Sunday, August 23, 2009

Just off

Now I am past the slightly scary exacerbation, with its very temporary double vision. I am working five days a week. Not much time for my life, but there you have it.

My days involve some three hours commute, and 7 1/2 hours working in less than wonderful conditions. My whole way of getting through is to simply repeat " I don't care " constantly to myself.

When I was a teenager, I worked in factories in some pretty nasty conditions. Always, the way I made it through was by telling myself I could put up with anything temporarily.

So I guess the next 5-7 years will be full of my mantra, and the knowledge that it is all temporary. Perhaps with the economy improving, the 401K will improve, and there will be jobs closer to home.

Boy, I am hoping that for everybody.

pb

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Not so good.

Lately we have many people out sick, and a few people out on vacation. There is more than enough work to go around, and not enough people.

All compounded by the ridiculous loud drone that makes everyone both on edge and half asleep at the same time. Whoever decided that we need to put workers around the air conditioning compressor ought to be take out and shot. With lousy 7mm handguns, about two hundred of them. For a long, slow, annoying death, like we are suffering.

Then, oh goody! We, and when I say we, I mean those of us who already get up freaking early so we can commute the hour or so to work. Yes, that "we." Anyway, we were asked to come in a half-hour early. So let's rush our asses to work on Friday, when the whole world is on the Southern Tier Expressway (17 to the locals) with their campers and suv's, everyone going to a vacation destination except "we."

So the place is insane when we get there. Still people out sick and others on vacation. And that lovely drone buzzing us along...

There wasn't a thing I could do for more than 10 minutes before I was interrupted by a person looking for my coworkers on vacation. I spent half the day promising myself that I would get to the bathroom soon, real soon. And the other half resigned to the fact that there was no such thing Friday.

When I finally ran to the potty, at about 11, after having arrived at 9:30, all without benefit of a break, I noticed that my sight had suddenly gone double! Everything had an extra edge on it. Like a shiny ghost self just in front or behind it. This gave me a sick feeling when I tried to walk, because it threw me off balance.

Now, my father had a similar experience, minus the horrific work day, because he's retired. He'd had a TIA. I was not a happy camper.

There was no break in the action until I finally gave up and went to lunch. I called Husband RJ and told him I would probably head directly to the emergency room when I got home.

There was no freaking way I would sit in a strange emergency room some 4-6 hours, then have my husband drive out to Binghamton to come for me.

As we got closer to quitting time, I mentioned to the boss that I was having a problem and would see a doctor when I got home, but would likely need to follow up with doctors on Monday. When I described what I was experiencing, she ordered me to go to the Emergency Room.

At that moment I regretted having mentioned it. She enlisted an HR person, and the two of them worked on me to go to the emergency room. "Let us call you an ambulance." No freaking way.

Anyway, when I got home, I called my Neuro.

Weird. The doctor on call very calmly told me he thought it was the MS. He sounded so completely and calmly convinced that I simply accepted it. He thought maybe I would want to check with my eye doctor, but that fizzled out because they never got back to me.

By the time I got up in the morning the whole episode had passed. My face is still slightly numb from it all, but that was it.

Weird.

pb
Little Pond