Weekend Recap

**This is a couple of weeks late, but I'm just not getting around to uploading the appropriate pictures. Oops.**

After last year's Anniversary Dinner Bonanza, this year's celebration was much more subdued. The plan was to celebrate our anniversary with a homemade steak dinner and a bottle of good wine from our Napa Trip on Friday, the 11th. However, things didn't quite work out as planned.

I realized earlier in the week that I had likely either pulled/torn my intercostal muscles or cracked/broken a rib on my left side from all the coughing over the past month. By Friday afternoon, the pain was so bad that I was starting to have trouble taking in a full breath without wincing. Not good. I thought I'd swing by urgent care to try and get some drugs to deal with the pain and maybe see if they could tell me exactly what was going on in there. The front office staff were so sweet, but explained that it'd be an hour wait. No problem. I eventually got ushered back to see the doctor, which is when the crazy began. The nurse taking my information couldn't figure out why I was back in urgent care and not with my primary doctor (um, can't see him for two weeks). She also couldn't seem to understand that I had been diagnosed with pertussis, by the urgent care doctor and that yes, I already had my results, thank you.

By the time the doctor came back I was in a ton of pain and emotionally, I was just spent. Like, no fuel left in the tank. I'm usually very assertive with doctors (it was the only way to get them to test for pertussis in the first place after the doctor told me "adults don't get it unless there is an outbreak" - yeah right), but on Friday I was a little weakling and didn't have it in me to hash it out. The doctor was a total asshat - asked me "well, how did you even get pertussis?" (WTF?! What kind of question is that?!), told me that "young people don't break ribs so an x-ray is just a waste of time!" and barely took two seconds to examine me. He wrote up a quick pain meds prescription and tossed it to me with a minimum of explanation. Thanks a lot jerk! I finally got back out to my car and had a good ugly cry because I was so pissed at being brushed off, at not being my own best advocate and for being in even more pain from the crying. I was a hot mess.

Thankfully, my father-in-law is a pharmacist and between talking to him and the nice lady that filled my prescriptions at my local pharmacy, I calmed down and started to feel a bit better. As for having a nice relaxing dinner? Yeah, it wasn't gonna happen. Instead, we had Baja Fresh and watched football while toasting our anniversary. Nice, but not nearly the night that we had planned. :(

Saturday saw Jim up before dawn to go play golf with Dubber, while I met up with his wife, Girlie, for manis and pedis. I hadn't seen her in a long time so it was good to catch up on everything. In the afternoon, we all met back up at their house to watch the UCLA game and cheer the Bruins on to victory. Yay!

After the game, we headed home to watch more football and finally have that steak dinner I hadn't been able to cook the night before. An unfortunate side effect of still having this cough is that wine currently tastes like battery acid to me. Seriously, it's depressing. So, instead of sharing a bottle from Napa, Jim had some from our cheapy stash while I downed lovely water. For dessert, we had homemade creme brulee made by yours truly. Happy Anniversary to us.

Sunday was a lazy day at home. Jim is beyond thrilled for football to be back and for us to resume our lazy Sundays sitting at home, eating snack foods, him watching the games while doing some work and me keeping one eye on the games while I also read/straighten the house/do laundry/sew, etc. I wanted to make some extra special snacks for the first Sunday of regular NFL games, so I opted for 7 layer dip and Boneless Baked Buffalo Strips. To cap off the day of "healthy" eating, we ended the night with hot dogs and bratwursts. Wheee!


My ribs were starting to feel a bit better, but then I reirritated it this past Sunday night and I feel like I'm about back to square one. I'm alternating between Vicodin at night and extra-strength Ibuprofin during the day, but they don't do much more than take the edge off the pain. I guess I should be glad that it gets rid of the stabbing and burning feeling. Ugh. I'm really frustrated with everything, to say the least. The cough is slowly leaving, but I'm still having enough coughing fits to make getting rid of the rib pain difficult. If anyone is keeping count, it'll be 7 weeks on Monday that I've had this. I really hope that I'm back to normal soon, but my guess is it's going to be another several weeks before I get there.