#962 the long, awful day

It has been a long, long day.

First, I needed to refill a prescription, which I did through the handy app from the pharmacy. That's when I took a look at the bottle and noticed it had SOMEONE ELSE'S NAME ON IT. It was my medicine and my dosage, but not my name.It kind of freaked me out.

I didn't get much sleep last night. I stayed up late finishing the book I bought on Friday. It was mind candy and I wanted to gobble the rest of it up, so I did. But I paid the price today because I'm really, really tired. You would think that I would just have a Diet Coke and carry on. But no. You see, last week, I decided that I should stop drinking Diet Coke. Why, you ask? Well, I'd been thinking that I was becoming way too dependent on it, and then one of my friends told me that she had read somewhere that soda exacerbates (to make a problem worse; I had to look it up) arthritis.

Now usually when someone tells me they read something somewhere, I do a little checking on my own. I didn't do that this time, though. I just took her word for it. I figured since I was thinking about it anyway and my arthritis already sucks, I'd just give it up. It's been a bad five days.

Work was workish. I got teased for having a cranky face. I did have a cranky face and I really wasn't at my best today.

After work, I had an eye doctor appointment. Of all the doctors that I see, I dislike the eye doctor the most. I don't dislike the eye doctor himself - he's perfectly nice. I just hate having my eyes checked. Why? Because my vision is so poor that I always feel that I am failing the tests. It's so demoralizing to not be able to see the eye chart. When he asks me what line I can see and I say, "I can see a big E," that's kind of a fail. And what if I say "1" when I should say "2"?  There's a lot of pressure there.

Plus, the eye doctor has really bright lights. My eyes hate bright lights. They start to water and wince and roll. It's not nice and it makes it very difficult for the doctor to perform his examination and takes more time, thus prolonging the unpleasant experience.

Tonight's eye doctor decided that I have some sort of something bad on my eye. It's either some type of infection or scar tissue. I have to put eye drops in four times a day and go back to see him, or his counterpart, on Saturday afternoon. Do you know how much I hate to put drops in my eyes? I'm very bad at it. Anyway, if the thing on my eye is an infection pustule, the eye drops should clear it up by Saturday. If it is scar tissue, it will still be there and we'll know what it is and we won't mess with it again (he says).

Armed with my new prescription for eye drops, I head off to the pharmacy to fill that prescription and to find out WTF is going on with my medicine with a stranger's name on it. The pharmacy people don't really know what to say, so they refill the 'scrip for free and send me on my way. They can't fill the eye drops 'scrip because their computers are down.

I head over to the grocery store where the pharmacist tells me it will be about 15 minutes for her to prepare the prescription. 45 minutes later, I am still in the store, sighing loudly and feeling cranky, hungry and really f'ing tired.

The good news is that while I was waiting, I looked up the relationship between Diet Coke and arthritis and guess what? My arthritis won't be exacerbated by a Diet Coke here and there. A couple of sites I read even said that the soda may soothe arthritis pain because of the phosphate in the beverage. I did read that if you drank a six pack of soda, especially toward the end of the day, it could cause swelling (hello sodium) that would give you pain and grief in the morning. I don't drink that much. My end thought is that I should cut it back to once a week and I think I'll be ok.



Anyway...

When I got home at 8:30. MT and T were already eating dinner. They did get me something, so that made me feel better.  But then, I just became overwhelmed with everything - the eye doctor, the mountain of paperwork that I brought home to do, paperwork for the rental (really easy, but just added to list) and the fact that I didn't get enough sleep last night, and I just started crying. Sobbing really, with big fat tears rolling down my face and snot coming out my nose. Nice image, right? MT ran away, but I'll hand it to the Man/Child. He put his arms around me and put his head on my shoulder and rubbed my arm and told me it would all be ok.

Which of course made me cry just a little bit harder. Still, isn't he the best?

Well, I'm sorry this was such a downer of a post. It's a poor way to start the month, but everyone has a bad day, right?

So now it's 10 PM and I am not going to be able to sign the 70 pounds of paper I brought home from work tonight. I think I'll get up early and sign at least 35 pounds of it and finish it at the office. I just don't have it in me to do it tonight. Plus I have to wrestle with the eye drops.

I'll do better tomorrow.