUT FIRST, BEFORE WE BEGIN DEP'T. Before the next chapter drops on Friday, get caught up on THE STAIRS, Tom Scocca's serialized work of fiction! COLUMN DEP’T. MR WRONG: I Learned About a Whole New Part of My Body Because It Hurts So Much I GOTTA TYPE this week’s column fast because at any moment the BACLOFEN is gonna kick alllll the way in and I’m not completely sure if I will be able to trust my fingers to adequately dump the contents of my brainwaves onto the pixels of Indignity Vol. 5, No. 204! I dunno if it’s that thing, the Medical thing where you think something works, a pill, but then it turns out that it really is just your mind playing tricks on you, but I think this shit is kicking in, this pill I just knocked down, because it took me until right now to remember the word “placebo,” oof. Here’s my slogan for BACLOFEN, ready? BACLOFEN: This shit will make you forget PLACEBO!™ Here comes a dose of Wikipedia: Chemically, baclofen is a derivative of the neurotransmitter γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA). It is believed to work by activating (or agonizing) GABA receptors, specifically the GABAB receptors.
You might be wondering how you got this far down today’s Mr. Wrong column before I told you why I am sitting around getting loopy on BACLOFEN, eh? Anyway, BACLOFEN is a drug that I bought today at the CVS after going to see my doctor. I dunno what I did to bring this on, I totally was careful during the recent Holiday, but for the past week I have had a debilitating pain shooting down the side of my left leg, from my hip all the way to my motherfucking ankle, and I haven’t been able to walk or stand or sleep or really even think straight (or as straightly as usual) since this started, ouch. So now, it’s BACLOFEN time!  Standing in line at the CVS looking at one of those CUSTOMER SERVICE buttons that you have to push in order to buy everything except prescription drugs! Hello CVS, gimme my drugs please! Adverse effects include drowsiness, dizziness, weakness, fatigue, headache, trouble sleeping, nausea and vomiting, poor concentration and recall (resembling dementia), urinary retention, or constipation.
I’m not trying to be funny but I have a lot of those already, woof! C10H12ClNO2!  Left: Ball-and-stick model of baclofen, a centrally-acting skeletal muscle relaxant. Baclofen is a racemic mixture, S-enantiomer is portrayed. Image by Vaccinationist - PubChem, CC BY-SA 4.0. Right: Skeletal formula of baclofen. Other names include: Fleqsuvy, Gablofen, Kemstro, Lioresal, Lyvispah, Ozobax.
I think those are all names of companies that sell stuff on Amazon, hiyo! Look, I am not trying to play the New York Times Medical Mystery or anything here, I have, according to my Primary Care Provider, a condition known as Iliotibial Band Syndrome (ITBS), or as he put it, “Oh yeah, this is I.T. Band.” Worst band ever!  The feeling of this Iliotibial Band Syndrome is like, first of all, the location, it’s happening for me all the way from my tensor fasciae latae, down the iliotibial tract, further down through my lateral epicondyle and beyond. I copied all that outta the Wikipedia, so we’re talking about part of your leg, one’s femur, the top part, the big bone, down through the part below your knee, the tibia, and in my case, the lateral aspect of my left leg, which I think is the correct locator, lateral, the outside, according to this completely Medical but also possibly NSFW diagram, and for the record, that’s not a picture of me, that’s just some Scientific nudity showing what’s where.  The sensation is like, OK, you got this giant rubber band stretching from your hip down to the ankle, and your rubber band, man, it has a goddamn toothache, and you can’t straighten up or walk without wishing you had a way to knock yourself the fuck out, I’m not kidding, it’s making me coo-coo-for-cocoa-puffs, you know? So right now, for a Medical Update: I still got a shooting pain down my leg, but it feels like maybe the BACLOFEN, or the other thing I got, a steroid, MethylPREDNISolone, [Ed. note: Uh-oh] is kicking in. I await a strong feeling of freedom from concern!  Yo Mister White, this one starts with METH, but it don't get you high, what the fuck? [Ed. note: Don't be so sure about that, especially coming off it.] Yesterday I was walking about half a block from my 2000 Honda Civic to a restaurant for lunchie, and I wanted to quit walking, just stop in the middle of the street I was crossing, and sit down, because that’s pretty much all I can do right now without wanting some sort of powerful Opioid or something. I can sit down, and there’s way less pain, and like, you know when you have a pain and it’s something you’re gonna be able to ride out—or in my case at that moment, in-excruciating-fucking-pain-walk out—until I got inside the restaurant and could sit down. If I knew that was a Chronic Pain situation, though? I would be on some other street looking to score, ugh. I read an article about a new kind of drug for pain and I hope it works. If that link doesn’t work for you, email me and I’ll send you the article. I think about that kind of thing when I’m sick, but not deadly serious-sick, just sick enough to start feeling hopeless and sorry for myself but then snapping out of it and knowing I’m gonna bounce back. You might not ever really know that serious-sick feeling, I hope. I hope you don’t ever know that feeling, OK? I can’t wait for this pill to kick all the way in. The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com. EASY LISTENING DEP'T.Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive! SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of a sandwich selected from Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, published in 1912 by Cassell and Company, London, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne, and available at archive.org for the delectation of all. CHICKEN AND HAM SANDWICHES. Put a breakfast-cupful of good gravy into a saucepan, with three dessert-spoonfuls of curry paste mixed smoothly in it. Add half a pound of the flesh of a cold chicken, and two ounces of lean ham finely minced. Let the ingredients boil for ten minutes, then turn them out. Cut some slices of stale bread about the eighth of an inch in thickness, and stamp them out in shapes. Fry them in a little butter, spread some of the mixture between two of them, and put over it a little slice of cheese, and a piece of butter. Press it well down, bake the sandwiches in a quick oven, on a baking sheet, and serve them as hot as possible, piled high on a napkin. Time, five minutes to bake. Allow two or three for each person. Probable cost, 8d., exclusive of the cold meat. If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net . SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T. Indignity is presented on Ghost. Indignity recommends Ghost for your Modern Publishing needs. Indignity gets a slice if you do this successfully!
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