That is not the typical thing they do here. In fact I am very surprised the second medic complied with my request. I wouldn't have gotten it if I had not asked specifically for a tank of N2O; and while I asked, I really, really didn't actually expect to get it. And if I did, I expected to be given a few minutes on it, not to be simply handed a tank. Well, have a tank lugged over for me, parked there and the medic to clear off after giving me a quick primer on working the flow controls (although I'm used enough to using gas bottles of CO2, argon, nitrogen, O2 and other pressurised gases for chemistry purposes that I didn't need it) When they eventually DID ask for the tank back, it was because they were moving me to a ward where I could seek opioid analgesia, to the best luck I might get there. But by that time there wouldn't have been any point in my taking the tank with me even if I COULD, because the only thing I could have done with it would be take the empty thing home, and plate the inside of it with a suitably resistant metal coating to survive it being filled back up with chlorine, or SO2)
The look I got, though, when they came for the tank and then realized how LIGHT it now was, because there was nothing whatsoever left inside, that was priceless, and the laughter somewhat in the way of pain relief in and of itself! I just kind of turned round and Edit / Delete grinned at them, shrugged my shoulders
. Although of course I thanked the guy who gave it to me and brought it over, both for it in the first place, and for just leaving me to it, to read my book and suck it dry.
There are way too many real stingy, mean-spirited bastards, but once in a while, if your lucky, you run into someone like that medic. He literally, is a living saint. Truly he is. I still feel immense gratitude for that.
And there was someone else, that more than once, when I have had trouble of various kinds and have been treated like shit by others, whilst in there, even when I was being discharged, they, because I'd not been given the prescription medication i NEED to take daily even when nothing else is going wrong that I would seek hospital assistance for, or if I was, then at improper doses, and you can bet they were improperly on the low side not too much!
But, rather than give me the two or three days worth of medication coverage, such as for example, a few morphine and oxy caps, plus 6 chlormethiazole capsules, they gave me a big fucking entire BOTTLE of liquid oxy, two big sodoff great full packs of morphine 30s and some tens, plus not one but TWO containers of chlormethiazole. I'd asked for two to three days of meds, meaning six CAPSULES of the chlormethiazole. Instead I got two bottles of capsules, containing sixty caps in each bottle. Plus masses of cimetidine, clonidine, tizanidine, gabapentin and cyclizine. They even gave me a small handful of morphine 100s.
And i don't even GET those 100mg capsules of morphine XR on prescription outside of hospital. I think it was either to stop me making a formal complaint about being left to withdraw whilst in there, or compassionately motivated, as a kind of compensation, by way of saying sorry we fucked up big time, here, have these and enjoy.
And they have fucked up like that several times, and several times I've been, after asking for a small supply of the essentials from my medkit that come from prescribed sources, to tide me over a weekend for instance, or simply so I have a day or two to recuperate before making a doctors appointment with my GP, I've had the same thing done for me, including those massive hospital pharmacy stock bottles of chlormethiazole capsules. I was very surprised at that, because typically its viewed mainly, although not exclusively as an in-patient detox drug for alcoholics (and I am not one, however I do take chlormethiazole as an unlicensed seizure prophylaxis drug, because whilst I strictly speaking shouldn't have got that prescription for that indication, I did get it, and it not only works, but does so with great efficacy. It does precisely what I ask of it with very very little in the way of side effects or negatives) BUT, its a damn dangerous drug, its similar to the short-medium acting barbiturates only without their AMPA receptor antagonism, a clear-headed strong barb in other words although chemically in a class all on its lonesome. It has a very steep dose-response curve, and it will easily kill in overdose. And I am truly astonished that I was given it when already on a heavy daily dose of morphia and oxycodone plus gabapentin and the two adrenergic autoreceptor agonists I take, muscle relaxant tizanidine and autistic overload-suppressing clonidine.
And for them to let the stuff out of their sight like that in such a HUGE quantity, the two 60 count bottles, rather than two lots of SIX individual dose units...they can't have fucked up like that surely?? Lol they metaphorically speaking, pretty much gave me the keys to the pharmacy and bonked the pharmacist over the back of the head with a blackjack, poured me a stiff glass of vodka, ether and codeine syrup w/limeade, dragged a CD player and my favourite collection of metal and industrial albums over and left me to party (I call that cocktail a 'manhattan project, came up with it several years ago, its made by layering the codeine syrup, not sugar free type, but the chloroform-flavoured kind, with vodka and limeade, then floating a little shot container of diethyl ether on top like a jagerbomb. Manhattan project is my pun on the manhattan cocktail, and the US nuclear program of WWII
)
