ARTHRITIS BEATEN TODAY: A VERY PERSONAL HISTORY-THEN CAME THE ERA OF CODEINE ABUSE
I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know what else to do. We had been planning this leisurely round-the-world trip for years to celebrate a wedding anniversary. I wasn’t about to let my arthritis spoil it.
Several years had passed since my accident and we were living in Spain at the time. The click in my knee had degenerated into a ‘trick knee’ that would sometimes buckle quite unexpectedly. Anti-inflammation and pain medication, including codeine, were readily available over the counter without prescription there. I used them only on particularly bad or particularly active days. But good days were coming far less frequently.
Then it was time for our trip, the dream vacation of a lifetime – a full year of bumming around Asia, the Pacific islands, and the Middle East. No schedule. Our bargain round-the-world tickets would let us linger anywhere as long as we liked. We could make our continuing flight reservations whenever we chose. Now how was I going to let my arthritis spoil a trip like that?
I knew there would be plenty of walking for museums, tours, sightseeing, and shopping. Then there’d be the scuba diving, swimming, boating, and beach bumming. A lot of activity – just the way we loved it. All joyfully accompanied by our vigorous eight-year-old son.
There was only one way I was going to make it through a year of that kind of activity: codeine. I gave no thought to the consequences of the abuse my already degenerating knees would suffer. Moreover, I wasn’t about to rob a moment of the joy and adventure of this trip from anyone, myself included. I’m not for a moment going to pretend that I wasn’t doing it for myself as well.
I didn’t have to stockpile a whole year’s supply of codeine. I knew it would be readily available in most of the countries we planned to visit. And it was. I’d go in and buy out the entire stock of two or three pharmacies at a time. It wasn’t that much; they only stocked a half dozen boxes each. (Or so they said.) Except for India; there codeine was really cheap and I could get a couple hundred tablets at just one pharmacy. I really stocked up in India.
No I didn’t turn into a junkie. Never got addicted. On boat cruises or lazy beach days, for example, I didn’t bother taking codeine at all. And I didn’t need it for swimming or diving either.
On museum, sightseeing, or shopping days, though, I’d really toss them down. And there were a lot of those days. But they were very low dose pills. I’d take several at a time – just about every four hours. Nobody noticed. Everyone’s used to my vitamin regimen – gulping down nearly twenty pills with every meal. It was just routine.
My non-codeine days let me know, though, what I was doing to my knees. The tension, the stiffness, and the discomfort made it clear. Masking the pain let me remain active, but vigorous activity is not recommended for arthritic joints. It only hastens the degeneration of the already damaged and far more vulnerable cartilage. And we prolonged it by extending our vacation far beyond our originally scheduled year. It was the best of times for us, and the worst of times for my knees.
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