If I have to ...

I'm playing on my laptop: gone through my email, caught up on Facebook and Twitter, checked out the bargain sites for mommies, read everyone's blogs ... and done. Sigh. Maybe I just need to update my blog. It's been a long time. No one may even remember that I am here. Oh, well. I do this for me.


My mind is a blank. So much has gone on and yet nothing is really new. Guess I better think harder.


O'kay, let's start with last week, no two weeks ago today, Friday, July 2nd. Nothing spectacular about that day, just that pain decided that I had had too much of a break lately. By late afternoon, cramps had set in nice and strong when they were joined by tremendous pain in my upper jaw on the left side. Fortunately, I have vicodin around for those monthly occasions. 


The weekend went by in a blur of cleaning and packing for our upcoming trip. If I didn't take my meds every 4 hours, pain would set in and make us all miserable. Yes, the pain made me extremely cranky, and I did not hold it in. Poor boys. Meg was out of range in California with her grandparents (every year she visits them for 2-3 weeks on her own). 


By Monday, I couldn't take it any more and called my dentist. I was fully prepared to have him paged since the 5th was a holiday, but low and behold, someone answered the phone and set me up for an appointment the next day.


I couldn't wait for the 3 pm appointment. Usually dreading a dentist visit, this was a new sensation to me. Brian and I have been seeing the same dentist, when we go, for about 16 years or more. I've only lived here for 17 years. He's really good and doesn't lecture me too much. Dr. N explained to me what the possibilities were and did some quick tests.


Now for the confession, part of me wanted it to be a root canal. I know that has to be a very bizarre sentence to read. I must be a masochist, right? No, I'm not. I hate pain. Some claim that I have no tolerance for pain, that I'm a wimp. I believed those words for so long that I begin to doubt whether I'm in pain or not, whether I'm exaggerating what I really feel or even making it up. No one has gone through what I've gone through, and I haven't gone through what anyone else has ... really. No one that I grew up with suffered from the crippling cramps that I've had since my teens. No one understood, and I always thought that they didn't really believe me. Of course, my mom saw the vomiting when I didn't take medication ... So to be told that I needed a root canal and that my pain was indeed real was vindication for a crummy weekend.


The same thing happened when I suffered the subdural hematoma a few years ago. I felt relief when I received the diagnosis. Hurray, my pain is not imagined. It is real! 


Back to dentist ... yep, I needed a root canal. Right then. No waiting. No soccer game for me that night (yes, I'm back on the pitch after 2 years). I did not have time for anything but more packing and cleaning.


Thursday, the 8th, was the first day of our 5-day vacation on the Oregon coast. Brian was working mad hours. He literally slept and worked all day, and very little of that was sleeping. Preparing for the trip was up to me: oil change and tune-up for the van, appointments, Mini repair (another story on the goodness of mankind), cargo box research and eventually rental, arranging dog and house sitting, ordering and picking up prescription for the puppy (he gets carsick and was going with us), making lists, packing for everyone, arranging with family and friends who were joining us. 


By Wednesday night, I was spent and lost it. How the boys put up with me, I will never know.


Thursday we were off to our favorite place on earth ... so far. Pacific City. Cape Kiwanda. Pelican Pub. I can say those words like a mantra and feel my blood pressure go down and my cares wash away.


I think I'll stop there while I'm nice and calm and relaxed.