A tiring day as a patient

Yesterday I had an event filled day. I must say the evening before there was a little bit of snow and my husband who had not seen the need for four new tires on the car, after a sliding backwards event, agreed that tires were needed.

I said I would call about getting the tires in the morning and see if they could put them on in the morning. I called the tire shop at 8 am when they opened and got someone who said they had two and would call me back if they could get all four and install them.

Then I went off in the car with the bad tires to PT for my (damn) tennis elbow. Over the weekend, I found the skin on my elbow was all red and irritated and raw from the treatment - he does ultrasound, massage, and then some weird thing with electrical impulses pushing some prescription medicine into my elbow. Evidently the adhesive has a similar reaction on my skin to paper tape...

Then I went off to the ankle doctor to find out if there is anything that can be done for my ankle or am I doomed to have a swollen, sore ankle for the rest of my life? The answer was an MRI to see if anything has changed since the last MRI in January. If it has, maybe surgery. If not. I am doomed to have one fat(ter) ankle. I told her she said the wrong thing, she was supposed to snap her fingers and fix everything. She said she would look for her magic wand. I just want something that gets better.

So I went to scheduling and took the first available MRI - it was at 2:15AM this morning. I took it. I will the doctor in a few weeks to find out the results.

From there I called the tire store and the smart guy who runs the place said they had the tires, they could put them on, and have the car back for me by 3pm. I dropped the car off and walked home with my bag of prescription I had filled in the AM, two loaves of bread and some prosciutto for Christmas dinner in a bag. That damn bag got really heavy. I had a choice of carrying it on tennis elbow arm or lymphedema arm. I got smart and stopped at the chocolates store and got two shopping bags to split the load.

Finally at home, I did some work and relaxed until I walked back to the tire store, with no packages, and went back home, until I had to leave to see my therapist at 345pm so back to the hospital, again. She thinks I am doing fine (and am relatively normal in case you are wondering). But in terms of upcoming stressors, there is that damn ultrasound next month to worry about but I will stress about it next year so I may be less fine and less normal then. So back home, made dinner, went to bed early so I could get up at 1:35AM to go for my MRI.

I went back to the hospital for the third time in 24 hours and pulled into the main parking garage, parked in one of the million empty spaces which was right near the stairs. Then I walked down and over to the hospital and found a sign that the main doors were locked from 12-5am and I needed to enter through the ER - which means parking in the little ER lot, which is free, and saves me 10 minutes of walking through empty hall ways. Back in the car, I drove around and parked and went for my MRI. I got a nice nap while being MRIed(is that a word?). I then came home at 3:30 am and went back to bed but didn't sleep well. Which is a good thing since my husband had set the alarm to wake me up at 130 in the morning and then reset it for getting up as we usually do around 5. But when we did get up, he found that the alarm was not set and the clock said it was 9am. (Moral - do not attempt to set an alarm clock in the middle of the night.)

I am now awake - mostly but not completely. I will leave for work shortly but am not going to get in as early as I had hoped. This means tomorrow morning I will be there bright and early so I can do the planned database updates.

Tonight I am going to bed at 8pm to recover from a day of being a patient. I only had 3 appointments within an 18 hour time frame. I am exhausted from being a patient.