No no no no no no no no no no!!!

OK, I guess I'm back after a very long hiatus to rant here, in my wordy medical cabinet full of balls, because they're trying to kill me. An FDA recommendation to outlaw vicodin?!? I heard that and my immediate reaction was "Jesus Christ, it's a good thing I've already taken my meds for tonight so I don't fucking freak out and throw myself off a cliff."

Fucking FDA. If they want to take away my vicodin, they better supply the fucking heroin.

Who is backing this? I bet it's the Aleve motherfuckers. Gah!
Where do I picket?! Where are the petitions?!?! Where are the addresses of the people on this FDA panel???!??!

Maybe I shouldn't have said that last one. But still, who are these people? They haven't walked a mile in my fucked up hip moccasins. I dream of stuffing a stone in their collective kidney. Let us drill holes in their teeth too close to the nerves, then give them ice cream and no root canal. I want to put pure glucose in their IV and watch them scream.

I honestly don't know what I would do without my vicodin. It scares me. A lot.

If they do take away the only thing that helps me walk like normal person, the thing that allows me to sleep on my horribly fucked up hip bursae, the drug that keeps me from stabbing my legs repeatedly in an effort to somehow relieve the horrible aching of petrified muscles, the thing that keeps me from screaming and punching walls, I will explode. And write terrible run on sentences. If I thought becoming a survivalist and barricading myself in a one room cabin with hordes of prescriptions and paintball guns would work, I would do it.

But I realize that eventually I would run out of pills and paintballs.

MOTH.ER.FUCK.ER.TWO.POINT.TOO

[Edited to add: it was an error with the nurse who called it in to the pharmacy. They are remedying the situation now. Still, my righteous anger applies to other incidents in the past and, no doubt, in the future. This doctor is still not in the clear yet.]

Just once I would like to have one month without medical drama. No new family illness, no mysterious blood sugar episodes, no bizarre side effects, no prescription refill fuck ups.

Especially no prescription refill fuck ups.

You may not remember, but christ I sure fucking do, why I broke up with my former doctor. When I interviewed for my new doctor, I discussed the whole pain medication history: how I had been on the same doseages for 5 years, how well it has worked for me, how I just needed someone downtown to be my primary care doc so I could continue what was obviously a solid, time-tested pain management regimen. She agreed that I seemed stable and was clearly not a drug addict looking for a patsy to feed her habit. We agreed that I would come in once it came time for my prescription to be filled.

I saw her on Monday and brought in the bottle of my last refill. She made a note in my file and asked if I wanted the refill in hand or just faxed to the pharmacy.

(For future reference: ALWAYS GET THE SCRIP IN HAND.)

I got a call yesterday, saying the refill was ready. I took the bus that went by my pharmacy and picked it up. I didn't bother to check anything. Then I got home and noticed the much smaller bottle than usual.

She shorted me 10 days' worth of pills. And made the pharmacist note specially that I was to "make this last the full 30 days."

OK, maybe it was just a mistake. Still? FUCKING BITCH. I can't help but think this was deliberate, that somehow she thinks that maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit and I really only need six a day, rather than the eight I've been on for 5 motherfucking years. Even if it is a mistake, there'll be 50 million hoops to jump through to get the rest and I'll have to pay full price because the insurance won't pay for it.

Once again, I can't sleep because I've gotten myself all hepped up. It's just so frustrating. I feel like I am constantly having to prove to every doctor I see that I really am in pain and that I really do need this medication. For as much as I joke about how great Vicodin is and how I'm such an addict, this is a real medication for me, like Wellbutrin or Levoxyl or Insulin, and I need it to live my life.

This doctor has known me for all of 1.5 hours. I've known this pain for 20 years. If she gives me shit, I swear I will tell her that I'm not seeing her for her medical expertise. I have other, better doctors for that. She is my means to an end. She is the cheapest way to get the medicine I need.

This pain isn't something that's all in my head. And I've been through enough that I shouldn't have to wait for hours on hold, to beg and plead and justify to some judgmental nurse with no knowledge of my background just so I can talk to the doctor and squeeze out of her a prescription for something that is legitimate and necessary. It's demeaning and embarrassing.

You know, my therapist says that a large part of my depression is fed by my insomnia. I would literally feel better if only I didn't have to deal with all this shit. I swear these doctors will be the death of me.

