I didn’t get my wrap up up last week, cause my back wouldn’t let me. Monday before last, it wouldn’t let me get something out of the fridge. I ignored my son’s advice and went to school anyway, though I had him drive me, since I was physically unable to. It hurt an immense amount, and my heart was working too hard to handle the pain, according to my fitbit, but I made it through my classes without falling down.
The boy picked me up and took me straight to the chiropractor, but the pain was so bad that I threw up, cutting my treatment short.
The boy now has my permission to keep me home when I can’t walk by reminding me of the shame I felt throwing up during treatment.
Classes were online the next two days. I got a shot of toradol and a massage and started to re-enter the world of the walkers.
I was supposed to be at the pain clinic this last Monday to talk about my neck, because its pain has been nauseating lately, but of course we focused on my back instead. I’ve had an x-ray. We’re going to do another MRI, then facet injections. And we’re going to try trigger point injections on my neck too.
So that’s this Fall.
Which works, because I can’t have my hysterectomy until January anyways. How will I cope with weeks to a month of recovery in Winter quarter? I’m working that out: stay tuned.
My shot nurses weren’t available to give my asthma drug injections this week, so the allergy doctor had to do it. Thus, it took three times as long, and I had to talk her through a lot of it. “It says you only get half of this third vial. Do I just start injecting and stop halfway through?”
No.
I ran into my old shot nurse while I was there. She’s retired now and confessed that she watches tv news all day. I can guess which station, based on her complaints about how America isn’t the same anymore, about the refugees sweeping the border, about how socialized medicine will kill us all . . .
When I told her I had a great experience with European health care, she pushed back. Didn’t I have to wait for treatment? I haven’t had to there, actually. I reminded her that, here, it took me 8 months to see a migraine specialist for a problem that kept sending me to the ER and that I was having to wait 5 months for my hysterectomy.
She said I was the only person who had ever praised non-American care.
So maybe there’s hope, if she ever gets out of her bubble. I hope so. I really liked her.
In other news, I had an intense erotic dream about one of my colleagues. It’s not the product of a crush; I miss sex since I’m not dating, and my body is starting to go a little crazy.
What I most want to do is to write up a description of the dream, with pictures, to show my colleague how weird it was. But my sexual harassment training indicates that would be a bad idea.
Plus, I’m not much of an artist, and I would be disappointed if my stick figures couldn’t capture the soft but burning passion we shared.
This week is going to kick my ass. My fifth class is starting, and the SCC students always need a lot of hand-holding in the beginning. I have a bunch of medical appointments, my neighbor pays video games all through the night very loudly, I’m dehydrated from not being able to drink while I teach, this is the week we score the Upper Division Comp Exam, and the first all-Atwood conference is this week. I’m doing an introduction, chairing a panel, and delivering a keynote. All of the Atwood stuff is very early in the morning, since the conference is being coordinated virtually from Germany.
Blessed be the fruit.
