I took too much prescription pain medicine

(Chapter 3 Memory Problems in my book)

Last night, I learned a very important lesson that I wanted to share with all of you. In April 2014, I had a very bad fall at my job. In August 2014, I had left knee surgery and in December 2014, I had left shoulder surgery both related to this fall. After these two surgeries, I was left with daily pain.

After this fall happened, I was no longer able to work at my cashier job at a retail store. Due to the severe knee pain, I stopped working at school in June 2015. I am now on disability.

I live with a memory impairment, so I usually write important things down, in order to help keep me on track. Whenever I take pain medicines, I usually write it down on a piece of paper, day, date, time and dosage.

Last night, I was in horrible pain with my knee and it just wouldn't stop, so I took two prescription pain pills around 8 pm. The bottle says that they can be taken every 4-6 hours. At around 10 pm, I took two more pills, without even thinking about it.

I went to bed, but I woke up around midnight, not feeling right. I thought that I might have taken too much of the medication. I was dizzy, restless, a dry mouth, dilated pupils and disoriented. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't. I live alone so there was no one with me while this was happening.

At around one am this morning, I decided to turn on my computer and research "drug overdose." What came up under the search, was the poison control center. I thought about whether I needed to call 911 and I decided that I would just ride it out. The websites also mentioned being seen at the emergency room. One website mentioned taking a laxative. I looked in my medicine cabinet and I found a laxative, so I took two pills.

I think that it was around 2:30 am when I was finally able to fall asleep. Unfortunately, I was only able to sleep for a short time. I woke up still feeling the side effects of the medication.

I think that I got up around 8:30 am this morning, after a very long night! I still felt extremely tired, but I think that the dizziness and other symptoms were gone. This was a very scary situation for me and one that I truly hope doesn't happen ever again!! I think for now, I'm going to have someone monitor me taking any pain medications. I live alone so I don't really know how I'm going to do that.

I've tried to figure out how this happened and I think that I know why. I forgot to write down when I took the pills at 8 pm, so when I was still in pain two hours later, I took some medicine. It must have been really bad because I have a very high tolerance to pain!

I think that one of the reasons that I didn't go to the emergency room is that I was afraid to have it on my medical records that I overdosed on medication. I was totally embarrassed and in shock that this happened to me!

I really think that between the effects of the medicine and the MCI, that I was unable to make the best decision for myself.