Random as Chicken Tetrazini

I'm not drunk in this picture, I'm just trying to be cute. Obviously, that backfired.

I haven't written for so long. I don't have an excuse, I just thought I'd state the obvious.

I am so often not at my laptop. That doesn't mean I'm not at a computer, but work has gotten both busy and monitored. Because I don't have a portable device that lets me access any social networking sites (no iThing to tweet to or Blacksomething to upface), I have started carrying with me a small notepad I've labeled my ManuTwit.

Most of the things I write in it have lost their relevance by the time I've logged back in to wherever I want to update, I'm left with a tiny notebook filled with hastily scribbled one-liners. Here and now is the perfect place for me to type them up, because I really need to post another entry, but I have nothing pertinent to say (except, of course, how much I love Joel McHale, but my brain has been so fogged since Friday night that I cannot write about the show just yet). So here goes:

Emily thought she might have had a "pass it forward" moment at the airport when the guy in front of her at security grabbed two buckets for her. Then she went into the Hudson News and lost it due to a large number of small children underfoot and a conference of businessmen hogging the magazine racks.

Emily had just sat down in her aisle seat when a guy in a snazzy business suit walked by and farted.

Emily just watched an episode of Third Rock from the Sun written by Will Forte. Whhaaaaaat?

Emily just walked by a storefront with a sign that said "Art and Pie Gallery". Oh, N. Mississippi, you had me at "pie".

Emily was late to her doctor's appointment due to a lady in a Lark failing to parallel park on the bus.

Emily wondering at the Woodburn Outlet mall: Putting Lane Bryant and Petite Sophisticates
next to each other: marketing genius or just mean?

Emily thinks everyone's "fifteen minutes of fame" is turning into everyone's reality show slo-mo farewell montage.

The day before the day

I have been using these solo nights in hotel rooms to cry myself to sleep. It's an indulgence I can't take at home, with the husband who will try to comfort me when comfort isn't what I need, and the cats, who I can feel judging me. But tonight a combination of a friend's picture and a song by Dido just brought everything tumbling out.

I haven't had many business trips lately. I spent my last one sobbing about my dying cat, and I will sometimes lay in bed thinking about how much more crying I have to do over him, but I'm careful not to think about him too much. My therapist says the biggest issue I have is my inability to grieve appropriately. My eyes will begin to well up for almost any reason: a person near tears for losing weight on a reality show, or a story about someone doing something heroic, or even hearing about other people talking about crying. And I hate that I can't control my emotions about issues that I have no real stake in. My emotional reactions makes me feel weak.

I don't hold others to that standard, but somewhere I picked up this fucked up idea that crying-- just my crying-- is a nearly inexcusable character flaw. I had a horrible day at work a few weeks ago where I felt like my head was being ripped open by the MRSA infection entrenched in my left nostril that ended up with me going in to tell the boss that I wasn't feeling well and I ended up bursting into tears. It was horrible. I felt like the worst stereotype of a weakling girl who cries at the slightest stubbed toe or dropped ice cream cone.

I wasn't planning on sobbing tonight, here in my hotel room in Seattle, but I saw pictures of a friend of mine with his new baby. He was so happy just looking at the baby. He may not even have been aware a picture had been taken.

I realized I don't have any pictures of my dad and me like that. I have a few of us posing and his smile seems genuine enough, but I there aren't any like the picture of my friend and his son. Even worse, I'm starting to lose my memory of Dad altogether. I have a few real memories-- like the time at the campfire girl performance when I was six or seven. I was emceeing some sort of talent show where I had to pull a volunteer out of the audience and Dad just stood up, as if there was no one else who could do it (and he was right. I was planning on picking him).

I remember, sitting downstairs every day after preschool, keeping an eye on the polyester mustard curtains for his silhouette, and then running upstairs to jump into his arms. But I have very few of those memories I know I really experienced where it was just us two interacting. And even fewer that were happy.

My more specific memories are things like him yelling at me because he thought I stole his cigarettes and smoked them, when really I flushed them down the toilet because I knew they were bad for him. I remember him admonishing me for urine or blood tests with sugar levels that were too high. And I remember standing outside the sliding glass doors of his hospital room the day before he died, not allowed to go in because he was in ICU and I was only 12.

