Saturday Stuff

A lot of really good things happened on Saturday.

I brought my wedding dress to my favourite seamstress for alterations. I was worried because the dress is beaded in the area that needs to be altered, and not just anyone is willing to fuss with undoing and redoing beading by hand. But Mrs. Lee didn't let me down. Her face lit up with delight when I unzipped the garment bag. "So pretty!" she exclaimed, "Where you buy? How much?" And when I told her: "Ah, good price, good price." Of course she can do the beading - she has mad sewing skills! So that's one worry off my mind.

I had dinner with my step-dad. We got off to a great start. He rang my doorbell to let me know he'd arrived - I could see the rental car waiting right behind him. (His regular wheels are in Florida for the winter. It's a long story.) He told me he'd wait in the car and as he turned away I shut the door to put my coat on. Moments later I opened the door to the car that was waiting outside my home. The light in the car came on - there was some young Asian guy in the driver's seat saying "No no no!" and pointing emphatically to another car, just down the common driveway. I laughed at myself. Nice one. My step-dad apologized for failing to warn me that it wasn't him parked outside my front door.

Later we closed the evening with a satisfying symmetry. A friend of his who he hadn't seen in a few years was in town, staying with his daughter. My step-dad remembered that she lived in the corner house at the end of a certain block. I waited in the car while he went to pick up his friend to go for coffee after dropping me at home. The door was opened by a suspiciously young, good-looking guy. There was a moment of conversation, and then my step-dad returned to the car, smiling and alone. Wrong block, wrong house. I guess it was that kind of night.

The point of all that was for us to have a nice dinner together, which we did. And for the first time in more than a year I found that I could be with him without feeling angry, or bitter, or resentful. Since we had our heart-to-heart talk the last time he was in, despite him still being a complete doofus about how he's handled moving out of my mom's house, I've slowly but surely forgiven him. Or mostly so. And that's a wonderful thing to have discovered, because I wasn't even aware of it until last night.

I wanted to point out all those good things, because other than that, Saturday was difficult. Although I haven't written about it in a while, I'm still having aches and pains on and off, and Friday night was a bad one. The temperature in the morning was 10 degrees C, which fell to -15 degrees C by walk-home time. Even though I brought a bag of extra layers with me to work and wore them on my walk home, my body couldn't handle the extreme change. By Friday night I was on the couch, aching from my shoulders to my toes.

I haven't been able to tolerate Ibuprofen since a few years ago. I switched to Acetaminophen (Tylenol) because that's supposedly easier on the stomach. That worked for a while, but then came the day when I took one little tablet, and got some very familiar tummy pains. I got scared off it for a while, but in the back of my mind I wasn't sure - maybe it was just a fluke and I should give it another chance. On Friday I was in enough discomfort to take the risk.

At first I thought I was OK. The pain receded within 20 minutes and my tum was fine. I was like "Score! Painkillers rock!" But it was not to last. In the middle of the night I felt the reaction come on, and all of Saturday was a misery. My stomach hurt enough that I couldn't ignore it, and at mealtimes instead of getting hungry I got nauseous. For hours and hours it was relentless. I know it could be worse, but it did get me down. The part that was most dispiriting was knowing that one more avenue of relief has been permanently closed to me. With all the other major NSAID's (ex. Aspirin) clearly warning of stomach upset in the side effects, I am left with no option but to slather myself from head to toe in Rub A535, which is better than nothing, but it's not a useful remedy if I'm anywhere other than at home. I can't very well strip down in a washroom stall at work and goop up my back under my proper work shirts.

Here's something: I have a surprise appointment with a rheumatologist tomorrow. I didn't realize that my g.p. was going to refer me. I had blood tests done in early December, and didn't hear anything back from him, so I assumed that the numbers didn't indicate anything useful. When I got a call at work on Friday stating that I had been referred, I was totally surprised. So, maybe my blood tests showed something significant after all. It would be good to have an actual diagnosis, and possibly even some treatments that don't hurt me. I'll let you know how it goes.

That being said, you might not hear much from me this week. There's a high likelihood that I'll be working with half my usual staff all week, as two ladies in my department both came down with the symptoms of a vicious cold that's making the rounds. I'll probably be working late every day, and running off my feet the whole time. So, have a good week, and keep your fingers crossed for me please, around 2:00 pm tomorrow, Eastern Standard Time. I'll be back with an update as soon as I can.