Toughing it out

Blah, blah, blah, I hate being sick, blah, blah. You’ve heard this before. Many of you have said this before.

Today I jacked myself up on Dayquil, Vitamin C, and caffeine, and proceeded to color a Sunday and a half, script a week, and then pencil a week. I even went out in public, doing the pencilling at Dragons Keep.

At the time I left for the Keep I was exhausted, but I really WANTED to keep working. I fooded, drinked, and then knuckled down and got to work. I LIKE working. I don’t WANT to be sick. And before long I didn’t really feel like I was.

I also iced my arm twice during the pencilling session — that has little or nothing to do with the sick, and everything to do with the tendonitis. It helped a lot on that front. Also, the naproxen seems to be working better than the ibuprofen did.

I’m home again, and I’m probably going to finish up that last Sunday strip. I’ve taken to coloring with episodes of Tom Baker’s Doctor Who playing in one corner of one of my two monitors. It slows down some operations noticably, but it keeps me in my seat.

5 thoughts on “Toughing it out”

  1. Honestly – was there every any better Doctor than Tom Baker?

    Glad the arm’s settled down. I’m miserable when I can’t do what I do, so I can sympathize with you 110%.

    1. Well, I find Patrick Troughton entertaining. As much as I hate to admit it I did warm up to Eccleston, never managed to like Rose though. I couldn’t really enjoy Peter Davidson’s Doctor, since I kept seeing covered in caw manure from the All Creatures Great and Small series.

      I think the whole Tom Baker is/was the best Doctor stems from the fact that for most of us in the states, he was the first one we ever saw. In fact, many of us, for a long time didn’t even realize that there were other regenerations of the Doctor.

      For me, my fascination with all things Dr Who may have started due to my hormones. The first story I saw Tom had Leela (Louise Jameson) as his companion…………………..

      1. Well – I always had a thing for Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), so I know exactly where you’re coming from.

        You’re exactly right about All Creatures as well – I lost interest in the show entirely with Peter Davison – I just couldn’t see past him having his arm up to the elbow in the back of a… well, we’ll not go any further with that.

        I could hack Christopher Eccleston, I think, as I liked him in 28 Days; maybe I’ll pickup a box of his shows on DVD sometime.

  2. Blech. Being sick sucks. But I’m glad to hear that the ice/naproxen is helping! And I hope you feel altogether better soon. 🙂 And hey, at least you’re being productive.

    I’m particularly bad at being sick – I tend to take it as an opportunity to clean house, catch up on all sorts of things that need doing, and just generally *not* do the ‘rest and relaxation’ thing people keep talking about. So I understand…

    *hugs*

  3. Beware of overuse of pain meds!

    Be very careful not to overuse pain medications.

    Having spent the last four years in pain clinics due to severe chronic headaches from a series of strokes, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people who suffer from severe chronic pain.

    Many of them started off with a normal level of pain, often from an injury.

    But overuse of even OTC pain medications can cause a rebound effect, causing both sensitization (feeling pain more readily) and amplification (the pain feels worse than it would have otherwise).

    Overuse isn’t limited to taking too much. It’s more often a problem of taking too often – and by this I don’t mean taking doses too close together, but taking pain medication too many days per week.

    As a rule of thumb you should not frequently take any pain medication more than two days a week. (For most – but not all- pain medications that is two days a week, not two doses a week.)

    And even two days a week can be too often if maintained for an extended period.

    If you need more pain relief than this schedule permits, I suggest you talk to your doctor for other alternatives. (E.g.: your type of pain may be amenable to acupuncture treatment.)

    An important warning: if your doctor suggests a regular regime of pain medication, run, don’t walk, to another doctor. Regretfully many of the patients that I have gotten to know got into their rebound pain problems from their doctors prescribing a regular regime of pain medication.

    Hope you’re able to get your pain under control. Just be careful that you don’t instead make it worse in the long term by inappropriate treatment.

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