It’s been sixteen days since I woke up with severe pain on my lower back and I now have a diagnosis. Two actually. I’ve been told that I suffer from Lumbar Facet Syndrome and Degenerative Disc Disease. Don’t they sound lovely?

After another sleepless night on Monday, I’ve been given codeine. I’m praying it will help me get through the night cause this pain has started testing my and Jake’s patience and the strengths of our relationship. When you lie awake at three in the morning, with pain, and someone else is sleeping soundly next to you, it’s amazing what goes through your mind. Especially since I’ve been taking pills that make me psychotic (more so than usual).

Anyhow.

It seems we’re finally gonna have a president. I must say that I’d much rather wait several more weeks than get this guy as the president for the next four years. I was quite pissed with the Supreme Court yesterday. I can’t believe they took as long as they did with the decision making. They did know that the entire nation was waiting for them. After those many hours, they didn’t even make a real definitive ruling. What a bunch of crap.

I don’t think I’ve officially mentioned Candy Land here. Thanks to Heather who’s got the board, Michael, Dinah, Daniel and I are playing it online. I’ve never played this awesome game before so I’m enjoying it tremendously. Up until yesterday, I was the major loser but Mr. Mint’s come to my rescue and I’m charging ahead. Come root for me!

‘Tis the season to give. And get. What do you want from Santa this year? Harrumph (actually it’s Jezebel) asks “Have you been naughty or nice?” Come on, you know you want the goods, it’s time to face the music.

As opposed to most normal people, I’m a huge fan of the holiday season. I love the Christmas lights (even if that makes me a bad Jew) and I love making my resolutions (even if I never keep them). For those of you who don’t like the holiday season, why not try to change your point of view this year, just to try something new? Maybe it’ll grow on ya.

Who knows?

Previously?

Goody Links
Ever wondered the history of chewing gum or potato chips? Here’s a great site for the history of just about everything. [ via MetaFilter ]

In case you were convinced that Bush won, over a month later you still can’t be sure. I wonder how many people’s careers are gonna be over before we get a new president?

Thoughts
from calm to psychotic in under 60
This morning I woke up much better than yesterday. My back was still aching but I’d actually managed to sleep most of the night so I figured that had to be a good sign. On the way to work, flurries of snowflakes were falling and I smiled. I love snow, especially when it’s sweet and non-intrusive like it was.

Until 3:45, I was having an okay day. Small frustrations of getting my schedule together were annoying but not enough to throw me off. My sign language class is offered on Tuesdays now so I was actually happy. And then….and then my so-called doctor’s office called.

I went to this doctor for the first time on Monday morning. I specifically asked how long the appointment takes cause I had a 10am class and they told me it would be no problem. No problem my ass. I got out of there at 10:25 and then I still had to call back to schedule a follow-up appointment. When I got out of my class, on the way to another, I called the office and had to call three times just to be able to get an appointment. That morning when I was seeing the doctor, I told him I really didn’t favor taking pills and he said that while he agreed with me, he still wanted to put me on steroids cause he said it would heal my disc problems immediately. So I said fine and started taking all three medications he prescribed.

Yesterday, after having spent a painful and sleepless night, I called the doctor’s office at 9am and asked them to find out why I was still in enough pain not to be able to sleep. The fucking office calls me back a day and a half later, and the stupid-ass secretary says she’s gonna put me on another medication and that the doctor wants me to schedule an MRI. To say the least, I freaked. I asked the chick whether I was supposed to take this new medicine in addition to what I already was taking and she said yes. I asked her why I needed an MRI and she goes, “Look I have no idea, I’m telling you what the doctor told me. He looked at your chart and told me to do this.” So I tell her about how totally unresponsive this doctor’s been to me and how I will have to change doctors and she goes “Well, I thought I was being real nice to you.” I must tell you that at this point, she probably could not have said anything without me blowing up.

So I hung up and called Jake who told me to call my regular doctor (who is wonderful and amazing) and ask for another doctor. I call the woman’s office and she’s gone for the day. Her very patient and kind nurse listens to me as I cry and babble over the phone about how I wanna know why I need to take even more medication and how I’m still in pain after these steroids and how this doctor won’t tell me what’s going on. I just went berserk. I’m at work and I’m weeping. I call my poor mother all the way in Turkey at 11:30pm, still blabbering.

