Tolerance

I haven't been feeling very tolerant recently. What I mean by tolerant is being able to put up with other people's crap. It is not my problem if some people are acting pretty stupid around me, or are rude, or are just plain dumb. I do not feel the need to put up with it. I have enough going on in my life that I can be a bit cranky when dealing with others.

As a friend was telling me recently, I need to keep my mouth shut and not tell people they are driving me crazy. I know its not my business what someone else wants to do but sometimes I can be a bit 'outspoken' (as I hear peals of laughter in my head from the people who know me best). I recognize that I do think I can come across as a bit bitchy at times. I do try to be a nice person but sometimes I just can't keep my mouth shut.

Especially if someone is really pushing my buttons, then I get really cranky. Here's an example: a group of friends are trying to get together for lunch and a museum. Around here, many public libraries have discount museum passes available on a first come/first served basis. I don't mind getting the museum passes, because I am cheap and it saves me money.

But one friend (and I am not making this up) called me, texted me, called my library, and texted me again in a five minute period to let me know that my library has the pass available for the day we want them, they were available, and could I reserve it. I didn't require babysitting and I sent her a text back to tell her that. That all got under my skin for some reason. Why did she need to do so much? All I needed was to be asked to see if I could get the museum pass.

Am I over-reacting? I don't think so. It made me feel that she thought I was incapable of checking on the availability of the pass and reserving it. Of course my inner child made me wait several days to actually reserve the pass to make her sweat if she decided to micromanage me and check again at the library.

I don't need micromanaging. I am quite capable of taking care of things myself. Allow me to feel a bit intolerant for a bit here.

Luck and Cancer

Back at the beginning of the year I blogged about how a cancer diagnosis was supposedly just bad luck. This made me cranky because: IF IT'S CANCER IT'S NOT LUCK.

Now someone has refuted this study and says its not bad luck its environmental and lifestyle factors that cause cancers. Is this supposed to make me feel better? Did I cause my cancer by making bad lifestyle decisions and hanging out in 'bad' places? If so, please tell me where I went wrong.

I never lived in a 'bad' place. I grew up in the suburbs, played outside a lot, kept myself fairly physically fit, and ate fairly well.

I don't have a lot of the bad habits many Americans do. I don't drink soda. I don't go to fast food restaurants. I like home made food which is full of vegetables instead of eating in restaurants. Now I go to the gym three times a week because of my limitations but I went for a daily walk for more than ten years. I also would get a lot of exercise regularly between hiking, skiing, snow shoeing, and more.

I do admit to drinking alcohol, eating red meat, and enjoying dessert once in a while. I did smoke cigarettes for many years, maybe five cigarettes a day. I may have inhaled once in a while as well.

So what did I do wrong? What could I have done better so my health wasn't so bad? Now I'm really cranky. Grrr.

When your body lets you down

It happens to all of us - you reach for something and your back twinges, you get a bad cold, or whatever, they are part of life. But then sometimes your body really lets you down.

This became very clear to me one day when I was skiing about ten years ago. I was having a wonderful time and then I fell on one run. I thought I was fine but some man stopped and said he friend had gone for the ski patrol. I thought he was crazy but since he insisted on waiting with me, he could help me untangle my skis. Then when I put weight on my knee it bent side ways and I knew he was right. I ended up with a torn meniscus and a partially torn ACL which meant knee surgery and the beginnings of knee problems.

My body has since let me down in other ways. I seem to have collected ailments that won't go away. Tennis elbow, lymphedema, bad back, rheumatoid, fibromyalgia, and that cancer crap. They just keep piling up. Yesterday afternoon I got very frustrated with myself. I try to be a normal person and then my body protests.

Sometimes I feel I should be in a geriatric ward some place with all my aches and pains. But then I try to tell myself that I got through cancer twice so I can cope through all this. But its the continued emotional spiral of coping with aches, pains and scars that is difficult.

I haven't been getting enough rest recently. Nor enough sleep. This makes it harder for me to physically and emotionally deal with life. And since we are at the worst part of the chaos of putting our house on the market (which means I will take our toaster oven with us today so it will not be in the way while they take pictures of the house). I will bring it back tonight so we can have toast in the morning and then take it with us again as they show the house. This is on top of the list of everything else I have to do today to make the house picture perfect.

My biggest problem is with everything I cannot do. I can't carry stuff around (one of my doctors told me that I cannot pick up everything after I told him we were moving). I have to wait for my husband to be home to carry stuff around for me. I get stuck and have to wait for help so often. My body is failing me too soon. And it drags me down and I constantly have to fight back.

Okay, enough whininess this morning. I will go back to being positive.

My life

Apparently I need more sleep than I thought. This may be why I had a bad week last week.  I was cranky. I was tired. My RA was bothering me. Work was stressful. And made me cranky. I don't think I got through a full work out at the gym all week.

