Thanks to Facebook, a painful look back

PJ with her Bouviers de Flandres in 2012

Facebook thought I'd like to look back on a post from four years ago, Sort of oxycodone-free zone, in which I wrote about a break from the excruciating pain after another tooth extraction.

No, Facebook, I would not like to see this memory, but you were going to share it with me anyway. Another freelancer wrote a story about how harmful this imposition can be to those who suffer from PTSD: They can be confronted with a photo or another bad memory of someone who abused them. It could even be one of those "Celebrate xx years of friendship with so and so."

I don't know if I technically have PTSD, but I definitely have triggers.

I wrote this on Jan. 6, 2014:

I woke up yesterday with my usual toothless-ache and took 10 mgs. of oxycodone, followed by another dose about five hours later.

Then I went out for coffee with a friend, and a strange thing happened. It didn't hurt again for the rest of the day. I thought that maybe coffee, conversation and a raspberry-oatmeal muffin at Rao's in Amherst had cured me. I felt so good that I even went to the gym.

I went on to write that the pain returned that night but I was encouraged by the break and by the knowledge that good conversation and coffee could hold the pain at bay.

Having lost 12 teeth (gradually) after my fourth transplant nine years ago, and having cried through many toothaches from hell, my dental drama loops into a whole period of time that I would rather not relive.

The only thing to say about it is that when I read about how bad it was, I have a renewed appreciation for being pain-free.

Another upsetting aspect of the post is that it brings back memories of two friends who I lost.

One through the mysterious (to me) end of a friendship and the other through the mysterious ways of leukemia that have often made me wonder why I lived and why a friend with the same disease died.

The friend whose company was good medicine during that pain-filled period is a friend no longer. I don't know exactly why this happened. We were longtime friends with similar interests, often spending a good part of the day together without knowing where the time went. When I inquired about a year ago why the friend was acting distant, the response I got was that the friend didn't enjoy my company any more. We didn't have an argument or anything like that. It hurts to lose a good friend... and to not know why. With hindsight my blog post about a good time is not a good memory.

So, strike #2 for Facebook.

Strike #3 concerns the comments. Not the content but the fact that the friend who wrote a comment died from the same kind of leukemia as mine. (Acute myeloid leukemia.) We had so much in common that we called each other doppelgangers. She too had multiple transplants, had three children, and was a runner and a Dana-Farber patient.

Patricia, aka PJ, wrote, "Just a thought. Years ago, I had excruciating back pain that turned out to be a herniated disk. The pain, which lasted over a week, despite copious amounts of painkiller and a cortisone shot, went away after I went to the hospital, was admitted and put on a morphine drip. The next day, I was pain-free and released. I went to see a neurological surgeon who advised after looking at the MRI (even I could see the bulge) that I have surgery. He said sometimes pain lets up by itself due to positional shifts in the body but that it will come back. Is there a chance that some nerve in your jaw was disturbed by your tooth surgery? It sounds like nerve pain to me. Maybe it will just go away. Feel better soon."

We frequently commented on each other's blogs, sometimes with advice, other times to share a laugh or say we understood. We had met virtually when she found my blog and contacted me. Later we met in real life.

About six months after she wrote that comment, she was gone.

I went back and read the last entry on her blog, which is here.