The original plan for the weekend was to spend Thursday night with Heather in Tuscaloosa, meet with the research coordinator at UA from 8-10AM on Friday, then drive to Nashville for a dentist appointment at 3PM, attend my cousin's wedding in Fairview at 4PM on Saturday, and drive back to Opelika on Sunday. Oh and due to 11 straight red days, my neurologist decided that I should taper off the medicine I've been taking for the past month (Vimpat) and also take another round of steroids. So I was excited about the prospect of pain-free days like I had in March while taking steroids.
Thursday - when I was about 45 minutes outside of Tuscaloosa, my mom called and told me that the wedding had been postponed due to my cousin's fiance (who is in the Navy and stationed in FL) becoming very sick and not allowed to drive home. At that point I still intended to come home b/c I had the dentist appointment, after all. In the next 45 minutes I decided that I would cancel my appt, drive back to Montgomery with Heather (who is gradually moving her belongings to her fiance's apartment there) on Friday afternoon, then take her with me to Opelika, spend the night and go to Six Flags on Saturday. (I've been wary about the effects of Six Flags on my head - stress/adrenaline/sun/noise/erratic behavior are all not friends of my headache, but with steroids, it seemed possible). So when I got to Heather's I told her my great plan, which was all fine except that she and Adam already had weekend plans so she couldn't do Six Flags. At which point I texted my go-to girls: Katie and Jess. Katie also had plans, but Jess was in. Great!
Friday - I drove to campus for my 8:00 mtg. Incidentally, Hackberry is being completely torn up so there was all kind of crazy detours and I ended up parking by Wesley and walking a couple blocks. No big deal. The research study is for chronic headache sufferers - they're studying the effects of meditation/yoga/stress management techniques on chronic head pain. I'm SO EXCITED. More about that later.
I called to cancel my dentist appt. on my way back to Heather's apartment and we loaded up my car with more of her stuff and hit the road to Montgomery. I should mention that A/C in my car is out and it's been smoking hot all weekend. We got there around 2 and I got to take my mandatory nap while she unloaded the cars. (Bless you, Heather.) At some point we realized that I left my pillow and elephant in Tuscaloosa. HEARTBREAK! The good news is that Heather has an identical elephant who is my current replacement until the real one can be retrieved.
At 3:00 my brother Hayden texted to me to tell me that the wedding was back on. Oh my. So I briefly wrestled with the moral dilemma of my cousin's wedding vs Six Flags. God told me to suck it up and go home for the wedding, so I did. I decided to wait a bit for the rush hour traffic and blazing sun to calm down a bit. Then I headed back North on I-65 toward Fairview.
Meanwhile my long-lost friend Tyler was heading South toward Birmingham (also for a wedding). We talk quite a bit but haven't seen each other in a few years. We'd been talking during the afternoon and it became apparent that we would be crossing paths on the interstate - so at 9:30 PM we met up at a truck stop near Columbia, TN for about 20 min. HA! It was great. I finally got home at 10:30.
Saturday - I expected to wake up feeling AMAZING due to steroids. Well, it was way better than I had been - 1/10 pain instead of 8/10. So I enjoyed my Quiet Time and memorized Scripture but it was back up to 5/10 in a couple of hours. Disappointing. Went to the wedding at 3:30 and left the reception at 8:30. I enjoyed hanging out with my family. Saturday night I didn't sleep very well b/c my pain was up to 8 and I was very frustrated/disappointed in the steroids.
Sunday - Went to church, went out to eat. OH - I "planned" to get two big cups of Juicy Peach tea at the truck stop where I miraculously found it on my last trip home. Unfortunately, this was Juicy Peach GREEN tea which is not only the wrong color, it doesn't even taste good. The real Juicy Peach is only in GA it appears. Sad day. Came home, took a 20 minute nap but woke up with my head feeling crushed - yep, STORM out of nowhere! So I was miserable for the next few hours with 8/10 pain, plus feeling very stressed about driving, needing to be back at BH in the morning, and still mad about the failed steroids. I finally left for AL at 5:30PM. The drive was uneventful despite the fact that I felt like I was fighting a battle physically, emotionally, and spiritually all the way home. Pain is very difficult to deal with sometimes, as you can imagine. Praise the Lord I made it home at 10:30 without any problems!
Today - BigHouse interns start today!!! I'm so excited! I need to go get ready and get on over there so I can make sure we have all our ducks in a row. Sorry this has been the longest post ever. I'll come back with an update about the research study and headache stuff later - I'm hoping once I'm off everything (by the end of the week) my pain will be a lot more manageable. We shall see.
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