An Unexpected Prayerful OUCH!

Three days ago I took my thirteen year old son out to a few local lakes to do community service for one of his classes. The next morning I felt like an elephant had fallen asleep on my chest. Checking my local weather channel I see the pollen levels are out the roof.. Wonderful. Well, at least I now know that it's just allergies and I'm not in the throes of a heart attack.

Oak, cedar, and nettle(an herb/weed) pollen have taken over the area I live. Just like the past two years this has happened I dare not even open the windows. I huddle inside like a hermit waiting for the evil stuff to go away.

I was ready for it this year. I already had my doc give me a prescription for Benzonatate and I already had it filled. These cough suppressant pills looks like yellow caviar. I'd first taken Benzonatate last Spring when allergies turned into pneumonia and I had excellent results with it. This year, however, something peculiar occurred. 

I'm laying in bed, out of breath. Can't breathe, although I'd taken the Benzonatate over twenty minutes ago. It's pretty fast acting stuff. In so much pain, I try to pray. Typically it takes me about thirty seconds to connect with the All. I have to push aside extraneous stuff in my head and relax. Not that night! As soon as I began I connected and immediately slammed into a wall of pain so horrifying I nearly blacked out. My right eye hurt so badly I thought I could have had a stroke. Scared, I crawled in bed with my husband. (We sleep apart because he snores.) After a while my heart slowed and the pain in my eye subsided. So I tried connecting again. The same thing happened! 

Every time I take Benzonatate I cannot pray without nearly giving myself a brain bursting headache. But it's not a migraine. It's a bright spasm which occurs only when trying to pray. It's like there's a chemical barrier there that cannot be breached. Needless to say, this is not my favorite drug but right now it's either take the stuff or end up with pneumonia from hacking myself into a frenzy and/or pulling muscles in my chest.

There are a few other drugs which make it impossible for me to connect, but this Benzonatate has given me the most terrifying upset. What would happen if I kept trying? Would I give myself a stroke? I don't know. 

What I do know is that the pineal gland has a great deal to do with our connection with the divine and this particular drug can cause dizziness. That's about the only connection I've made so far. If the pineal gland is upset then dizziness and an overall disconnected feeling will take over. A lot of things in our everyday environment can cause this, fluoride is one of the most prevalent. 

Has anyone else ever experienced unease from having certain chemicals in their body while trying to connect to him?

Drugs Create A Divide

I'm prone to migraines. The kind that creep up and for three days I have trouble reading, speaking, hearing/understanding people and then WHAM! the actual pain sets in. Then I'm thinking, "Duh, you dipshit. Those crappy days were the aphasia precursor to it. You should know better by now." Do I? No. Of course not. When you have fibromyalgia all those symptoms kinda run together some days and you just suck it up and deal with it as best you can. It's hard to sort it all out.

Meanwhile, the world is spinning and you can't stop looking at your son cross eyed and he asks, "Are you ok?" Sure, son. I'm ok. Just let me go lay down and die.

Schoolwork needs to be graded, huge portfolio projects have to be planned, I have to give both boys PE, dinner needs making, and damn that linoleum in the foyer looks like a muddy bear rolled into our house because it rained last night and nobody bothered to wipe their shoes off before tracking the mud all in the house. And yet my brain hurts with the fire of ten suns.

So I finally broke down and asked my doc for help with the migraines. He gave me 50mg Imitrex. Because I have such odd responses to medications I have to be very diligent about researching before I actually ingest a new medication. So researched the shit out of this drug. The more I read the less I wanted to take one of those pills. (Now I know why my mother temporarily turned into a hypochondriac while in nursing school.) But my head was pounding and stuff wasn't getting done on it's own.

I chickened out. I suffered through it. I called my Mom-the-Nurse and grilled her about the med to get her thoughts on it. She's used to giving it in IV's and not in pill form. And other than that she says it's ok and it wont interfere with my current meds. But I still chickened out.

