Monthly Archives: July 2009

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Back from vacation…

Which was “interesting” at best. A lot of good, a ton of bad but overall it was pretty awesome! I hit the ground running as soon as I got into town at 9:30am on Saturday. My mom’s birthday party started at 3pm and I was going to make her cake so I had a really crazy busy morning but I managed to pull it off, cos I’m awesome like that! My mom’s party was great, she loved it. It was nice to see family I hadn’t seen in a while, along with some old friends and of course get shamelessly wasted lol.

Then… On Sunday evening after I recovered from my hangover lol we went out to the bar for a while and that was OK. Monday I headed over to my sisters house for dinner and I had something stuck in my problem child tooth and it was driving me crazy! So I finally managed to dislodge whatever it was and I still had that “pulse” you get with nerve pain but I brushed it off and asked my sister for some Advil. After getting to my mom’s place it was still persisting and I took more painkillers and finally managed to get to sleep that night because we had plans to go to the movies on Tuesday because mom and I wanted to go see Ice Age 3 in 3D. So when I woke up Tuesday morning I was a little swollen and sore but again I blew it off. We went to see the movie which was awesome in case you wondering 🙂 I’d never seen a 3D movie before and it was a lot of fun. After the movie was over, my mom noticed my face had started to balloon out and I headed over to the clinic that was thankfully across the street.

Turns out I have a bacterial infection in the soft tissue(s) in my mouth because that bitch dentist took TOO much of my tooth away leaving my mouth open to exposure to bacteria and deadly infections. So after shelling out $32.00 to see the Doctor since I was in another province and don’t have Ontario coverage anymore (I will get reimbursed from the RAMQ) and then headed over to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled. I was put on a very aggressive round of antibiotics and painkillers. The antibiotics are only meant to be taken once a day but I have to take them 3 times a day because it was that bad. I was given percocets w/acetaminophen for the pain/swelling which didn’t really do anything for me. I shouldn’t be taking prescription narcotics but the pain was SO EPIC that I had no choice. Thankfully after Tuesday night/Wed morning I was OK with Advil save for one time during my tattoo appointment.
Tuesday afternoon:

This was the HORROR I woke up to on Wed morning. (see gallery for the awesome pictures)

I’m not a vain person but I cried when I looked at myself in the mirror. I have never ever in my left ever looked or felt SO hideous! I didn’t want to even leave the house but alas I had a tattoo appointment that afternoon and when I left the house I was wearing big sunglasses and a hoodie to hide my face best as I could. Tim was appalled when I walked in there. He says to me “what the fuck happened to you!?” so I told him that I did have an infection to which he said he wasn’t touching me until I told him I was on meds for it to which he relented thank God. So that kind of ruined my tattoo appointment because I felt like utter crap, looked like a freak and wasn’t feeling well because of the antibiotics but I tell you the painkillers really helped during my tattoo appointment especially since I had part of the underside of my arm tattooed. So needless to say that didn’t suck too bad lol.

I didn’t do much for the rest of my vacation except hang out with my best friend who doesn’t make me feel self conscious and thankfully the antibiotics had started to kick in so the swelling was getting better by that point and I was able to eat and talk better after that. Then Dustin came home from camp in Kentucky and I went to my nieces soccer game and Friday morning we left to come back to Montreal.
Friday we relaxed and didn’t do much because everyone was hot & tired. Saturday we headed off to St. Denis street and much to my surprise just for laughs was on and that was a lot of fun! We couldn’t go to see any shows because we couldn’t afford them for one thing and Dustin was with us and he’s not 18 yet.

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Then on Sunday we headed off to Pointe-à-Callière, the Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History which I have been to before but Dustin & mom really seemed to enjoy it. Aside from that we didn’t do much, we mostly wanted to relax & veg out. It was too hot and muggy to do everything we wanted to do but it was still fun just the same!

