It started as soon as I got to work. I was chatting with my co-workers when one of them noticed that in the fifteen minutes I'd been there I hadn't stopped pulling tissues from the box I'd grabbed. Realizing that it probably isn't normal -- or cancer -- to have your sinuses constantly draining, I decided to walk to the nearby drug store to buy some allergy medications.
Allergy medicine is, of course, a controlled substance now, so you have to grab the little slip of paper and take it to the pharmacist where they scan your driver's license, record you name in a log, have you sign the log, and then hand over the pills. So I took my slip for a nice 24 hour medication to the pharmacy counter where I was informed that they were out of my selection.
IF YOU'RE OUT OF THE MEDICATION, WHY DO YOU HAVE SLIPS FOR IT ON THE SHELF? Shouldn't the number of slips correspond to the number of boxes you have behind the counter? Wouldn't that make for better inventory control?
Oh well, I bought a different 24 hour allergy medication and at 8:30 took one of the pills. (The time will become important later.) I can't say it worked miracles, but after forty-five minutes or so I could at least get through an hour or so before having to search for a box of tissue.
Next came my call with my oncologist's nurse, who needed to give me instructions for tomorrow's port replacement. The call was scheduled for 10:00-10:15, which I had carefully worked to keep open on my schedule. 10:00 came and went, then 10:05, then 10:10, then 10:15, at which point I had to turn off the ringer on my phone and head into a meeting. When I got out of the meeting, there was a voice mail from the nurse.
Listening to the message, I learned three important things: first, while my first port had been installed without anything more than a local anesthetic, the new one was going to require a general anesthetic and so I couldn't get the procedure done without having someone with me to drive me home; second, I would not be able to work after the procedure; and third, they were expecting me for a blood draw at 2:15. All of this was news to me, being provided the day before the procedure.
So now I have to clear my calendar for tomorrow, find a ride to and from the procedure, and, worst by far, haul my butt to SCCA for a blood draw in the middle of a very busy afternoon. And since I didn't have time to really sort things out appropriately, this meant walking the mile between my work and the SCCA, which was not something I needed to be doing today.
And just as an aside, what is the point of a trolley system -- for non-locals, the South Lake Union Trolley, and yes, about every possible joke about that name was made and pasted onto a t-shirt before the city tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to get people to call ii the South Lake Union Line -- the distance between the ends of which can be walked by a
With only a few minor oddities (e.g., walking out of a fairly important meeting 15 minutes before it was over), I managed to get it all sorted, get through the day, and get home.
Where I promptly slept for two hours.
At this point it was 8:30 and my sinuses were draining like a colander again. My "24-hour" pill lasted exactly twelve hours. Needless to say, despite the instructions to the contrary on the box, I took another pill. I just wish it would kick in before I run out tissue.
It is perhaps not surprising that pretty much everyone I interacted with at the SCCA today had the same response to my presence: "Gee, you look terrible." Given that these are people who see cancer patients all day long, that's saying something.
P.S. The pile of tissue in the picture is what I generated in the fifteen minutes it took me to write this. After awhile, it made more sense to just throw them on the floor and pick them up in large batches than to get up and walk to the trash can every ninety seconds. Painting the wonder room has left the condo in complete disarray.
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