I was very tired by Friday night. Then Saturday I did a lot of nothing (well I went to a few garage sales) and then took a 3.5 hour nap. Then I went to bed at 10 and slept for 8 hours. I could take another nap today. I probably will.

I will work harder at keeping up on sleep this week. I might even fit in taking a few naps.

This is my life. I have to fit in naps. I have to take it easy. Regularly. I have to have naps. I have to sit around with my feet up.

I need to whine!

I'll just say that the best part of my day yesterday was calling my brother at 730 am and finding out he was on the west coast and it was 430 am. Sibling rivalry lives.

 This was my day yesterday:

Monday afternoon my phone would not work. I figured it has a dead battery (not an unusual situation for me) and I'll let it charge overnight and it will be fine. Tuesday morning it would not boot up. I tried everything. Finally I resorted to Google and found I could download a utility which would help me reset my phone (and since it was backed up, it didn't matter). But it took 45 minutes to download and install. Then I got a fail message. So I said GRRR (and WTF) and figured I would deal with it later. I unplugged my phone and it worked.

I got to work. We are about to get new paint, cubes, desks, and carpeting so everything is a bit chaotic. I carefully had packed up my office and desk and marked four boxes as being needed for my desk during all the chaos. There were only three boxes. And after some looking and research, it turns out my boss threw out my most important box (even though it was labeled). He did help me look through the recycling dumpster and we found about half of what I needed.

Then I couldn't connect to the f****ng internet. I tried everything I could and gave up and called our outside IT guy. He said he would be there in an hour and it then took about 30 seconds to fix it. (Why he couldn't walk me through that on the phone I have no idea.)

So finally I could get online and to the server, but I couldn't print. Because the person who was supposed to order toner for the main office printer a month ago, didn't because (a) she doesn't care, she has her own printer; and (b) see above. She apologized and said I could email her anything I needed printed. Half an hour later, I asked again and she hadn't even looked at her email because she (just found out she needed to pack her office and) had been busy packing up her desk. But the toner was due to arrive today and then she got an email saying it was back ordered so I guess she will be printing for all of us again tomorrow. And no I don't care if we all piss her off because she didn't order the damn toner a month ago.

Then I get to sit at my desk and get some work done. My boss stopped by and said he would see me next week. I said no I will be here Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday because I have way too much to do. He was surprised because apparently its a slow work week and he didn't think I would have much to do. My work level does not correlate to how busy or slow sales are. I'm marketing and IT so I always have something to do.

And then the cats pulled a dead mouse out of the kitchen cabinets. It was in a trap and my husband hasn't been checking them as often as he should. I did not need to see a dead mouse when trying to cook dinner.

My plan is that today will be a better day. I will not have to put on my cranky pants and be a b***h to everyone again. I also think that my health recently has not been cooperative so that I tend to over react to everything. I also do really like my job and my boss. Usually he is very nice and understanding. Yesterday it was just too damn much!

Deep breath. It will be better. And I can always claim too much pain from something and need to leave work for the day.

Transitioning Doctors and Change

I have never been very good with change. Once I am comfortable with something, I don't want it to change. I enjoy being in a little rut here and there. I only like change if I want it to happen. For example, if I like a doctor, they are never allowed to leave or retire. If I don't like them, I will make the change myself. But I get concerned with too much change.

Right now I have a range of doctors. A couple of them are older and I like them so I have concerns that they could retire on me. I can tell how old they are roughly by looking them up on the hospital website and figuring out their age by looking at the year they finished medical school. (If medical school takes 3 years, that means they are about 25 and then I can do the math.)

I changed my primary care doctor a couple of years ago. I was fed up with her. She sent me for my annual mammogram, which was the bad one. I was very upset and left her a note at her office that I wanted to talk to her. I never heard from her. That was it. She was toast. I now have a new one but she is a bit young and her ego is present a bit too much.

So now I am contemplating changing again. I think I found a new potential doctor who has a sub-specialty in rheumatology. But then I wonder if I have a PCP with a sub-specialty rheumatology would I still need a rheumatologist as well? Or just the PCP? And I do like my rheumatologist. Crap. I'll have to figure that out.

And I just changed my therapist again. I liked my long term therapist and she retired (damn). So I got a new one who was a bit too young, talked about herself too much, and wasn't a match for me. I met the newer one yesterday. There is potential. She had some good advice for me. We'll see how that goes.

Changing doctors requires bringing them up to speed on me with the inevitable conversation about how many doctors I have and how many appointments there are lined up for me. And training them on all my ailments, medical history, and medication allergies.

How much change can I handle at one time? I waver on this one. My health isn't stellar and if I keep switching doctors I risk losing a sense of security. And the hospital just switched to a new computer system and I have had the sense the doctors are not doing as well with looking up my medical history before seeing me.

Maybe I'll wait a bit before changing my PCP and let everything else settle down. I also have an appointment scheduled with a new specialist next month. That's more change too.