How can you not wake up in a good mood when, the night before, your team made a comeback in merely seconds to beat their biggest rival? Even though I woke up exhausted from staying up late watching said game and then celebrating afterward, I bounced into work with an energy that no one else had. (Literally; my boss is a Patriots fan and my co-worker is recovering from the flu.)
After work, I dragged Mike with meMike came with me to the rheumatologist, which sucked a little because I ended up being late and I couldn’t pay my copay because I am so horribly broke. I made a promise to bring them a check on Friday (AKA Pay Day; biweekly pay SUCKS), and then sat down to wait. While we waited, he flipped through an old issue of Sports Illustrated with Tom Brady on the cover and I edited some of my novel. We laughed at Tom Brady, especially because the cover said something about how awesome the Patriots are (but really, they lost to the Colts Sunday night, mwahahaha). I kept editing, he occasionally found himself accidentally watching General Hospital (it was on TV in the waiting room), I confessed my childhood crush on both Maurice Bernard (Sonny on GH) and Steve Burton (Jason on GH), traumatizing Michael forever.
Miraculously, even though I was late, I actually got in pretty quickly. Usually I have to wait forever to get in to see Dr. Greco. He did the same routine as always: asked me where the pain is, checked the fibromyalgia points and got nothing, talked about my symptoms, and then we moved on to the different doctors I’ve seen and he also asked me how the Cymbalta worked for me.
“It kept me up. For four days in a row. And I was all jittery and hyper. So I stopped taking it, ’cause I needed some sleep,” I said, afraid that he might tell me I needed to keep taking it. I prepared myself to argue.
Instead, he just said, “okay” and we talked about the other medications I’ve tried. The only one that hasn’t made me crazy and does slightly work is Tramadol — but it makes me HIGH. Like, so totally stoned. I cannot stress enough how HIGH it makes me. (It’s kind of awesome because it’s relaxing, but kinda not awesome because I’m only good for sitting around and watching DVDs or TV, or sleeping. I feel like I’ve said this before.)
Anyway, he asked me to call all of my doctors to get all of my records transferred to him. Then he wrote fibromyalgia on my paperwork for yesterday. “I’m gonna write fibromyalgia here, even though that’s not what you’ve got,” he said. I didn’t argue it, even though I so desperately want a real diagnosis, not a stand in. He said that I’m harder than an episode of House, and that this is going to take some detective work. I said that every doctor I’ve seen has dropped me or handed me off to someone else, and he said that he’s not going to do that, that he’s going to do the detective work.
Mike and I left the office and medical building shortly after. I asked him if he minded going to Southern with me so that I could sell my textbooks, and we went. I ended up getting $198 for them, which is good considering I paid about $300, maybe $400 altogether. I even sold the Praxis workbook I’d bought at Barnes and Noble; their return policy is fourteen days, and it’d been well past two weeks when I dropped out of school. I got $2 back for it, which is better than nothing.
As we got closer to his house on the way back, I asked him what he wanted to do next. Even though we’d spent the afternoon running around, I liked being with him. My novel called, but I also didn’t want to leave his side just yet. It’s rare that we get any kind of alone time together, since we both have big families and live in crowded little houses. We decided to go to Olive Garden, because we both craved pasta and I had the extra cash. We had a funny waiter and got the chance to just relax and hang out. We talked about our grandparents and our favorite childhood memories, and our waiter made fun of me because I couldn’t finish my dinner after soup and bread.
After eating, we were both exhausted so I dropped him off and went home to take a shower and do some writing. I didn’t do a lot of writing. (I forgot to post the daily toll last night, too, so I’ll try to remember to post it later.)
I had a good day, though, and hope today will be another good day (and more productive with my writing)!
