The Insanity of the United States Postal Service

Could be worse, Face, could be last year
with 7' of snow.

When you get to the fetanyl patches and can't leave your house, and the furthest you can walk is from the easy chair to the bathroom, you will long for the days of the "fivers". Just sayin, ounce of prevention/pound of cure. I want you to retain your ability to hump engine blocks around the yard : ), it's great entertainment value. So, I just want you in some pain, not total.

For those that don't know, there is pain out there that morphine doesn't come close to relieving. May the worst pain anyone here have, be a kidney stone or giving birth, and not even that with some luck. I will say childbirth looks painful, but at least it was meant to be.

The side effects become worse then the relief is sweet, and there isn't much other direction to go, sometimes they can go in and fry the nerves but that doesn't always work and some grow back. Or maybe, that burning in the disc will kill a nerve that runs out the arm or leg, [or intestine] and once the nerve dies, the muscle dies. Sometimes you see people [like "House"] with half of their thigh muscle atrophied away.

Wait until the doctors and pharmacists look at you with sympathy and not suspicion. When the doctors are willing to fight the dea for your right to pain management, and still someone is worried you might go off the deep end with a little weed. : )

Maybe you can skip right over the morphine and jump right to "buprenorphine", some say it gives them their lives back. I have one acquaintance on a morphine pump, with a steady drip into the spinal canal. The pump itself is internal and they have to fill it through the gut cavity with a needle, I think they use fluoroscopy to find the filler on the pump? She has to have someone drive her 50 miles one way to get it filled.

Merry Christmas, : )

Quote: petroglyph

For those that don't know, there is pain out there that morphine doesn't come close to relieving. May the worst pain anyone here have, be a kidney stone or giving birth, and not even that with some luck. I will say childbirth looks painful, but at least it was meant to be.

Don't get me started on the kidney stone thing. Once some women at a job were saying how it was good for guys to get stones so they could feel pain like childbirth. I was ready to scream but am not one to show offense, I just dummied up and kept working. Female body was made for childbirth even if painful. No body was made for stones.

There is a pain problem in the USA. People who take the pills for a high make life harder for the rest of us. I had to drive across the county to get a Rx because they could not call it in! Had to stop at a pharmacy on way home because I could not bear to drive the rest of the way.

Others have other pain. Guys like Favre to Limbaugh have gotten hooked. I fear we will never have something good but not addictive to fix it.

My son in law just passed a trophy. : ) I believe they said it was around 2mm. Ouch, mine felt large but was around the size of a ball in a ball point pen.

There is no one, that can take opiates steadily for very long that won't become at least physically dependent, if not addicted. There is a slight difference, but the agony of detox is identical.

I could scream at the frauds diverting their meds, it has caused a lot of grief.

Quote: AZDuffman

Don"t Once some women at a job were saying how it was good for guys to get stones so they could feel pain like childbirth. I was ready to scream but am not one to show offense, I just dummied up and kept working.

We could get together and all hope their next kids head is twice as big?

Quote: petroglyph

My son in law just passed a trophy. : ) I believe they said it was around 2mm. Ouch, mine felt large but was around the size of a ball in a ball point pen.

There is no one, that can take opiates steadily for very long that won't become at least physically dependent, if not addicted. There is a slight difference, but the agony of detox is identical.

I could scream at the frauds diverting their meds, it has caused a lot of grief.

I've passed ones the size of BBs. Right before is actually worst, have to take a leak but can't because there is this check-valve in you stopping the flow.

As to the opiates, right, but even if we had a substitute I fear it would be the same. My mother is a near pill pusher, says why feel pain or whatever. I tell her that you cannot just change things and have no effect. I know in everything from a car to carpenntry, if you change a stress point it will sooner or later break. Same with your body, trip up what the body does and something will give. Opiate, weed, booze, meth, it matters not.

Quote: AZDuffman

I've passed ones the size of BBs.

Do you know if they are calcium?

Quote:

Same with your body, trip up what the body does and something will give. Opiate, weed, booze, meth, it matters not.

And that, is just a fact.

Quote: petroglyph

Do you know if they are calcium?

Never had them checked out. They now follow pattern. Piss some blood, feel discomfort in the kidney. Later it moves down the tract and hard to make #1. Load up on water to get good pressure, then "POP" it passes. I take the blissful ignorance instead of finding a major problem and knowing about it and opening a can of worms.

Quote:

And that, is just a fact.

Simple fact that many refuse to accept.

Quote: DRich

Face, do most of the stops on your route have individual mail boxes? Where I live in Las Vegas almost everyone has a communal box. On my cul-de-sac there is five houses and one mail stop with eight individually locked boxes. I would assume the driver would prefer the community boxes. For some reason I was assigned box seven even though there are only five houses.

Would you please use your extensive connections and influence with the postal service to have my box number changed to three?

Thanks for your help.

