little update. and nice spanish men in the living room.

I was asked about my blood pressure: on Tuesday, my pressure was a whopping 92/70. I’m pretty sure that it’s the lowest that I’ve been, at least when it’s been checked. The pharmacist (who, it turned out, graduated from her pharmacy school with one of my good friends, which was a nice connection) was hesitant to let me just leave without rechecking and rechecking again. Luckily, I was only driving home around the corner, literally.

I’m going back tomorrow to have my pressure checked again at noon. Yesterday afternoon was my 1st “cut in half” dose of the blood pressure medicine (my new doc called me back in record time, horray!), and I’m hoping that after I take it again today, things will even out. That means I’m at a 4mg dose!? My doc had wanted me at 16mg on Friday (after a week of 8mg), but we clearly are not doing that. My body is just so sensitive to medication and changes with medication, and my mom always gets so upset when I have problems with that because she blames herself since she also has medication sensitivities. It’s always nice when your mother gets upset about things that she can’t control and then you have to reassure her, when you are the one needing the reassuring. But I <3 her anyways.

I had a bad evening last night, feeling quite low… D and I are having our living room/kitchen done as I mentioned, so we had some last-minute things to move out of the way. Even just putting small things into bags and bringing them into the office or bedroom wiped me out, I couldn’t believe it. My head was bothering me more yesterday as well, but it didn’t feel too much like my typical NDPH pain, so it was probably associated with the low blood pressure. I woke up feeling decent, luckily. I’m just taking it easy and not going anywhere. I just have to go out for a short while tomorrow afternoon - for my blood pressure check with my pals at Walgreens (not a plug per se, but the one I have been going to has been super nice to me), and to go to one of those “buy in bulk” stores for something I need for the bridal shower I’m co-throwing. Once the shower is over, I’ll post a picture of what I made, in case I have eyes of anyone reading this that is involved in the wedding

P.S. 3 nice Spanish guys are reflooring the living room and kitchen. Only one is really speaking English. I haven’t used Spanish since ‘01. Oops. As long as the kitchen isn’t carpeted, I think we’re golden.

the residue in the sink, post-flood. Mmm. after carpet was taken off. dirt? what?

 

Cloudy, humid, with definite light-headedness.

Yup. So my new doc has me trying a blood pressure medication that has been used for headaches (i love that - such random meds are used to treat other random things… hey, at least I’m not being prescribed little blue pills that are meant for men only…). Of course, with my system being as sensitive as it is, and with my blood pressure already being on the lower end of normal, it has gone down even more. Monday afternoon was when it really started to hit me (after being on the stuff since Friday AM), and since then I’ve been kinda unproductive. I drove the 2 minutes over to Walgreens so that I could have them take my pressure and then I drove home, so that’s about all the driving I’ve done. I was SUPPOSED to go to my grad class this morning, but that clearly didn’t happen. I wasn’t able to get into the car for just about an hour and then get on the little train and then sit through 3 hrs of class… and then drive again after that.

I managed to do my laundry this morning, but whoa, was that a task! I could have won the award for “Slowest Laundry-Doer Ever”. The laundry room in the building is in the basement and we’re on the 2nd floor, but thank goodness for elevators. Still, my laundry bag was no heavier than normal, but it felt like 10 tons. I took it slow and hadn’t even taken any meds since I was waiting for my doc to call. Hey, when you need clean clothes, what are you gonna do. I also just wanted to get it done with, since the pile has been growing, and I didn’t want to wait til D got home and whatnot. We’re cutting the dosage in half, luckily, and still moving along my taper off of the Topamax.

Tomorrow’s highlight: New carpet for the living room and new kitchen floor. Ya know, since it was, um, flooded. [Sidebar: As embarassing as it probably was at the time, I ended up turning on the waterworks of my own in the management office on Monday and was welling up in tears when I was told that it could be yet another week to wait for the whole recarpeting/flooring business to take place for us. I so kindly reminded them that we are living in half of our apartment right now and can barely stay in the part that was flooded for more than a quick meal's time because of the smell and mold that is probably growing. "We made some calls and can have it all done on Thursday morning." Gee, how prompt. Seeing as how we were told it would be 2-3 days, and now it's been almost 2 WEEKS. end rant.]

 

Ahh, apartment life… we are in a fight.

Scene: Yesterday.  A long afternoon outside with sun and heat for a friend’s graduation party, followed by my boyfriend D’s dad’s birthday dinner (semi-late) at their house, followed by needing to take a rescue med for pain that was starting to sneak up on me… I then needed to drive back up to our apartment (D and I each had our own cars to drive up, and it was about a 45 min drive).  We finally got into the apartment’s parking garage around 11:30pm, and I trudged with my bags inside.  My head was kinda still bothering me, but I had been alright enough to drive. I’m basically ready to collapse into bed.

I hear an “uh-oh” from D, who is a few steps ahead of me with his stuff.   There is a ring of wetness outside of our apartment.  Every renter/leaser/owner/person who lives anywhere’s worst nightmare.  We open the door, with each step, hear a SQUISH. SQUISH. SQUISHHH. Our sink is filled to the brim with the dirtiest of dirty brown water, the kitchen floor is covered with bits of lettuce-looking stuff, what looks like dirt (?) and a small layer of water, and of COURSE, the majority of the carpet in that room (the little kitchen opens up to the eating area/living room) is soaked.

Of course, seeing as how my head already hurts and I’m frustrated with the pain, it is only natural that my tears would start streaming at this point.  Which they did! I started pacing. And cursing. And pacing. There was also some cursing, if I didn’t mention that.  My printer was on the floor where there it is damp - i’m going to try to turn it on later. My nice Simple clogs (mine are darker) are possibly ruined. We do have apartment insurance and everything, but still. Who expects this to happen?  Apparently, the story is that there’s some sort of “pipe problem” between our apartment and our next-door neighbor.  They were home when the problem happened, so lucky for them, they didn’t have as much damage. Of COURSEEEEEE.  We had to be good children and visit with our mommies and daddies in the state over and be away for a few days.

Welcome back to your apartment, Joanna. Oh, you have a headache? Poor thing. Let me just get things a little wet here for you while you go take some meds, and while you should be going to bed to sleep off the pain, let’s stay up for a while longer and hang out- I mean, call maintenance! Yeah!

Here’s hoping you had a better/easier/pain-free weekend, friends!  I will end my rant now