Friday, April 18, 2008

After the Melt-down

I am fixable; that is what Dr. Tepper at the Cleveland Clinic tells me and I believe her. Just one more test to see if surgery is an option and then the rest is up to me and medication adjustments. As for me, what can I say; I’m in it for the long haul. As for the medication, it is already beginning to have some unpleasant side effects; I will get by those. The really awesome news is that I may not have had strokes at all! The next test will give a definitive answer on that point as well as the surgery thing.

Today I had a mini-meltdown; I was alone and I am grateful for that because I am positive Don would have been clueless as to what to do. Flaming forsythia, even I didn’t know what to do but cry (which is very unlike me). I suppose the problem started last week when I started the new changes in medication and continued to escalate in the process of weaning myself off one med and adding another by slowly ramping up the dosage; add to that the fact that I have been trying to get my prescriptions changed from one carrier to another and am having problems getting the doctor’s office to write new scripts for those that will not transfer and the tension kept building. If that were not enough I only just today recovered from another very bad migraine. Put it all together and you have the perfect recipe for a Betty melt-down; not a pretty sight in any circumstance.

Just when I was beginning to feel lonely and abandoned (which we should never do) I glanced out my kitchen window and watched a chickadee scamper out of my bird feeder (yes, she was inside it) and fly away; and then out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of one of my favorite fair weather friends, the Common Flicker. For those of you who may not know, the common flicker is a woodpecker about 11” in size and they can provide hours of hilarious entertainment as they scratch and peck on the ground looking for ants and insects. There seems to be nothing they enjoy more on a hot August day than a good dust bath and I have watched them linger a good long while at their ablutions. I stood there at my kitchen sink looking out at the wilderness of my back yard and watched a pair of robins. How could I have gone 49 years and never before seen that the male robin does indeed have a deep red breast and that his lady has a more demure rust colored breast? A pair of rabbits was scurrying round doing what rabbits do this time of year, and a groundhog was obviously in hog heaven at the salt block we set out for the deer. No longer lonely with my friends just outside the window to keep me company I set about getting dinner ready.

There is always hope.

2 comments:

ArtPropelled said...

When my husband was going through radical chemotherapy it was often the birds that saved the day. We were lucky enough to have a pair of red collared barbits nesting just outside the bedroom window and their antics would keep his mind off the side effects of chemo.
I will be holding thumbs for good news regarding your health, Betty.

Betty said...

Robyn, I am so glad your husband had the barbits to keep him company. Thank you, I will be fine.