Behold, I liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!!!!!
When I got up Thursday morning, I thought I felt tired because I hadn’t slept well the night before (damn cats), and when I was sitting in front of my computer I thought I was cold because I hadn’t put socks on as soon as I got dressed (which I always do because otherwise? I end up cold!). Before I left for my hair appointment, I was practically sitting on top of the space heater I keep by my desk during the winter, and still wasn’t warm.
On my way to the appointment, I stopped in Madison to pick up a lab slip from my doctor’s office so I could have blood drawn to have my thyroid levels checked –
Oh! That’s another reason I thought perhaps I was tired, because over the previous almost-week, I’d had my blood drawn for blood tests three times (for pre-op testing, my yearly appointment with my wls surgeon, and my three-month appointment with the hematologist). None of them took much blood, but when I realized I would be stopping for my fourth bloodletting in less than a week, I wondered if it might be making me tired.
I told the lab tech who took my blood on Thursday that I’d had blood taken three times before, and she said it wasn’t a problem.
I went to my hair appointment, and the entire time I was having my hair cut, I was FREEZING.
I left the hair appointment and ran over to Kohl’s where I bought a purse (THE PERFECT ONE, I am sure.) and a knit hat because did I mention I was FREEZING?
The entire time I wandered through Kohl’s, I swear it felt like I was walking through quicksand, and I was like “Those stupid cats! Climbing all over me and fighting with each other all night long and making me sleep poorly! I’m going to just start kicking them out of the room!”
Duh.
I headed for Huntsville for my eye appointment, and I stopped in the parking lot of Target because I had half an hour to kill, and there was nothing on earth I wanted to do LESS than wander through Target for half an hour, and then a big light bulb went on over my stupid head.
I called Fred. “I think I’m getting sick. I’m getting SICK. GODDAMN I AM GETTING SICK.” Then I whined about how I had half an hour to kill before my appointment, and I hadn’t brought a book with me (STUPID) and I didn’t want to walk through Target and Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii didn’t feeeeeeeeeeel good. And then after my eye appointment I had to wait around for anoooother hooour to wait for my new glasses.
(I figured, it had been three years since my last eye checkup, so surely I’d need new glasses.)
Fred suggested that I go settle my ass in the waiting room of the optometrist’s office and maybe they’d take me early. I figured, if nothing else they’d have magazines for me to read, so I did as he suggested.
Their magazine selection was small and old, but I leafed through an Entertainment Weekly from last year (now, who’s this “Jon Gosselin” fellow, again?) and they did end up taking me about five minutes early. As it turns out, my eyes are in a holding pattern. They have gotten neither better nor worse in three years, and I don’t need reading glasses yet. The optometrist told me that I didn’t really need to get new glasses, the old ones were fine, but SOMEONE mocked my eyeglasses when last I visited (okay, they ARE kind of small. Shaddup.) and so I felt I should get some new ones.
I glanced at the glasses on display, but I truly could not stand the idea of waiting around for an hour or having to come back on Friday to get my finished glasses, so I said fuck it (quietly, to myself), and left.
Then I stopped by Petsmart to pick up a few things, and got home as fast as I could.
I should add that this entire time, I had the heat on full blast, and it must have been 95 degrees in that car, but I was FREEZING.
When I got home, I added up the symptoms – headache, chills, spaciness, achy lungs, all-over general achiness, and to me that added up to the flu. I took my temperature and the thermometer reported that I had a fever of 100.5 (which is more of a fever than it might sound like – my normal temperature tends to run around 97.9). I took a Tylenol, went out to gather eggs and say hi to the dogs, came inside, ate lunch, and spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch dozing on and off.
I considered calling my doctor’s office to see if I could get in that afternoon, but I was still (stupidly) hoping that it was just a fluke, that I’d wake up in the morning feeling fine. I do occasionally have days where I feel a little flu-ish one day and then fine the next. But those days never come with a fever.
I slept shittily that night and woke up not sure whether I felt better or not, ’til I got out of bed and walked toward the bathroom. I showered, got dressed, waited for my doctor’s office to open.
I got an appointment for late morning with the nurse practitioner, then snoozed on the couch ’til it was time to go.
Once there, after I had my vitals taken (hint: one way to get the nurse’s attention is to tell her your temperature’s been at 105 when you mean to say 100.5) I got to go through the flu test. Have you had the flu test? Oh, it is DELIGHTFUL. They take a six-foot long q-tip and cram it up your nostril, spearing it through your brain until they hit the underside of the top of your skull, and then they twirrrrrrrrrrrrl it around while slowly counting to five.
“One,” the nurse said.
“Two,” the nurse said.
And then you know how in movies they slow down someone’s voice until it gets all draggy, and each word is dragged on and on and on until it ceases to have any meaning?
“Threeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” the nurse said.
“Fouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur,” the nurse said.
Then I think she took a call and maybe sent a few text messages.
“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive,” the nurse said.
She paused.
“Did I skip four? I did, didn’t I? Just kidding!” And she yanked that fucker out.
