Friday, October 9, 2015

Of pests in the house and pain in the arm

I wondered if it was a bad omen that on Wednesday I woke up with a stink bug in my hair. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but after tennis, it was downhill all the way.

At ECP, the needle wasn't drawing well, so my nurse had to move it to another vein. While she was doing this, the other one started bleeding. The new one hurt almost immediately. At this point I saw that Melissa had just emailed me to check in, and I wrote her with my free right hand that I wondered if she could get me an oxycodone. She called over but they said they had to find the doctor on call. By the time the five milligrams appeared, tears poured down my face. It wasn't enough, and when they tracked him down again he said he was off service and he would have to page the one who was on service. By the time the next 5 mgs arrived, I was almost done, and it just started to kick in at the end.

This only happened one other time. One of the nurses said to just bring my own oxycodone, but another said I couldn't do that, so I didn't. Except for a few problems, it has mostly gone smoothly. I don't understand why with everything supposedly so streamlined with the new EPIC system, your main caregiver (Melissa) can't just give the OK to get you what you need. It is on my chart.

After the episode in which the other passenger bullied the driver into stopping at a drugstore (against the rules) and then yelled at me for protesting, my doctor put in a request for me to ride alone. But there was another passenger with me in the car going back. She had some kind of mental illness...on the spectrum I think are the words. She talked almost non-stop about her medical problems and whatever seemed to come into her head. When we got near my house I asked her to stop talking so the driver could find my house.

Arriving home around 9 p.m. with a headache, I was greeted by pantry moths dive-bombing me. I had seen them the day before and traced them to a few meal worms in my rice. Feeling bad about the waste, I threw almost everything out. I thought maybe it was because I had kept some rice too long, but then I looked it up and saw that they come in with the food that you have bought. Some people are so freaked out by this that they freeze everything before putting it away.

I put the remaining cereal and rice in the refrigerator. I saw one in the dog food and put it in the garage. As of last night, some were still flying around. I swatted at them with a dish towel and squished a few onto the wall, leaving a smudge that I then had to clean. I vacuumed the cracks of the cabinet and then sucked up a couple that were on the ceiling.

As of this morning, the coast was clear.

Have an A-1 day!

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