I do have one very vivid memory where the look on his face showed me that he really did love me. We were staying at my grandmother's house one night and during a particularly bad nightmare, I ended up sleepwalking down the street, waking up several blocks away from the house, on a street that was completely foreign to me. I was nine and it was dark. I sat on the curb and burst into tears. A man heard me and came out of his house and called my grandma's house after figuring out exactly where I should have been (not an easy thing when I only knew her as "Nonnie," which was not her given name and helped him not at all when he tried looking her up in the phonebook). He walked me out to his front porch and we watched as my entire family came running around the corner (I had only gotten a few blocks away). Probably the only look on my Dad's face I know I can remember accurately was the one he had at that moment. He was so worried and so happy to get me back. I don't remember if he carried me back to Nonnie's house, but he probably did.

I wish I had a picture of him to post for this entry, but as I mentioned earlier I am in a hotel room on a work laptop, and the single picture I have of him with me as a baby sits on my old desktop at home. Maybe I'll update it when I get back. Maybe this incident will have passed by then and I won't feel the need to be dramtically melancholy. I was supposed to go to bed an hour and a half ago, but that one Dido song made me get up to write this. It hasn't gone through much of a filter (I usually re-read each post 50 times before actually publishing), so I apologize for any run on sentences or incomplete thoughts.

And I'm sorry for getting you involved in this selfishly dramatic post. I'm posting this and going to bed without even reading it. I'm supposed to be at work at seven tomorrow.

Oh, I'll keep going with this until I die

More phrases:

• That's what I'M talkin' about

Lists

I have had so many things I could have written about in the past 2 weeks, but my brain has lost the ability to string together many sentences longer than up to 160 characters (140 if I twittered as much as the news shows claim I should).

Phrases that should be expunged from the English language

• You go, girl.
• Back in the day.
• And whatnot.
• Give (giving, gave) 110%.
• It's go time.
• (Anyone calling anybody) babe.

Things I have seen lately that shocked me, but not too much

• A bin of fedoras on sale at the local Walgreen's
• A business man trying to enter a building by choosing to go through the other door rather than open other door for the visibly disabled person exiting through the same set.
• The hat guy from the beer festival last year.
• The link on Yahoo from E! Online's newsfeed, posted under the main headline on Natasha Richardson's death, that read "Who Gets Invited to a Celebrity Funeral-- and How?"
  

I have other lists of things, like commercial personalities and jingles that I hate, but that will have to wait for another day.

Ever have one of those immune systems?

It lives on my nose, on the tip and back to the left. It has settled also in the bag underneath my eye, which dries out my eye enough for it to hang out there as well.

No, I'm not talking about an adorable tiny wombat named Benson (He moved to Newman's right ear. They get along pretty well, except for the fights about the phone bills). I'm talking about another MRSA blossom that, like all lumps worth their salt, hurts like a mothefucker and makes everything that happens throughout the day more irritating, more painful and more "I'm going to rip the head off the next person who makes eye contact with me".

I'm sure you've had days like that.

So I'm on honkin' antibiotics and taking 16 vicodin a day (what am I - an amateur?), and I have to stick a Q-tip covered with goop up my nose three times a day. As you might imagine, I am a joy to be around.

Oh, and I passed a kidney stone this morning.

So, I've been out of the office for the past two days, writhing in pain and cursing the day I was born, and I show up at work this morning and the boss expects me to prepare for the complicated training I'll be giving tomorrow, and get the handouts rewritten, and rewrite the curriculum. And answer the phones. And respond to emails. And babysit the douchbag coworker who I used to think might be useful until it became apparent that (a) he thinks he's smarter than everyone else [this is an IT guy, you're thinking, how shocking! Yeah, I know] and 2. he hates being told what to do by women.

Anyway, I think my boss is punishing me for being out sick 4 days out the past four weeks. We're all a little passive-aggressive in our loverly little group, but pulling this "get stuff that takes three days done in roughly 5 hours, so you can stand in front of a class of high-maintenence bone-headed computer users who want to learn more about downloading jebus quote screensavers and couldn't give a hooter's tip how Outlook works" thing is fucked up, even for her.

And? On top of that? She sends me an email and says "Oh, don't forget to wander around with a candy basket harrassing people into coming up with questions for you to answer." Sweet.

So today's been a pretty "everything is sucky" day for me. I hope you enjoyed my whining. Be sure to tune in next time for a one-woman play about missing the bus and the new shoes that don't fit.