She told me it’d be a few minutes to get the results, and I leafed through a copy of Time magazine about the Man of the Year for 2009, and I’m pretty sure it was some financial guy (yes, a quick check of Google informs me that it was Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve), but I swear to you, during the ten minutes I read the profile of him, the one and only thing I retained for longer than zero seconds was that he had $85 in his wallet. It’s like everything else was written in Greek, and not only because it was financial stuff. Even the stuff about his family went over my head.
The nurse came back in to tell me that the flu test was negative (dashing my dreams of coming home to quip via Facebook and Twitter that I suspected my uterus had been out nights kissing pigs in hopes of giving me the H1N1 and making me postpone surgery), and that she needed to take blood for a CBC to see what was going on. I uncovered my right arm – the arm I’d had blood taken from for the thyroid level check the day before – and only then realized that it was all bruised up LIKE I WAS A BIG OLD DRUG-SHOOTING JUNKIE.
(Okay, truthfully, I don’t know how this works. Do junkies shoot up in a vein? They do, right? I seem to recall movies involving them tying off and being unable to find a vein.)
I told her I’d had blood taken the day before (sounding like A GUILTY JUNKIE I AM SURE), and she asked where and I told her (in the lab next door), and she wondered if they could piggyback a CBC on the thyroid test, and I stared blankly at her, and she decided to just go ahead and take the blood since they wanted to get the test done before the lab guys left for lunch. She took my blood, and I tell you what, it didn’t hurt in the slightest, but I immediately started seeing little black dots and felt incredibly nauseous. I had to lay down ’til it went away. The black dots went away, but the nausea remained to keep me company.
End result: they thought it was a virus, but my white blood cell count was on the high end of normal and if it was a virus my white blood cells would have been low, not high, so they thought it was a bacterial infection, gave me antibiotics and an anti-nausea medication, told me to come back if I wasn’t feeling better, and off I went.
I dropped off my prescription, found out there was a long wait, and called Fred and asked him to pick it up for me on his way home.
Then I went home and slept the afternoon away.
Friday was definitely the worst day, with the nausea that wouldn’t go away and the fucking CHILLS, god how I loathe the chills (well, also I hate the nausea). I had my electric throw wrapped around me from chin to foot, on high, all afternoon long.
And, hmmm. Look at that, we’re coming up on 1700 words about poor, poor me and my horrific four-day illness. WOE IS ME.
Let’s just say, I’m feeling MUCH better.
I did call the gynecologist’s office on Friday to tell them what was going on, and they opted to reschedule the hysterectomy. Then we had a ten minute round of figuring out what day and time we could do it, and so now I’m not going for surgery ’til February 10th.
FINE, YOU STUPID UTERUS, YOU GOT YOUR WAY. HAPPY NOW???
I can feel my stupid uterus in there, gearing up to make my next three weeks a bloody living hell.
I SHALL PREVAIL IN THE END, HOWEVER, HAVE NO DOUBT.
On Friday, Pink and Keebler were adopted – TOGETHER!
That leaves Hydrox, cooling his heels in the adoption center. I was worried that he’d be lonely (I’m sure I’ve mentioned that despite his size, he was always the biggest baby of the bunch), but they put him in with another lonely only, so they have each other for company. I’m going to swing by Petsmart while I’m out today and see how he’s doing. I suspect he’ll be just fine.
Steely Dan and Fagen are coming around a little more every day. One day, I went in to hang out with them, and Steely Dan jumped up on the cat tree and looked expectantly at me, clearly waiting for me to pick him up. Another day, Fagen (the more scaredy-cat of the two) actually climbed up into my lap when Steely Dan was NOT already there. Usually, he waits until I’m holding Steely Dan, because it makes him feel safe to have his brother right there.
Fred discovered the most amazing thing. If we take Miz Poo into the foster room with us, the boys completely lose their fear of us. They’re so excited at seeing her, that they’ll let us reach down and pet them, without flinching away. They purr and rub up against her, and she mostly puts up with it though she’ll smack at them if they get TOO much up in her face. We don’t take her in with us every time (don’t want to have to depend on her to get the boys to come to us), but every once in a while it’s nice to take her in there. She’s not interested in the kittens, but she knows if she goes in, she can sit in our laps and be petted, and she’s ALL about that, so it works out well!
“Who, US? We weren’t doing anything, honest!”
“DO I want to come up for some pettin’?”
“I guess so. Don’t get used to it, though, lady. I might bolt at the slightest provocation.”
Newt, in the kitchen. Probably waiting for Jake or Elwood to wander by. He loooooves to hold them down and bite their necks!
Previously
2009: Fred is, as I have mentioned before, an overexplainer.
2008: No entry.
2007: “Oh!” he said, with a big smile. “You’re pregnant!”
2006: A SHELL ON A STICK.
2005: Every movie and every show we watch, he’s in there deconstructing it.
2004: Memes.
2003: A day in the life of Spot J. And3rson.
2002: No entry.
2001: Blech.
2000: I now officially have too damn many books to read.