(no subject)

[the_rck]

It's been pointed out to me that my last entry was about being dreadfully sick and in pain and that I gave no follow up. To remedy this, here's a bit about the last few days.

Thursday was miserable. I had the misfortune of forgetting that UHS opens an hour later on Thursdays, so I had to sit in a coffee shop for an hour, waiting for them to open. I saw a nurse practitioner pretty much immediately after they opened. My second misfortune came from the fact that that morning's staff meeting had included instructions about not prescribing pain medications unless one knew the patient well. That meant that I had to wait for my primary care doctor to be available.

I finally saw her about 11:15. She wrote me a prescription for vicodin because she knows me. Filling it took another twenty minutes. By that time, I'd been chewing gum for nine hours. I don't think I'll be finishing the book that I partially read in the waiting room. At this point, it's too tangled up in memories of pain. Fortunately, it's not a book that I cared much about, just a popcorn romance/mystery. I ended up taking both the vicodin and some anaprox. Then I napped during the afternoon.

Friday ended up miserable in a different way-- Scott gave himself food poisoning by eating some apple pie that had been sitting on the counter since Thanksgiving. That meant that I was in better shape than he on Friday. I got Delia to pre-school while he got himself to the doctor. (UHS is about three blocks from the pre-school, but he was too sick to be willing to have us in the car just then, so we took the bus.

The pre-school was having a Scholastic book sale as a fund raiser. cherydactyl was working the sale, so I sat with her (at enough distance that I could hope not to infect her). I spent more money there than I intended, but it was all on Christmas presents for the nieces and nephews.

Saturday and Sunday were blurs as Scott and I both tried to recover and to keep up with Delia. Yesterday, I managed to work the pre-school lunch club (one hour with ten four year olds and two other adults) and to set up the December book display for the pre-school. December's easy because the Christmas books fill the entire display and are all shelved together. That meant that all I really had to do was to shelve the books from the November display and re-alphabetize the books that were out of order. It took a lot less time and energy than usual.

Today, Delia and I had lunch at Panera with cherydactyl and her younger daughter. Then we went shopping for used clothes. I bought Delia nine or ten dresses for $25. Three of them are too dressy for everyday wear, but she loves those best. The others will work for pre-school. I can't seem to persuade her to wear pants or to wear jumpers over long sleeved shirts even though we have lots.

I definitely still have the cold. I have to keep taking Sudafed all the time, mucinex during the day and cough medicine at night, but I'm now able to do without the pain killers. I also have a shorter temper than usual and have blown up at Delia twice. One of those two times, I probably still would have if I'd been feeling better because we had a time deadline. In the other, I'm not sure I would have.

Comments

[melallen.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't persuade my daughter to wear dresses (unless I have lollipops) for the life of me. She lives in leggings and long sleeved shirts. Amazing how different two four year olds can be :)

[the_rck]

My current theory is that she's copying me. I mostly wear dresses because it's easier to find dresses that fit than pants. I do wear stretch leggings under my dresses in the winter, so I've been working to persuade Delia that pants under dresses are proper fashion when it's cold. (Little girls' dresses are so short that many of them look more like long shirts to me. Four is too old *and* too young for her to be flashing her panties at strangers.)

And it is amazing. ::grins::

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

I think it may be a four-year-old thing. When my son Arlo was in four-year-old preschool, I noticed that every single girl in his class always wore a dress to school. When I asked some of the moms about it, they said that their daughters insisted. So my theory is that it's a stage that little girls may go through in the process of figuring out their gender identity. Though a few years later my daughter Kendra, when *she* was four, was happy to wear either dresses or pants. Go figure!

We usually keep Kendra in dresses that are a couple of sizes bigger than her other clothes, so that they do cover more than they are designed to. She does wear pants under dresses in the winter, and shorts in the summer. I keep wondering that they don't they make slips for little girls. My mother taught me that a female in a skirt *always* wears a slip, but I've never yet found one in my daughter's size. Maybe nobody wears them anymore except for me and my mom; I don't know.

[the_rck]

I was taught that wearing a slip or not was based on what one planned to wear under it and on how thoroughly opaque the cloth was. That is, slips are for not showing off one's underwear and for keeping one's hem from trying to climb to one's waist or wrap around one's legs.

I don't wear slips most of the time because my dresses and leggings tend not to have too much static with each other. Skirts that flare a bit help with that, too. I'm not sure how these dresses would behave if I wore nylons.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you are feeling better!

