DD-thats great. There can't be many GPs these days who would so much as bother to give a wounded animal an antiseptic wipe. Difficult enough to get house calls, I have, but only in situations where hospital/ambulance treatment is definitely not needed, but at the same time, I was completely unable to move off the sofa (to the point of having to piss in empty coke bottles and hope to fuck I didn't have to drop a Theresa May before I had healed)
But fucking hell, that is one great doctor, for spending over two hours,even after running out of thread to stitch your dog's wounds, giving the dog pain relief, I wish doctors these days were all like that; that it were the rule instead of the exception.
Makes me reminded somewhat of a doctor I used to have (he retired,due to severe depression)
At the time, I had a real problem with benzos, started with severe anxiety, led to something nastier by far. He helped me detox, by giving me a large bottle of chlormethiazole. The dr in question knew I was a chemist and pharmacologist with an excellent knowledge of toxicology. Its an antiquated sedative-hypnotic, that acts very much like the barbiturates do, and is very, very intolerant of overdoses. At the time, the benzo problem I had, it was going to leave me dead, probably sooner rather than later.
And I'm pretty sure that his detox method was based on 'kill or cure', either I'd manage the unsupervised taper, knowing the nature of the drug being used for the purpose, or I would die, much sooner, although quickly and painlessly, just KO and never wake up.
I went on one binge, initially, thought 'last time, and I'm done', for two or three days, just chilling, smoking hash, getting plenty rest in before the hardship, although it turned out, physically, there was to be no horrific benzo withdrawal hell, the chlormethiazole worked wonderfully.
He knew, I'm fucking certain he knew, that I'd go on a binge, once at least. And in really high doses over a protracted period of time (I.e several days), a metabolite, or metabolites, build up in the body. Chlormethiazole, chemically speaking, is a vitamin B1 (thiamine) derivative, made by cleavage of B1 using sodium bisulfite or metabisulfite, and CAREFULLY removing the other fragment, there being a vast difference in the water solubility of the 4-methylthiazole-2-ethanol cleavage fragment which is desired, and the water solubility of the pyrimidine half of the thiamine molecule. The substituted pyrimidine bit is just plain outright fucking virulently noxious stuff. It throws a spanner in the works of biochemical processes that require vitamin B6 as a cofactor; which among other things, includes biosynthesis of the neurotransmitter GABA, which is, aside from the less major of a player; glycine, the only inhibitory neurotransmitter we've got. And the result of poisoning by toxopyrimidine, as the compound is named, is neurotoxicity and it is a very potent, powerful convulsant.
Really, really nasty stuff.
Anyhow, the thia- bit in 'thiamine' denotes there is a sulfur atom in there, which there is. And the metabolite or metabolites, are no problem at clinical doses or recreational doses that aren't protracted (acutely in the quantity required would just kill you), but if taken in really large doses over several days, this AWFUL sulfurous stinker of a metabolite is produced in the body, and it comes out in everything...EVERYthing.
Piss, shit, saliva, sweat, tear fluid, earwax, even nasal fluid! it comes out of everything and anything that can be exreted. And its potent enough, stench wise, to make people quite literally, from a few hundred meters down the street, turn round, cross the road and sprint in the opposite direction.
And there is absolutely fuck all you can do about it, you can't get rid of it. You have to wait until it has all gone of its own accord. No amount of bathing, showering, deodorant, nothing on the face this earth will get rid of it that won't also exterminate the host.
Result? his kill-or-cure last ditch effort, plus aversion therapy (I.e the heinous mercaptan-type stygian reek from Tartarus's own sewers), it saved my life, got me off the benzos with no physical withdrawal whatsoever, and I'm no longer a psychological addict to downers either. Many users of many drugs find that even a tiny taste of whatever it is they used before stopping using whatever it was results in them ending up right back where they started; an former alcoholic has a pint, and bam! full blown habit, 2 liters of vodka a day plus a 5th in the morning and middle of the night just to keep from seizure.
But I can use GABAa agonists when I need them (and I DO need them, chlormethiazole as it happens, although I also have a benzo script (nitrazepam), because have seizures, and I need an anticonvulsant, the nitrazepam I take considerably less often than the rx says to take them, I take a much higher dose, much much MUCH less often, no more than a couple of times a week, it just takes quite a hefty dose of most downers to actually put me out, always has been that way-not only have I not much of a sleep cycle, but my body doesn't seem to want to be MADE to sleep either.
Definitely prehistoric-oldschool that doctor. Didn't fuck about, didn't stigmatize patients with needs for things like pain control, made sure what needed to be done, was done. And he CERTAINLY would never permit medical or government politicking to affect how he treated patients. He did what the patients needed him to do to provide the best medical care he could provide.
I don't doubt that if anybody else knew, about what he did in my case, he'd have not only been fired, but quite probably prosecuted and potentially sent to jail for negligent attempted manslaughter if there is such a thing. But we both knew how things were going to play out if I kept on as I had been going. He didn't give me any warning of the terrible sulfurous mercaptan or alkyl/aryl sulfide whatever the fucking pus-slobbering smallpox-infected corpse of baby jesus weeping damnable abomination of a metabolite was. One of the vilest and most powerful chemical stenches I have ever smelled. I have smelled things that were worse, or could carry further, but that one was up there as one of the very worst of the worst. Can't compare to say, pyridine up close (it doesn't have the tremendous RANGE that the sulfurous chlormethiazole metabolite does but its truly foul, like acrid rotting fish thrown onto a stack of burning car tyres soaked in stagnating piss, a single drop in a liter of water is more than enough to make you retch if you were to take a sniff, if not actually blow chunks all over the floor), or worse still, an isocyanide (they are NOTORIOUS, a considerable number of chemists,both in a salaried position, and those who are autodidacts who freelance, isocyanides generally lack the lethal toxicity of cyanides, but they REALLY stink something foul. I've read a quote for example where someone was describing them, and they said 'there mere opening of a flask of allyl isocyanide was enough to foul up the room for several days'
Along with plenty of references saying 'indescribably foul and extremely distressing'. Which is somewhat colourful and rather strong descriptive language for a salaried 'in officialdom' chemist. Although its true, they do indeed defy description, there just isn't anything else like them, they are in a unique category of horrendously offensive reserved for isocyanides and isocyanides alone. And extremely distressing,utterly foul, doesn't do them justice. Has to be smelled to be comprehended. Not a foul stench, but a brutal physical and sexual assault upon one's nose and olfactory bulb. Nasal fucking gang rape by gyppos. Only not nearly so desirable or tolerable.
