Medication Fail

I was going to talk about another unfortunate thing I did Thanksgiving Weekend, but I'll blog about this instead.

I'm in this study where I have to take this medicine twice a day.  They're not harsh if you miss one, but they would like you not to miss one.  I'm a fuck-up, so last week I sleep early and miss drinking my pill.  I've been trying to make up for it ever since.

But I had a perfect plan today, which was perfect because I had to wake up early for my dentist's appointment.  I would drink a pill at 8:30, drink another at 5:30 (it's only nine hours later, but it's not ridiculously a short amount of time between doses, and the bottom line is I have to down three pills one day), and the third at 2:30.  Not only will I be back on schedule, tomorrow I have to visit the study administrator at noon to get a new bottle of pills and I could just pop a pill before seeing her at 11:30, which will be nine hours after I swallowed the previous pill, like the two before those.

But ... and this is the story of my life: I always have an excuse ... the dental appointment today threw me for a loop.  I was so tired getting up early that I was late for the appointment.  I kept falling asleep in the dentist's chair during the cleaning.  The girl cleaning my teeth, the same one I blogged about back in April, once again treated me like a baby, at one point making me show her how I brush my teeth.  Who in the hell does that?  (I shouldn't be so harsh.  She is trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong when I clean my teeth.  Plus, I've always complained that dentists seem to throw me out of their offices as soon as they put back their instruments, so I recognize that she is trying to help.  Still, I find what she asked me to do today infantilizing and very strange.)

And to top it all off, during cleaning one of my fillings fell off.  It was one done at the U. over the summer, therefore they were going to do it again, and for no cost, thank fucking God.  Problem was, like this girl who was teaching me how to brush my teeth, they're both students, and their schedules are usually filled with patients and/or lessons well in advance.  When we went out to the receptionist she told me that the specialist who did my fillings before and would do this particular one again had an opening tomorrow morning, when I had to go see my study administrator ... or not till some time next year.  Great, I was looking at the prospect of walking around with a cancerous cavity exposed in my mouth for five months.

However, she found another opening: That afternoon, specifically an hour later.  Why the hell not, I thought -- this needs to get done, they're going to fix what they didn't do right the first tiem, and as long as I'm here anyway. ...  So I make the appointment, go to an open couch in the waiting room, set my alarm, put my feet up on the cushions, and take a nap for an hour.

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The filling redo wasn't bad, although I was still groggy and falling in and out of consciousness.  I just remember a few things both women told me: The girl redoing my filling told me it was going to rain, which convinced me I should use the U. tunnels as far as I can to get me closer to my car (although I got lost and spent a half-hour negotiating my way through -- the underground tunnels are not a convenient way to move about campus); I couldn't eat crunchy or hot foods and I needed to chew chewy foods on the other side of my mouth the rest of the day (I ate chicken and had soup for dinner -- besides chewing on the righthand side, I think I broke her edict); and the super-duper fluoridated toothpaste that I was paying eight bucks for (doubt insurance is covering this -- is the U. on the make?) should not be rinsed out with water, just spat out.

I had a lot on my mind, and this is coming off an appointment where I was injected with a local anaesthetic to numb the gum around the tooth that needed a new feeling, so I stumbled a few times on my way to my car.  I then remembered that this may have been the last day to cash in on a rain check for batteries at the hardware store that ran out of them 90 days ago (Menards calls them "Sorry Slips" -- how ka-yute!); that and getting money out of the ATM for Grandmother meant my somewhat self-destructive plan to drink coffee (which she allowed me to drink four hours after applying this varnish to my teeth) was out the window.  I just went home and helped Mother set dinner and surf the Internet.  This was, oh, around 5:30.

It wasn't until I woke up from my nap at 10, just as I was about to leave to get Father back from the airport, that I remembered that I fucked up my plan.  Great.  So now my new plan is to get this third pill in at 5 in the morning, then push the pill tomorrow morning till noon.  Seven hours isn't great, but I'd rather do that then miss a dose.

Oh, who am I kidding, I screwed the pooch on this big time.