So I got one of 5 ultrasounds booked, of course the most urgent one isn’t being booked until the middle of 2010 which is INSANE! I talked to one technician today and he was really nice and managed to get me an appointment for Sept as opposed to November which rocked and then I had to call the vascular clinic for the other ultrasounds I needed and she too was super nice and really helpful and felt really bad that she’s so booked but told me to send in my requisition just the same and she told me she would do her best to see when she could squeeze me in.
I’m also sending it to other hospitals in hopes that I can get in sooner as opposed to later. She was pretty pissed that my doctor left it up to me to make these appointments when they should be doing it themselves. That might had been more helpful since the Doctor obviously has more pull and could *maybe* get me in sooner but c’est la vie! I called the clinic today to see when I could come in and see the results of my blood tests and that’s not until August 3rd so that kind of sucks…
I have to find a new dentist ASAP so I can get my problem child tooth pulled out right away so that I don’t get re-infected like it just did. Thankfully I was accepted into McGill’s teaching clinic and while it takes MUCH longer to get treatment (up to 3hrs for a filling) the considerably HUGE price difference makes it a million times worth it. My jaw dropped numerous times when I was being told how little it costs and just how much some dentists are charging for dental care! So once your in, your in which rocks! I need a lot of dental work, which sucks. I need to have one of my front teeth pulled which DOESN’T make me happy AT ALL! But thank God for dental implants! I need to get a partial for the teeth I recently had pulled because even though McGill is considerably more affordable its still going to cost me about a thousand dollars for the implant because you need to get a crown first and then the implant after that. So I’m looking at about 2 years before I’m all caught up so I’m going to seek out care at a private clinic that I’ve been eying up in conjunction with McGill simply because this private clinic isn’t that costly and it will save time because having to take that much time off of work won’t make much of a difference if I’m not getting my hours in to pay for said dental bills. Thank God I have a visa! I’m also filing a complaint with the CDA because what she did to me was WRONG!

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so…

I’ve had this gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach for a few days now.  It would come & go & at first I thought it was just because my nephew was going to be in Kentucky & going on his first plane trip…  It would come & go and for the most part I ignored it because I refused to let myself get stressed out over what could possibly be nothing.  That is until I came home from work…  You see I rarely get calls on my home phone, and if I do its generally from the family or the bank calling.  I had a voicemail from the clinic I’ve been going to asking me to call them back.  Well that bad feeling came back with a vengeance and of course they don’t give you results over the phone…

So I phoned the clinic regardless and was told that Dr. Levy wanted to see me to discuss the results of my blood tests with me and he’ll be there until 8pm tonight  which doesn’t work for me because I’m leaving for Ontario tonight and still have a thousand things to do before I leave & Monday is not an option because I won’t even be IN Quebec until sometime next week.  So I have NO idea what those tests turned up because there was quite a few aside from the standard ones (sugar, cholesterol, calcium blah blah blah) because all the “extra” diagnostics tests are acronyms that mean nothing to my non medical trained self…

One thing I do know, is that I am scared half to death. Part of me wants to go and run to the clinic NOW to see what’s up but I don’t have the time & if its really bad then I am content to have my head up my ass until my vacation is over. I know that’s bad, but I’ve been waiting for this for SO long and its my mom’s birthday party on Saturday(happy 50th birthday mom!) and I want to at least attempt to enjoy myself while I’m there in spite of the fact that there’s obviously something quite wrong with me and that will hang over me like a dark cloud…

At least I know the cat & my apt will be OK (I would hope) thanks to John. He’s so sweet 🙂

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A proper update if you will…

You ever have one of those days where you truly question how you manage to get through life? Friday for me was exactly that, normally I wouldn’t bother posting something so utterly embarrassing but I can laugh about it now. My awesome mom is hooking me up with a copy of her visa (thanks mommy I love you!) so I can re-build my credit & get some much needed dental work so I had to go to her bank here & sign the papers that they had sent over.

I also had to go to my bank and I wanted to pick up my Greyhound ticket for my vacation since the price is better if you buy a non refundable ticket 14+ days in advance. Anyway I thought it would be more simple to do a “round trip” if you will since the furthest I had to go was Berri Metro & back again. So I get to Berri, head over to station Centrale to buy my ticket from Toronto to Cambridge (my final destination) and the girl working the ticket counter asked my 5, count em 5 times what day I needed the ticket for.
For SOME reason I kept saying July 19th, when I am due to arrive in Toronto on the 18th I was distracted. Mostly because I got written up at work, I’ll get to that in a minute. So anyway after realizing my EPIC FAIL I went back to the ticket counter thinking I could save face by buying another ticket because the ticket price was $9.03 due to a heavy discount but to change the date it was $15.00 except that didn’t work out quite like I had planned.  I go back to another girl and she tells me that my ticket it $26.03 I was thinking come again? I know Saturday travel is more costly but it was an ADVANCE PURCHASE which is supposed to be MORE cost effective! So I sucked up my fail and said wouldn’t it be cheaper to change this one instead? After she realized that I had just bought it 5 minutes ago, the original person I bought it from changed my ticket (much to my chagrin) free of charge which was really nice!
Back on the metro and off to McGill I go looking for my mom’s bank… I’m geographically and directionally retarded and the directions weren’t 100% clear as to where this place was because their mailing address was totally different from the actual location because it was IN the metro Jesus Christ. Anyway I DIDN’T know that and ended up wandering around McGill university & area for the better part of 45 minutes trying to find this place and gave up. It wasn’t until I had finished off the last of my errands and headed for home that I seen an ad posted on metro vision that I clued into where it was! I’m pretty sure fate was mocking me at that moment… Perhaps not but regardless I went there today and I found the place and signed the papers. Didn’t help taht when I called them I didn’t get a call back for 3 days and the message that was left for me was in rapid fire French that none of us could understand.

