Posted by …ln other news, Jarrett Wilson managed to snap, krinkle and/or pop the catheter of his baclofen pump at an intense workout on Monday. He began to experience increased spasticity that night and ever more as the week went on. The initial suspicion was nuvigil withdrawal but after going bac…lofen through the symptoms, baclofen withdrawal seemed a more prudent diagnosis. The first and most obvious sign of baclofen withdrawal is enhanced tremors and spasticity – the patient will shake as if his insides were some diabolical popcorn machine. Next, the patient might start hallucinating. Our sources report that this symptom had been seen in Jarrett,. Let’s go to Chuck in the amusement park cafeteria for more details. Chuck: Thanks, Flo. The great and powerful writer of this blog wants me to tell the readers that he’s abandoning the news room bit – it started off pretty cute, but now is kinda like a turtle, slow with no discernible direction. I figure I’ll just be straight up, here are the facts –
As Flo mentioned, while doing some trunk rotations at the gym. I figured I’d add more weight that day, because that’s what you’re supposed to do at the gym and what’s the worst that can happen? As if the universe was listening, it replied by creating an unexpected pop in my abdomen and sending me into baclofen withdrawal. At work the next day, it was becoming harder and harder to control the tremors from my left leg. I started becoming concerned when having sudden temperatures changes in some isolated part of my body. I entertained the idea that the temperature and body part might symbolize someone’s attitude toward me. For instance, if my butt got really warm it’d mean somebody thought I was a hot piece of ass. If my shoulder went cold it was because someone thought I was unjustly ignoring him or her (i.e. getting the cold shoulder). I needed more period that something was amiss so I took my blood pressure. I’m glad I did, it was freakin high. I called my all things disability doctor, and she told me to go to the ER.
Within 20 minutes I’m in my principals hot rod headed to the ER. They got me in for a CT scan of my noodle and found nada – the ER doc prescribed something for anxiety and I was on my way.
The next day, PM/R doc and I puzzled over it – baclofen pump? Medication reaction? Another hemorrhage? Global warming? Not enough donuts in my diet? There were signs everywhere, but the answer was oh so elusive. Think of it like The DaVinci Code meets neurological disorders. In essence, we were looking for Da – Neuro Code. After that first meeting, there weren’t any dead bodies with clues written on them or ambiguous paintings to draw direction from, so we improvised, discussing symptoms and recent med changes. We decided that it was a complication caused by my skipping my nuvigil doses the weekend before. I would continue on nuvigil as usual and my hot ass wouldn’t be giving anymore cold shoulders.
After another day of tremors, temperature anomalies and high BP and a trip to the ER, it was back to the PM/R doc to reassess. The more we spoke on it, the more it pointed toward baclofen withdrawal, so she scheduled surgery the next day.
Turns out, we were right, the catheter leading from the pump to my spine had snapped. After replacing the catheter, my body decided to bleed a lot, there was concern that the blood would put too much pressure on my spine. Luckily, that fixed itself, however, I still had a leak – much the same as the great CSF flood of 2011 after the pump was first put in.
Listen, the brain and spinal cord are very particular about the amount of fluid they will sit in. If they sense that the amount of CSF is not just so, they demand that my head fill with an abundance of discomfort juice and that the discomfort juice should spread to my stomach and take the form of bile and partially digested food and exit out of my face portal with much heaving and dramatic bellowing.
To assuage all of these various fluids, a new fluid must be introduced as mediator, to “patch” things up if you will. Put simply, my blood is injected at the site of the leak and clots, sealing the leak.
A few hours after having this done, the discomfort juice was gone and the contents of my stomach would continue their course to exit out the correct portal. In fact, the improvement was so great that the Dr. decided to send me home that day.
That was two days ago, I’ve been holed up at my parents house resting since then. I hope to return to work later this week or early next week.
I’ll check back after I know more. FIN
@JarrettLWilson
My Brain Injourney 
Discomfort juice doesn’t sound very appealing. It’s like curdled albatross milk. Or marmot skin alamode.
Those two will work as a base for discomfort juice, but the active ingredient has to be something laboriously acquired in a ratio of 1:2. Example – One part curdled albatross milk mixed with two parts foot sweat from large feet stuffed in clogs two sizes too small that had been climbing hilltops in the Swiss alps.
That sounds line a formidable ratio indeed! How about two parts cyclopse blood with two parts rhino fluid. Doesn’t matter what kind of fluid it just has to be from a rhino.
Hmmm…when I first read your recipe I thought, “rhino juice, what is that and how does one acquire it?” After asking the second part and reading further that “doesn’t matter what kind of fluid it just has to be from a rhino.”
It occurred to me that, you’re right, even if it’s just a baby rhino’s some juice, it’d be very hard to acquire. A potent discomfort juice that would make! Must be cautious though, to much discomfort and we’d have to reclassify it “pain juice” (or whatever the next step after discomfort might be: I feel there’s a step before “pain”, but I can’t think of a good adjective for it.
Despair juice