November 21 - November 30, 2008

It is Friday after work and a co-worker is having a Christmas party (yeah!) that includes toe nail painting.  I wouldn't miss this for the world!  Luckily I am one of the first guests there and I get some cute toes with snowmen on them...my favorite!  Shortly after that I have to leave the party.  I can't carry on a conversation and I only know 1 other person in the room so this is not the time for me to be striking up new conversations and friends.  I hang in until I feel that I have been there an appropriate amount of time before leaving a party.  I have to get home.  I am exhausted, frozen, dazed, tingling throughout my body and a headache that just will not leave me alone.

Sunday is Grey Cup.  This is a highlight of the year for me as I LOVE football and we planned our wedding around Grey Cup so it is almost our 7th anniversary.  I don't remember a thing about the Grey Cup or that day.

Monday the 24th is our anniversary!  7 years I have been married to my best friend, the love of my life and my rock, especially now.  I have to go back to my doctor that morning and Glenn drives me to the appointment before he has to go to work, I will catch a bus from the appointment to my work.  The reason for the appointment is to go over some results from some recent tests.  I fell like rubbish once again today.

The doctor finally comes into the room and we start to go over everything.  Things are still not looking good on paper and I tell him how I have been doing and feeling.  The bone scan came back negative for arthritis, no surprise. 

Now if you know me, I am a doer.  I get things done and I do it now.  I don't wait around.  The only thing I procrastinate on is home work and those days are behind me. 

So I ask the doctor what the next step is, where do we go from here.  We have no answers for why I am feeling this way, I am not getting any better, only worse so what is the next step in the plan for figuring this out.  The doctor sits back in his chair, looks at me for a moment and then asks me, "Why are you so intent on getting this solved?"

For real, did he really just ask me that question?  Yes, he in fact did just ask me that question.  Let me see, I don't know, I don't like feeling sick, I don't like knowing that the life that I once lived has now escaped me.  I don't like having to know where every bathroom is because the diarrhea will not go away, the my head throbs all the time when it never used to, that I barely have the energy to get through a few hours let alone a full day....it goes on and on.  I thought it was fair of me to ask what the next step was.

The doctor then looks at me and says that I am depressed.  I need to go on anti-depressants and then I will feel better.  I start to cry.  He is not listening to me.  I am not depressed, I WANT to get better.  I don't know why I am sick and I am tired of it.  He takes my crying as a sign that he is right.  He doesn't understand that he just took the last bit of wind that I had left in my sails, out of my sails.  He writes me a prescription and also orders some more blood work.  I am trying to keep myself together...will anybody listen to me, will anybody help me and give me some answers that I am looking for?

I walk out of the doctor's office with papers in hand and tears in my eyes.  I can barely see and am trying not to let myself fall apart.  I look up and Glenn is walking towards me across the parking lot.  He had a feeling driving to work that I would need him and he took the day off and came back to get me.  I have never been so grateful for him as in that moment.  I fall into his arms and just let it all out.  He gets me into the car and tells me that I am not going to work.  We are going to go home and figure this out.  I call work and tell them that I won't be in, I am taking a sick day.

We go home and Glenn became my super hero.  He calls his doctor to book an "appointment" for himself.  He is going to go to his doctor and see if he will take me on as a patient.  I am done with that other doctor.  Glenn will be seeing his doctor in the next few days.  I love my husband.  Remember, it is our anniversary and this is the best gift that he could have gotten me, a possible new doctor.

We spend the rest of the day resting, watching a movie at home and then we go out for dinner.  We make the best of our anniversary under the circumstances.  I am so thankful for my husband.

The rest of the week I do make it into work, I get the blood work done, we get massages and just try to live our lives as normal as we can.  December is just around the corner and better things are going to come my way, right?  Come on, it's December, Christmas is in the air, things have got to get better!