My boss has been acting like an epic twat and it seems like lately I’ve been her “target” of choice. So I got a formal written notice that was SO BOGUS it blew me away! 98% of the things that she complained about which I did do to an extent (which she exaggerated and slightly bullshitted on as well) I will admit, however they are OVER AND DONE WITH. I even called the labor board and even they said she has no grounds because I am not a “repeat” offender and it was just things that pissed HER off, nothing more. *eyeroll* whatever, I totally rebutted that one. I was nice and polite about it, but I was also brutally honest and I got my point across pretty damn good I must say. She wasn’t nearly as bitchy to me today, which is a good thing because I’m not in the mood to deal with it.

I’m was far more concerned about my looming health issues…
A few weeks ago I started getting this odd tingling sensation in my pinky finger which I thought nothing off because I kill my nerve endings in my fingers on a regular basis anyway, that is until it started to spread up to my arm usually it would stop at my elbow but then I would get shooting pain that would sometimes carry up into my armpit.
I blew it off thinking that my carpal tunnel was acting funny again and gradually it started to go away except I STILL have almost no feeling left in my pinky finger on my left hand. That is until last night… I was sitting there on the couch with John after dinner and I never wear socks while at home and I propped my feet up on my coffee table and happen to notice that my usually tiny feet had appeared to have gained about 5lbs, I looked at the right and that one too appeared to be slightly swollen but not anywhere near the left one. Which struck me as odd because I didn’t feel like I was in any pain/swollen or anything of the sort if that makes sense. Until this morning when I woke up and took another look at them and my legs… Which appeared to have sprouted balloons! Holy FUCK! So I did my morning thing, went to put socks on which took quite a bit of effort as they barely fit on my fat ass foot and swollen ankle and likely contributed to the seemingly lack of circulation.
I really had to shove my foot into my normally too big for my feet shoes and I started off to the bus stop and walking was painful and took far more effort then it normally does. I could feel it stretching and it kept sending little shocks of pain to my knee which picked that very moment to start acting up again as well. So I said the hell with it i’m going to the clinic after work to get all this checked out because I also had a random smattering of bruises that keep appearing on my legs and taking a really long time to heal.
Lucky for me I got to see Dr. Hottie Pants again woo hoo! Anyway he was asking me all these questions about work, did I travel, get bitten by something and so on. This has NEVER happened to me before and because its on my left side mostly he’s a little concerned that somethings being blocked somewhere in the veins that could lead to my heart.

So I have to go and get a ton of blood tests, a bunch of x-rays & ultrasounds which I can’t afford AT ALL even if I wanted too! He referred me to a private clinic upstairs in the building because I would get in faster but my insurance company DOESN’T cover ultrasounds because the RAMQ DOES cover them *IF* they’re done in a hospital and they range from 2-4 hundred dollars EACH and I need 4, four of the damn things! Even he wasn’t 100% sure what was wrong with me and said that it was odd & a “unique” situation.  He tried to not scare the crap outta me but he failed, and failed hard!
So I’m going to call 2 reputable hospitals here and see if I can get into their diagnostics clinic because I can’t afford that, private care may be more effective but damn costly.    I’m scared to death about this whole situation because it could be fatal & I can’t afford to get the proper care I need. Thank you Quebec/Medicare for SUCKING SO FUCKING HARD! I pay taxes and into medicare for what? One can only hope that they realize how serious this situation is and get me in ASAP because this CAN’T wait!

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I’ve been busy…

And angry, frustrated and a million other things. Being having a few strange “moments” as of late, none of which I care to discuss. I have a TON of e-mails to respond to, been contemplating a career change and I can’t WAIT for my vacation to come which thankfully is soon however not soon enough!

Motivation, yeah I pretty much lost that somewhere along the way. I’m hoping after my vacation which won’t be much of a break due to the fact that family will be following me home… So I took an extra 2 days off of work to accommodate them and my various appointments that I have when I come back anyhow. My hours have been cut back at work which is no shock since its summer and hotter then the armpit of hell on more humid days. We have A/C that does next to NOTHING… So of course who wants to come in and eat at my work when you need a personal fan at your table… Its only for 8 weeks I can deal its only a 5 hour/week loss so not too bad.

I’m mostly looking forward to my tattoo appointment. I haven’t been tattooed since JANUARY and I’m dying here! Must call Tim to confirm my appointment, head to Berri metro & buy my greyhound ticket in advance to save money and a million other things… So yeah nothing really exciting to report, just figured I’d post something cos well you know, that’s how I roll 😉