Day 6: Doing Better
ix Days Six Days since surgery!
The Hydrocodone is working — I’m experience much less pain, today. Enough so that I tried walking a bit without support!
The result is what I call a “monkey walk” — knees bent, bobbing side-to-side to try to minimize pain and maintain balance. I can do it for short distances, but I have to go back to the walker to traverse anything longer than the kitchen island.
Mixed Results on Hydrocodone
So, yes, the Hydrocodone relieves the pain, but it messes with my digestive tract. I lose appetite with it, and the afforementioned constipation issue (although I’ve taken enough precautions that I haven’t experienced the latter.)
It’s a toss-up which is worse — the pain vs the gastro issues. I dunno.
Gotta Watch Out for Stealth Tylenol
I was going to take Tylenol with the Hydrocodone when Rose cautioned against it.
Why? I wondered.
I did the usual internet search and there is no conflict with taking the two together.
In fact, the sites noted that there are several meds that combined the two.
I checked the label on the Hydrocodone: sure enough they added 364mg of acetameniphen: Tylenol.
That’s a potential problem. If you exeed something like 3000mg of Tylenol per day, your liver can’t handle it (it’s metabolized in the liver) and bad things result. Really bad things.
A lot of medications add Tylenol to their compounds (as acetameniphen): one of the most common ways of overdosing it is to take the normal dose and then get extra from some other compound you might be taking without realizing it.
Hell With It
I decided to just go back to the straight Tylenol. It’s not as fast acting, and it wears down before the next dose, but it’s better than dealing with the other effects from the Hydrocodone.
Catching Up on Movies
Nothing like a period of enforced idle time to catch up on movies that have been on your peripheral radar for a time. For me, I’ve been watching these (all available for free on Amazon Prime:
Once Upon a Time in the West
Every once in a while I get a hankering for a spaghetti western: Once Upon a Time in the West is sort of the cardinal example of the genre. Sergio Leone cast Henry Fonda as the heavy — definitely against type and a big reason Fonda chose to do it, actually. Charles Bronson as the hero and Jason Robarts as the complicating third man (a Leone favorite device.) Finally, Italian flame Claudia Cardinale as the character around whom all the conflict centers.
I always avoided it since it’s a marathon to watch at 2hrs 45mins, but hey I’ve got the time, now.
It’s a better movie than I thought it would be. There’s actually a reasonable (although predictable) plotline, it’s shot in Monument Valley rather than spain, and features a whole host of big names in cameo roles.
It absolutely filled the bill.
Khartoum
A 60’s ‘spectacle’ film about a Sudanese muslim uprising in the 1800’s under a self-appointed spokesman for the Prophet Mohammed calling himself the “Mahdi” (played by Laurence Olivier), who is bent on converting the whole islamic region to his vision under the sword (based on a true event.) The story revolves around the efforts of one British General Charles Gordon (played by Charlton Heston) sent without government backing to escort Europeans, who are caught in Khartoum, out of the city, before the muslims attack and kill all the non-believers.
Writing isn’t great, music is atrocious, Heston does a reasonable job (although it’s hard to not see him as Moses dividing the Red Sea or Ben Hur driving a quadriga.) His better breakout roles came later as in The Agony and the Ecstasy and in the Scifi genre (most notably Planet of the Apes.)
The Man Who Knew Too Much
As much as I love movies, for some reason I haven’t seen most of the major Hitchcock movies. This one is with James Stewart and Doris Day as a hapless American couple and their urchin touring Morocco and getting entangled in an assassination plot by accident, with the urchin being kidnapped and held hostage to ensure the couple’s silence.
Not a great example of a Hitchcock movie, but hey! It’s a Prime freebee.
Doris Day is about as “fish-out-of-water” potrayal as an American suburban housewife in a place like Morocco as one could imagine. Towards the end of the movie, when she’s asked by the prime minister of some foreign country and a collection of dignitaries all gussied up in formals and jewels to sing a song from her repertoire (she’s done theater in the US and London, apparently) she sings “Que Sera, Sera” — about as banal a tune as one could present to such an audience.
It’s a head-slap moment…
(For the record, she hated doing it.)
Summary
So, that’s been fun and a way to kill time while my body puts itself back together.
Next…