You almost lost me

The side effects were just too bad, that Linzess nightmare awhile back

It started with paranoia then gave way to profound fatigue so I went to bed.

Hell met me there, a new kind with seized spikes of lost breath and shakes

Rotational episodes this time then bouncing off the bed with gutteral screams of agony.

What to do now? Thousands have punched my life this decade of intermittent/daily misery

When I can’t even think to pray just stare blankly into my mind’s eye, lids pulled tightly closed.

The visual anomalies reminded me of another medication side effect in a Mexican hospital

When the pregnant young nurse shook nervously as she gave me medication in the middle of the night.

That night I learned the terrifying reality of black boxed hallucinations that you cannot stop or control

You hold on for dear life, wondering if you will ever come away with your sanity, if the side effect ever ends.

So Tuesday night I recognized the pattern from 2009 that ramped up to a break in mentality,

Desperately pleading for a way to think clearly, to get out of the scene stuck on repeat.

“Ozone” came into my consciousness, not spoken just present all-of-a-sudden in my thoughts

But how when I am convulsing, wretching air, terrified of injury as my head and neck thrashed so?

“Just start” came the next words, “yeah right” were mine that followed, sorry, “pray tell how?”

We found a way, my distraught beloved and I. Water spilled about and I rolled around in a desk chair unable to walk.

It was ugly alright: running a medical device that can hurt you while your head drops to bang on the table a few times midway through,

Somehow I got the treatment in me, terrified this time of doing it wrong.

You can damage your lungs you know and perhaps Steve’s if ya miss a step or two.

I drank the water: 400 ml of 70 gamma was the strongest I knew how to process

And within 2 minutes the worst of the wretched, hellish nightmare was over. Then I wept.

A few rebound shaking episodes broke through before it was all over that night

Lying on the bed staring into the darkness this time just dark no weirdness in sight.

If I did not have my medical ozone system I am convinced that tonight I would be in a psych ward somewhere not here

Drugged with anti-psychotic medications, facing weeks of infirmity that’s if the drugs could be cleared from my system at all.

I don’t respond well to medications that affect the brain or “second brain” of the gut

Even a “pediatric dose” can create a crisis ranging from gut issues to this, the worst.

Several days later the seizure threshold remains too low to function yet at my baseline

I’m doing as best I can and taking rescue remedies more often, or rather via nurse Steve, even with the episode earlier tonight.

Be wary of Linzess Gentle Reader. JJ