Interesting about health services making a point of being careful who they are prescribing pain medications to. Back a zillion years ago when I was in college, I once had a roommate who for a hobby used to go to Health Services and request controlled substances, just to see if she could get them. She always could. Then she would come home and gloat about what she'd gotten this time. She kept a small bedroom drawer full of bottles of all sorts of potent stuff -- pills and injectables and all sorts of interesting things. Sometimes I'd find her and her boyfriend sitting at the kitchen table injecting things into each other. He was diabetic, so he genuinely needed insulin shots. My roommate, on the other hand, I have no idea what he was injecting into her.

They were both in the seven-year medical program, so as far as I know they are both doctors now. I find that a little scary.

[jss]

First, it can't have been a zillion years ago; therck and I aren't that old yet! :-)

Second, I've often heard that doctors (especially while in med school) tend to be the ones who smoke, drink, do drugs, and all the other bad stuff You're Not Supposed To Do, so the fact that these two were both Flexies doing that... doesn't surprise me.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Well, I was in the same seven-year-medical program as my roommate, and I never did any of that bad stuff, and neither did the vast majority of our classmates.

I am curious what ever happened to them, so I Googled her and her boyfriend just now. She has a common name that she shares with somebody much more famous than her, so I only found hits on the more-famous person. Plus it seems likely that she got married and changed her last name, anyway, so the name that I knew her by may not even *be* her name anymore. The boyfriend has an unusual name, so he was easier to find. He seems to be a pediatrician specializing in eating disorders. You can find articles on the web that quote him talking about scary dieters in elementary school. I tried Googling my old roommate's first name with her boyfriend's last name, in case they eventually got married, but I didn't find any likely hits, just someone else with that name.

Interesting.

TheRCK, you wanted me to hijack your blog with this tangent, right? :)

[the_rck]

I don't object to tangents. ::grins::

I'm sure that there are a lot of med students who don't do stupid things. I can think of a few I knew who didn't. Still, med school and the clinical work that follows are a particular kind of prolonged hell. It wouldn't surprise me that some folks would be self-destructive while doing that.

[jss]

> I was in the same seven-year-medical program as my roommate

It occurs to me that I actually know (and have fallen out of touch with) the roommate of whom you speak, though I don't remember who her boyfriend was. Had you not said anything, I'd've not known anything about her hoarding pills or "doing shots." But then, I was always gone from any party by the time anything beyond marijuana or ethanol made their appearances so without anyone telling me anything I'd've not known who among our extended friend-group was doing, er, controlled or illegal substances. (I was so naïve.)

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Huh. Actually I rather doubt that you know her. I lived with her for part of the year before you were a freshman, and I don't think her name would have ever come up in conversation when we were talking. Do you have my current e-mail address? I'd be happy to take this conversation to e-mail and name names.

[jss]

Done, I think. I'll let you know here if the mail bounces. :)

[the_rck]

::laughs:: That's right. We're not *that* old yet!

I wonder if some med students do that sort of thing as a coping mechanism to try to make surviving the whole process easier...

[the_rck]

It's tightened up in the last twenty years, I think. There's a lot of scare out there about dependency and addiction. To the point that people with chronic pain can have real problems. It also comes up as a potential malpractice issue, but I think the primary concern is governmental agencies.

Your roommate rather astonishes me. Of course, people being stupid often do astonish me. ::shakes head::

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

She astonished me too!

[scodiddly.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... pie on the counter gives food poisoning? I dunno... baked goods with a lot of sugar and acid are pretty safe for at least a couple weeks at room temperature. I'd be more worried about meat and/or cheese than a fruit pie.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, I know you! You know TheRCK? Wow, the world is a very small place sometimes.

How've you been?

[scodiddly.livejournal.com]

I know TheRCK through the Smithee Awards people. Actually more on LJ than in person in this case.

Me? A couple years ago I moved to Chicago (the burbs) following the career changes from computers and back to audio. Doing fine, mostly used to the new locale.

[the_rck]

We suspect the pie because it's the only thing that he ate that wasn't also eaten by someone else. The other potential culprit would be beef contamination of his food (he's extremely allergic, and no one else in the house is), but the reaction wasn't strong enough or fast enough for that, and nothing he ate was likely to be contaminated. Contamination's always possible, though, since something as trivial as a dirty pizza cutter can do it.