In the meantime, I call NYU to schedule this MRI and the woman tells me I need a permission number to be able to schedule an MRI and since this is a regular procedure, the doctor’s office should have already given me one and the hospital can’t schedule an MRI without it. So I call the office back and the woman’s totally clueless and she says she’ll need a few days to get me this number. Let alone the fact that the earliest MRI appointment I can get at this moment is already 10 days away.

As I get off the phone, I realize my regular doctor did call me back and is now leaving to go home. I struggle to call her back but her office is closed so I get her paged. The paging service is a total bitch and hangs up on me as soon as she has my number. This amazing doctor calls me back from God knows where and she calms me down. She tells me that I’m probably having an emotional reaction due to one of the medications I’m taking. She tells me that she wants me to change doctors and says that I totally should feel comfortable with my doctor and gives me another name to call at 9am on Monday morning. I ask her if I’m supposed to take this additional anti-inflammatory medication the other doctor gave me and she goes “But you’re already taking an anti-inflammatory” and she says that one should never take two anti-inflammatory medications at the same time. So she tells me to go home and lie down and ignore the other medication. She’s kind, she’s wonderful, and she’s amazing.

I go to the pharmacy where the asshole doctor called for my prescription and the pharmacist says that with the current medication I’m taking he would recommend highly against my taking this additional medication. I tell him my general doctor agreed and that I refuse to take this new prescription and come home to lie down.

All of this in about 40 minutes. I am now dying with pain and that doctor is extremely lucky he’s nowhere near my vicinity.

Why do doctors in this country suck so hard? What happened to personal care and attention?

Previously?

I know I haven’t had many excerpts lately but I promise they will come back as soon as I am sane and in one piece.

When I mentioned that my back was broken yesterday, I meant it. Last night, I lay in bed almost crying from the pain. There was absolutely no possible position in which I could curl up and not hurt myself. I tried lying on my back, my stomach, my side, half leg off the bed, both legs under my stomach. None of it worked. Nothing. Nada!

So this morning after a few hours of walking around hunched and changing positions in my chair every few seconds, I started worrying that something might have gone seriously wrong. I have a family full of people with slipped disks, so I had reason to worry. My wonderful doctor was kind enough to give me an appointment pretty much right away and she told me, thankfully, that I hadn’t injured anything permanently but that I wasn’t in real good shape. She gave me some strong drugs (weee!) to take the pain away and told me that she wants me to do physical therapy. Ugh!

My experiences with physical therapy are horrendous at best. I had years of it back at home. It was okay while the guy was doing it but minutes after he’d leave the pain would start shooting up and down my spine and I’d end up, curled up on the floor, weeping. You must understand that after such magnificent memories, I am really not looking forward to these sessions. It might even be better to keep walking around hunched up.

Thanks to Heather, I had my first laugh today. Thanks for making my day, I really needed it, especially today.

I came home, all bummed out, really feeling quite miserable. About forty minutes later, I called my friend John who lives in Japan and we talked for quite a while and I am so glad we did. From December of last year to this past May, I was living in Tokyo, for work and I had no friends whatsoever. John, and his now girlfriend Liz, were two of my closest friends. John actually ate lunch with my almost every single day of those six months. We even sat at the restaurant, him reading his book and me reading mine. He listened to me whine about my job and played the typing arcade game with me until the wee hours of the morning. Liz took me to my first and second hairdresser trips. Since she knows how to speak Japanese, she talked to the funnily dressed woman who was about to change the length and color of my hair. If it weren’t for her, I would have never had the opportunity to experience the hair washing machines that wash your hair on their own. Just like sticking your head in a toilet bowl. By the time I got off the phone, I missed Japan and felt thankful for my friends, no matter how much or little I get to speak to them. Thank you John and Liz for being the best! Since they are both taking the same Japanese exam as I am on Sunday (well Liz is taking the expert level but it’s on the same day) I also wanted to wish them both tons of luck!

May you always be surrounded with friends (and no backache).

Before?