Hope

If I had to give a theme to the past four to six weeks of my life, I think it would be Health and Welfare. It seems that everything and anything has been attacking that area of my life, or some component of it has been my focus. First it started with my quitting smoking. And, yes, I am still a quitter. As a matter of fact, I no longer rely on nicotine at all. It was six weeks as of last Saturday . According to the schedule, I was supposed to remain on the patch until late October. However, I was having some problems last week and decided to discontinue all ingestion of medicines except the Wellbutrin.  I only continued with that one because some anti-depressants will give you flu-like symptoms if you quit them cold turkey. Causing those symptoms would not have helped what I was trying to achieve. Actually, more like what I was trying to discover. For several days last week I felt edgy and out of balance. I couldn't quite describe what exactly it was that I was feeling but I knew I wasn't feeling right, like myself. The best description I could muster was that it felt like I was hungover. I had that weak, jittery, tired, dehydrated feeling you have after a late night of binge drinking. Considering I haven't been drunk in over ten years, I assumed that it had to be a recent medication that I was ingesting. Since I went from only ever smoking cigarettes and popping over-the-counter sinus meds to ingesting Wellbutrin, popping sinus meds which recently had an ingredient change, Nicotine patches, Rhinocort, Flexiril, and 880mg of Alleve daily. I figured something wasn't jiving with something else, or I had developed some kind of toxicity. As such, I dropped it all and here I am adding back 800mg of Ibuprofen and 500mg of Amoxicillin every eight hours.

I can't win for losing. I've had sinus headaches, ear-aches, high blood pressure, back strain, and as of yesterday I suffered through three teeth being extracted. I'm seriously afraid to ask what's next. I already had a close call with a crazy driver who managed to crash his car into a brick wall right in front of me as I was driving home from work. I really hope there's nothing else possible. A girl can hope. Right?

Speaking of hope, there was an adorable little boy in the dentist's office yesterday. He asked his dad why he was kicked out of the house. It sounded to me like mommy needed some "alone time" and insisted that her husband take the precocious child along with him to his dental appointment. You could tell the father wasn't the primary care giver. Most of what he talked to his son about was WAY over the head of a child who looked to be no older than three or four. However, he was a smart little one. His father asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said a pilot, then an astronaut. I was seriously impressed. When I was a little girl, not all that much older than him, I thought it would be awesome to grow up and become a secretary. If only I had higher aspirations, maybe I would have figured out my career path a lot earlier on in life. 

A different dentist than my usual two pulled my teeth out yesterday. Other than the pain and fear, I didn't mind so much. He was a cutey-pie! In his attempt to make small talk, he asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was an Accountant but if it would help my cause any at that moment I'd lie and say I was a lawyer. He chuckled but I noticed he went over the procedures and patient waiver quite thoroughly. As he was straining and stressing to remove the teeth while suffering through my whining and near panic attack, I thought who the hell thinks as a child that they'd like to grow up and become a dentist. Y'ah know, I think the same thing about proctologists, podiatrists, and nursing home attendants. It must begin with a masochistic disposition. I just can't imagine a cute little four year-old telling his father  that one day he wanted to pick at peoples' teeth, poke their butts, clean out their toe-jam, and clean up shit for eight to ten hours every day. At least, I hope not.