Then yesterday another one hit me and once I knew for sure that it was indeed a migraine and not just a stress headache I grabbed that box and popped a pill in my mouth before I could think about it too much(thus thinking myself OUT of it). I walked into the kitchen to finish serving dinner and about two minutes later I passed out cold on the floor. Fifteen minutes my ass! The literature said fifteen minutes was when it'd start to take effect but in two minutes flat my blood pressure dropped so drastically I passed out. Imitrex is a vasodilator, thus decreasing the pain of a migraine. Vasodilation causes decrease in blood pressure and when you do that too quickly.... you're on the floor.

My husband carried me into our room and put me on the bed. I opened my eyes and I'm pretty sure I drooled all over the pillow. I couldn't even open my mouth to talk. The next hour was a blur of hanging the upper half of my body over the edge of the bed to try to get blood flow to my brain so I wouldn't pass out again and consciously trying to fill my lungs with oxygen. I literally couldn't breath. I was so sleepy, though, this was pretty hard to do. Then everything from my armpits up went numb. My face and scalp was so numb you probably could have done brain surgery on me and I wouldn't have cared.

It was at that point that I tried calling out to Pleroma. When you're scared you talk to God, right? Right. So I tried. "You hoooooo... anyone there?" I called and called and called. I could not feel the slightest sensation of connection, just a wall that I felt like banging my head against, but only because my head was so delightfully numb at that point. All I wanted was acknowledgement and a hug that everything was going to be ok. But all I got was a lot of nothing.

That lack of connection, that great divide which separated us for a time- it was torture!! While I lay there on the bed praying with all my heart to be able to feel him all I could think about was the fact that I knew he heard me and I was simply unable to hear him. With as little coherence as I was capable of I prayed a bunch of feeble gibberish. It's all I could do.

My headache went away for about two hours and then came back. This particular med can be taken again after two hours but I chose not to. I was too frightened. The next morning, however, I was blessedly pain free! Usually I have a lingering 'teaser' headache for a few days afterward; teasing that it may flare up once again. This time I didn't even feel a twinge.

So would I take Imitrex again? Yes, if I was sure it was going to be a bad one then yes, I'd take it. But the experience has taught me a valuable lesson about pharmaceuticals and our connection with the divine- pick your poison carefully and take it as infrequently as possible. When you feel that great divide suddenly spring back up in your mind it is truly terrifying. You feel like you've lost a part of yourself.

Hermetic Literature: The Prayer of Thanksgiving

From the (small) Hermetic collection of works found in the Nag Hammadi scrolls, the Prayer of Thanksgiving is said aloud before a meal. Something to note here is the oblique lack of "hellfire and brimstone" threats. No mention of begging forgiveness of trespasses or who's will is supposed to be done on earth as is in heaven. Instead, we have a heartfelt piece of prose written to convey a deep and lasting affection for a father from a child. It is not meek or subservient. It is not with fearful compliance that a person would say such a prayer; it is instead with confident steadfast love and devotion, knowing that the All wants to give this knowledge and compassion freely with no strings attached.

"We thank you,
every soul and heart reaches out to you,
O name free of trouble,
honored with the designation god,
praised with the designation father.
To all and all things come fatherly kindness and affection and love.
And if the instruction is sweet and simple,
it grants us mind, word, and knowledge:
mind, that we may understand you,
word, that we may interpret you,
knowledge, that we may know you.
We are happy,
enlightened by your knowledge.
We are happy.
You have taught us about yourself.
We are happy.
While we were still in the body
you have made us divine through your knowledge.
The thanksgiving of those approaching you is only this:
that we know you.
We have known you,
light of mind.
Life of life,
we have known you.
Womb of every creature,
we have known you.
Womb pregnant with the nature of the father,
we have known you.
Eternal constancy of the father who conceives,
so have we worshiped your goodness.
We ask one favor:
we wish to be sustained in knowledge.
We desire one protection:
that we not stumble in this life."

An added note at the end of the prayer states, "When they prayed and said these things, they embraced and went to eat their sacred bloodless(vegetarian) food."