So I went to my doctor's appointment on the 29th and in the end, not much has changed. I was quite surprised that my weight hadn't changed much in the 2 months since I had been there. In the interim, I've mostly been eating whatever the hell I feel like without any real thought for the repercussions. On my birthday I even ate an entire bucket of KFC on my own. I figured I was in for some pretty significant weight gain but for some inexplicable reason I had only gained two pounds. That put my weight somewhere around 250, which is still almost impossibly low for me from a historical standpoint. I think the real difference is that I just don't feel as hungry as I used to and I no longer have the capacity I used to. Even though I'm mostly eating whatever junk food I want, I just don't eat enough of it to impact me like it would have a year or two ago. Take those Fat Sandwiches that I ordered from Neubies. There are still 2 of them left right now in the fridge and this is after Shelley took one with her on Sunday. In the old days, those guys wouldn't have last more than a couple of days. I would have wolfed them down like it was feeding time at the zoo. Instead, I have to actually make some special effort to plan out when I'm going to eat them because it can't be long before they start going bad. It's already been 5 days after all.

I can't help but believe, firmly in my bones, that no good will come of this appetite change. I just know it's the harbinger of some doom that has yet to rear its ugly head. Just mark my words. In a month or maybe half a year or whenever, I'll come back here to post an entry about how I was just told I have cancer or some other previously undiscovered illness. Maybe I got AIDS from a public bathroom toilet half a decade ago and it's taken up until now to really kick in. I have no clue what it'll be but I'm just sure there's a very muddy shoe out there waiting to drop.

Anyway, back to the doctor's appointment. I basically told him about the horrors of the last couple of months without using any of the red-line words that would require him to take action. I think I was able to get across just how iffy the situation had gotten at one point, though in the end he still wasn't inclined to increase the dosage on the opiates. That really didn't surprise me any since it's just par for the course as far as these things go. No doctor wants to look like they're feeding their hophead patients. Instead, he prescribed something new which is supposed to help out, but in a minor way. It's a GABA agonist called Gabapentin which is supposed to help with neuropathic and chronic pain. I think it's supposed to stop the growth of additional nerves in the wound areas which might then freak out and send pain signals night and day. All in all, it's not supposed to do all that much on its own, but I suppose ever bit helps.

On the plus side, it does seem that the nightmare is over. The past couple of months might have been an absolute horror but things have receded lately. The pain situation is under control once again and is impossibly mild by comparison. It almost feels like a blessing. At this point, I'm looking to try to cut back on my dose as much as I can to try to build up anther stockpile for when the bad times come again. I seriously doubt I'd be lucky enough that things won't go to shit again somewhere down the line. What's really frustrating about it is that nothing has changed between now and 2-3 weeks ago. Nothing. There's no key or trigger that I can think of. Nothing has been different in my activity or diet or anything and yet I had such a drastic shift that ranged from wanting to blow my brains out to things being just hunky dorey now. Since I don't know what caused things to get better, I have no way of knowing how long this'll last. I guess all I can do is hope it hangs around for as long as possible and enjoy it while it does. The good times always end.