I'm Rural, so a vast majority are individual. Even duplexes and such have individual boxes (and are sort of a PITA due to having two or more families sharing an address). I do have a few stops which sound like yours. Just a residential street, often No Outlet / No Thru Traffic, and occasionally, they'll have a cluster box like yours. The problem on my end is that I don't get paid for them. Though my biggest one is 48 slots, it all counts as one box. It takes me 15 - 30 minutes to fill it, but it's tallied as whatever the hell time they use for a stop, which is almost certainly measured in seconds. I really like that I can bang out an entire street much faster than if I was mounted, but getting paid as if it was just one box is a joke of the highest order. It also sucks being out of the protection of the LLV when it's 40, raining, with winds of 20+ knots. I suspect doing them on the surface of the sun in your neighborhood is likewise miserable, though I suspect those are City Carriers and may not have the same pay method on their jobs.

Your numbering issue is a little side project of mine to keep the mind busy (Paco, do not answer this and ruin my game =p) I suspect addresses are tied to lot numbers, and I suspect that is handled by the zoning commission. There is quite a bit of growth on my route, and I've seen tens of houses erected since I began. Hell, I've seen 10+ houses go up just this month. When acreage is bought up and parceled out into lots, I suspect they're identified right then and there, even if it's all still woods and no ground has yet been turned. I would bet (figuratively) that the houses in your division are not juxtaposed, but rather there's a bit of separation between one or two. A separation that's just big enough to stuff another house into. Someone (maybe you) wanted their house where yours stands, and that happened to be the 7th lot. Even if yours was the first house built, it's still House #7. Looking at your neighborhood, does my logic stand?

Quote: Evenbob

Could be worse, Face, could be last year
with 7' of snow.

I remind myself of this daily as I perform my ritualistic "check yourself before you wreck yourself". I worked Saturday in a hoody and that was it. No jacket, no hat; we just broke an 80yr record for the latest without measurable snow. Had to have been 55* Sat. So yes, I definitely count my blessing and haven't yet become totally unreasonable.


On the pain stuff, I'm sort of an oddball. I remember EB recounting his opium experiences, saying he totally gets how people get hooked. I've smoked it before but only a few times, as I had little to no reaction to it. I remember one really bad migraine I had they gave me demerol for. They gave me a whack and I thought it was a drug seeking behavior test. No change whatsoever. They asked where my pain was and I answered "still a 12!". The nurse guaranteed to take me out. They whacked me again and still, not an iota of change. And this was well before all of my recreational use, so it's not like I had a tolerance.

The pain, too. Maybe I broke that part of my brain from all the trauma, but it doesn't seem to work like it should. When I snapped my hand in half, the doc got his magic pad out and asked "1-10, where's your pain?" My reply, "0". He didn't know what to do. "It doesn't hurt?" "Not even a little." When he examined it I cringed and he gave me a raised eyebrow, but I explained it was because I could feel the bones grinding and it was gonna make me puke. But through all of it, I didn't even use ice let alone opiates. I just had to concentrate on not throwing up, and he shoved the bones back together without incident. A deer fly bite is infinitely more painful than that was. I don't get it.

They say drugs like ecstacy can burn out your feel-good sensors, making natural dopamine levels ineffective at helping your mood. Perhaps the same can be done for pain, though despite my best efforts, I haven't had a breakthrough on that front =p

I dunno. Vikes work for me, they're the only thing that ever has. A goddamn gift from heaven is what they are. The only side effects I ever have is an occasional mild headache and a feeling of extreme desiccation, and having to drink water is hardly a serious concern. I do develop tolerance and become physically dependent on them, but that's what my "clean weeks" are for. And the worst that happens there, other than being in pain from lack of meds, is sinus pressure and mild itchiness. Addiction? Not even close. I do like the rush (they make me jittery as opposed to lethargic) and I LOVE experiencing "pain lite", but I have never once been compelled to take them for the sake of taking them. Some people get the monkey real bad. I just don't. Not sure why. I've been on a one-pill-a-day regimen for several years with clean weeks thrown in the mix to keep them working. Since I left the casino in Aug of '14, I've been nursing a supply of the 40 I had remaining. Still have 4 left. Ain't hit the streets yet. You see? I'm good to go. So someone give me a damn bucket of them already! =p

Quote: Face

I'm Rural, so a vast majority are individual. Even duplexes and such have individual boxes (and are sort of a PITA due to having two or more families sharing an address). I do have a few stops which sound like yours. Just a residential street, often No Outlet / No Thru Traffic, and occasionally, they'll have a cluster box like yours. The problem on my end is that I don't get paid for them.

Wait a minute, are you paid by the delivery? I thought USPS was hourly? Or are you on some kind of quota per hour?

Quote:

Your numbering issue is a little side project of mine to keep the mind busy (Paco, do not answer this and ruin my game =p) I suspect addresses are tied to lot numbers, and I suspect that is handled by the zoning commission.

If I may jump in and throw some experience from my abstracting? Sometimes this stuff is due to enhanced-911. Modern Tax-ID numbers can even be assigned to streets, all for the 911 service. So it is possible as Face said that it is tied to lot numbers, but the numbers may not be as obvious as they seem because the street itself might be a "number" in the system.