Tag: life Page 5 of 15

I ended up taking the day off yesterday and today, and called yesterday to get an appointment with the doctor just to make sure I didn’t cause myself any more serious damage than my wounded dignity. They didn’t have an appointments available yesterday, but I was able to get one for 9:30am this morning. I spent most of yesterday wandering from the computer to bed to the couch, because being in any one place for very long (or indeed, in any one position) was rather painful, and what painkillers I had on hand just weren’t cutting it. I did have some leftover diclofenac sodium left over from my back problems last summer, so I was taking those along with Tylenol for pain as often as allowed.

Drove down the doctor’s this morning, and was seen fairly promptly. I had an appointment with the same nurse practitioner that has been managing my blood pressure and blood sugar issues; I actually think of her more as my primary doctor than my actual PCP. (In fact, I have to call my insurance company to select a new PCP, as Dr. K. has left the practice. They told me this when I was checking in, and I realized that this really wasn’t a bother, since in the 7-8 years he’s been my PCP, I’ve only seen him about 5 times. But I digress…).

After getting the blood pressure and temperature readings out of the way, she prodded and poked and moved me about to see where the pain reactions where. Luckily, I don’t have the kind of radiating pain down my limbs that she was worried about. She wrote me out some prescriptions for pain medication, and sent me next door for X-rays. This was, oddly enough, the biggest bother, since taking them involved lying on my back and being rolled this way and that. I hadn’t had any pain meds this morning, so I was pretty sore and annoyed by the time they were done, but not so much at them (they were very personable and kept the amount of prodding to a minimum, and what prodding they did needed to be done). He told me that I’d find out about the results probably tomorrow.

I went by the pharmacy to fill my scrips, stopped by Moe’s for some lunch, then came home, took the pills and ate. I watched a little TV, but when I realized I was actually not listening to Matt Groening talk about….whatever he was talking about on the Daily Show episode I was watching, I took the cue from my body and went to bed. I slept until kitanzi came home and got me up for dinner. We watched the Dustin Hoffman episode of Inside the Actors Studio, which was amazing, and then I played a bit of WoW to pass time until I could take another dose of meds and go to bed. Which I am now going to do.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the previous post and offered their well wishes and support. It means a lot to me to know that you’re all out there paying attention and caring.

One of the things I’d been greatly looking forward to with our new apartment was its close proximity to my office. It really is “around the corner”, and I thought I might take advantage of this one some nicer days and walk. Despite the fact that rain was called for today, I decided to chance it and stroll to work this morning, to get a sense of the timing.

Now, there’s two ways I can do this. I can stroll up the street to the light, and then down a short block, and then around the circle which leads to my office building. We’ll call this “the long way”. The other way, which looks so much more preferable on the map, is to cut through the back parking lot of the office building that is two buildings down from mine. This is the route I took this morning.

Right after coming out of our complex, there’s a path leading up a fairly steep embankment. I climbed up, and thought to myself that it really was just a bit too steep for comfort, even if there was an obvious path. But I made it up ok (about 15-17 feet from bottom to top, with a relatively severe incline), caught my breath, and then had a nice stroll across the parking lot to my building. Total time in transit, from my door to my office door: 11 minutes.

At lunchtime, I strolled over to the shopping centre next door and had lunch at Mellow Mushroom, a local pizza chain that I’ve always been fond of. While I was eating and reading the back half of this weeks Creative Loafing, the sky opened up. This wasn’t a shower, this was serious sheets of rain with gusting winds. But I had time, so I leisurely nibbled on my pizza and, having finished reading Creative Loafing, leafed through their far inferior competitor, the Sunday Paper. (The Sunday Paper is an alternative weekly newspaper if it were written by your dad.) The rain finally slaked off and I strolled back to work through the now-light shower, getting wet but not drenched. It was warm enough that this really wasn’t terribly unpleasant.

By the time it was time to go home, the rain was gone, so I merrily set off for home. As I got to the top of the embankment, I thought “this really is a bit steep. I’ll need to be careful.” Unfortunately, two steps later my foot slipped and, unable to recover, I landed hard on my tailbone and slid down to the bottom. I picked myself up and shook myself off, and limped home.

My jeans were a muddy mess, and my dignity suffered a near-fatal blow, saved only by the lack of anyone watching. I have a great deal of pain in my bottom and lower back, but I don’t think I did any serious damage to myself. If I’m still in great pain after 24-48 hours, I’ll go see a doctor. But I’m afraid that walking to work is going to either have to be the long way around, or I’m going to have to find a less steep pathway that parking lot, because I’m not going down that hill again.

Ow.

I had a lot of plans for the weekend, which involved packing and doing some repair work on the apartment in preparation of us moving in July, but all of that got derailed when I got sick.

Getting sick really isn’t something I do, as a rule. I don’t know if I just have a particularly robust immune system or what, but while I might occasionally get an annoying case of the sniffles, I rarely get outright, hurts to move, something is pouring out of every orifice, its only the glorious hope of dying that’s keeping me alive, ill. Maybe once every couple of years, really, do I get sick enough to miss work.

Well, Friday, I was feeling a bit run down, and felt I might be coming down with something. When I woke up Saturday, I was certain. Spent the weekend mostly sleeping, watching TV, and playing World of Warcraft, and generally not doing anything that required the output of energy. Monday, I had my three-month checkup with the sleep clinic (we made some slight adjustments to my CPAP pressure, but otherwise everything is pretty ok), On the way back from the clinic, I stopped by my GP and asked if they could fit me in. I left with 4 prescriptions, and $75 later was home again.

Today was the first day I felt well enough to try and come to work. So I went out, got in my car, and started to pull out, and realized I had a flat tire. On changing the tire, there was an enormous metal object embedded in it. Fortunately, I ponied up for the roadside hazard protection for these tires, so it only cost me my time to change the tire, go to the Goodyear place, and for them to patch it up. Still, by the time they were done, it was after 10am, so I ended up extending my sick time out an extra half-day, and came in at lunchtime.

I still have a fair bit of chest congestion, but my nose is no longer completely blocked (Sunday and Monday nights were the first time I’d slept without the the CPAP since I got it in February), and the sore throat is completely gone. Hopefully, by the weekend I’ll be much more human again.

Good grief, I hate being sick. It’s such a waste of time.