After a Few Disaterous Distractions, Time for Daydreams Is Delayed: Part I

Life decided to hit me with quite a few disasters in the past few months, which left me distracted and a bit too worried to enjoy daydreaming.

Disaster One

As you may or may not know, for the past three years I've had a 120+ round trip commute for work. Why would anyone do that? I had several valid reasons.

I worked at a college. It was a good job. We used the health insurance for my daughter and for myself. There was also the possibility of tuition for her when she was ready to go to college, whether there or at another school in the "Tuition Exchange" groups. I really liked my job, and the people I worked with. Also, times are hard and jobs are hard to find, so when you've held a job for so many years, you don't just quit, especially without something else waiting for you.

I would still be making that commute, for most of those reasons if I hadn't been blindsided, rather literally, by some serious health problems.

I'd been suffering with some knee pain for several weeks. I thought it was a sprain or some such thing and that it would get better on its own. I also hadn't met my high deductible and was hoping it would just go away. It didn't. What did change, however, was our health insurance. My husband had recently started a different job with better health care, so we switched over. The very day we made the change, the pain in my knee was so unbearable that I went to the emergency walk-in clinic. It wasn't sprained. It was "just" arthritis that was flaring up. They gave me one of those 5-day pack of prednisone to help the inflammation and swelling, told me to wrap it, and I was good to go. It worked. By Friday, the last day of the medication, the pain was just a mild nuisance, easily ignored for the most part. However, also on that Friday, I began to have a severe feeling of pressure in my head. It got worse as the weekend progressed. It was Easter weekend, and on Monday, I felt fine.

It was a wonderful day. My younger daughter and I went north to shop for her prom dress. We also got to visit my other daughter, my mother, and my father and his wife too.

Tuesday, I went to work, and by the time I got there, I could barely see. I left after only a few hours and made it home. It was a very scary drive. Everything was blurry, but I knew that I HAD to make it home. The next day I went to the eye doctor. He said it was from the prednisone and my diabetes.

"Diabetes? I don't have that."

"Yes, yes you do. Get to your doctor today or to the E.R."

I got an appointment for the next day with a new doctor, because I really didn't have one here. As of a year and a half before all my lab tests were fine. Somehow that dreaded "D" thing had snuck in. The doctor sent me for tests, which showed that I am, indeed, diabetic. The prednisone had caused a major optic shift because it spikes glucose levels, especially in diabetics. My fasting blood glucose numbers were scary high, in the upper 300s and lower-mid 400s. (They should be at or below 100.)

I could not see to drive, so I had to go on medical leave from work. I was able to start to sort through some things that had been waiting since we moved here in 2009. I finally got a filing system going and was making great progress...until...

my near vision decided to go away, too. I refused to give up. I bought 3 pairs of "cheater" reading glasses from the dollar store, the strongest they had, the weakest, and one in between.I was able to get by with that for the computer and for the things I absolutely had to read. Sometimes I had to use a magnifying glass in addition to the glasses, but I got by. Unfortunately, that kind of vision was not going to let me catch up on all the books I have piling up waiting for me to read.

For the next few weeks I never knew how, or if, I would be able to see until I woke up and saw...or didn't. It gave me time to think. I realized that rather than go back to my job after (if) my vision settled enough to fix with glasses, it was time to let it go. I didn't like the idea, because I'd been in that job for about eleven and a half years.

NEXT: some daydreams, another disaster, and more distractions...