I guess all that work with the food mill yesterday took a toll on my messed-up neck disk because bright and early this morning I yawned, felt hot pain into my shoulder blade and that was that. This time it was really bad, and with already being sick I can say I won't be doing much of anything for a while. Mr. Eat The Blog took me to the doctor for a heavy-duty shot of muscle relaxers and a stack of prescriptions. Pain killers, Prednisone, muscle relaxers=puke-a-rama. That's OK, at least I was able to get some rest today. I'm on my own tomorrow, so that means making due with Advil until he gets home from work. I know some people can take pain medication and function-but I am not one of them. As long as I keep somewhat still and don't do too much reaching, I think I'll be OK. If not, he has vacation days and can work from home. At least I shouldn't gain too much weight taking Prednisone because I already can't eat. See, there's always a silver lining.
A few nights ago, I stretched out my leg and heard the most horrible crunching coming from my left knee. The pain was terrible, but it let up after a day or so. I mentioned this to the doctor today who kind of shrugged and reminded me that I'm not a kid anymore and that eventually things wear out. I was reminded of when my mother broke her hip.
We were for years convinced she slipped because she'd had a few too many gin and tonics, but my mother insisted that she simply got out of her friend's car, and was walking to our door when he leg went out from under her. Until I started having pulled muscles reaching up to wash my hair, I couldn't understand how something like that could "just happen." The hip bone was so deteriorated when it broke that the pins they tried holding it together with only lasted a few months and she had to undergo another surgery to replace the whole hip. She was fortunate to live in a major city and was one of the first people to have a total hip replacement done with fancy materials (titanium). Once a year, she'd have to visit the othopaedic surgeon and he'd send in a report on the status of her hip.
I feel somewhat bad that I wasn't more sympathetic to what she was going through. Two hip surgeries, spine surgery (that left her in worse pain for the remainder of her life), heart disease, diabetes, kidney cancer...you mane it, the poor woman had it. Sometimes I feel a bit foolish complaining about lupus and rheumatoid arthritis because hell, at least most of the time my illnesses are manageable. On days like today, where I'm laid up and medicated out of my head, I wonder how she managed to drag herself out of bed-and put on makeup. Always with the makeup, she was. She'd made me promise that if she ever ended up in a coma I'd come and pluck the stray whiskers off her chin and slap on some lipstick. Anyone care to volunteer for chin-plucking duties? I don't care much for lipstick.
I'm actually in pretty good spirits, considering. I'm thankful too. In many places, if this sort of thing happens to you they don't give you anything stronger than Ibuprofen to treat it. I know I don't exactly give the impression of a drug addict, but in some places it does not matter. I've been in emergency rooms that have pre-printed signs on the wall telling patients they do not prescribe pain medication. I really am fortunate that as inconvenient as this is, at least I can get it treated. A new policy at the clinic has them swiping the magnetic strip on your driver's license as a guard against identity theft. I wonder, if that is also used to track where a person has received pain treatment. It would make sense.
Lent will be here soon, and this year I will be doing Friday Lenten cake recipes again. Those recipes get a fair number of hits from year to year, though most of them tend to come from European countries where the tradition of baking without eggs, butter and milk during the Lenten period is still observed. The recipes are also helpful to people with dairy allergies, and vegetarians. If anyone has a favourite recipe for a Lenten cake they'd like to share, I'd be happy to post it. I'll spend the next week or so doing research for new cakes.
Anyway, I'm really glad I baked a massive batch of chocolate chip cookies yesterday because once the Prednisone kicks in, I'm going to need them.
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