Back from vacation, which generally went well in my opinion, despite the tragic death of one of my brother's friends from cancer while we were there. Mom did well on her meds and there was no WWIII between my sister and her husband. And while I ate basically whatever I wanted and gained 7 pounds between the time I left and this past Monday, I only missed one day of working out while I was there, and I have already dropped the 7 pounds in the 5 days I've been back, so I am thrilled with myself on that score. I also had very little leg pain during the trip...primarily because I spent almost all of my time standing or lying down. Of course, it all returned as soon as I got back in the car to drive home on Saturday and came to work on Monday. And as my piece of shit Humana policy has turned down the pain medication the doctor wanted to put me on, I am still waiting for him to get me a substitute drug to help me deal with the pain of sitting. I also finally see the surgeon next week to see what he thinks of the whole situation. At this point, I am actually hoping he could do another microdiscectomy to cure it, because it really has not improved at all at this point, and if the only other option is pain medication for god knows how long, I'll suck it up and pay for the surgery. The cupcake dream is pretty much dead at this point anyway after paying for the new transmission, my vacation, and my MRI, so the rest of my savings might as well go to getting me out of pain so I can at least look for another job. It might not be my dream job, but anything would be better than idiot lawyers.

It's official. I've become my mother. And it's BECAUSE of my mother. We had another weekend of a 7am Saturday phone call from my sister, though this time telling me that my mother was having horrible pain in her left shoulder and arm and was afraid she was having a heart attack. They called an ambulance and while it was quickly determined that it probably wasn't cardiac, she continued to have horrible pain and nausea, etc. all weekend until they determined it was probably a pinched nerve and got her on the proper muscle relaxer, which, thank god, helped. She is seeing her ortho today and will hopefully get a trigger point injection and enough meds to keep her OK through next week's vacation. But in the meantime, I am a complete mess. Even knowing her problem was just muscular or a nerve problem in her neck (welcome to my world!), I was an anxious mess for no reason all reason....just like she used to be when she was married to my father and he got any sort of illness, even just a basic cold. Plus, of course, I'm afraid that I'll be the one stuck ministering to her throughout our trip next week if she's still having problems, even though I'm the other person in the family having physical problems myself right now. Gah! I hate the aging process...for everyone!

OK, it's now a week after the MRI and I still haven't heard from my GP. I had to call yesterday and leave a message for him to call me about the results, which of course he managed to do at 5pm, exactly when I was picking my car from the dealership and didn't even hear the phone ring. He said he's try me again this morning, but it's now 1:15pm and I've heard nothing. Obviously, if I don't hear from him today, it will be next Wednesday before he'll be in the office again and by then I'll be ready to kill him! I'm about to go ahead and just make an appointment with the surgeon without even waiting to talk to the GP. The waiting is just ridiculous and it's probably where I'm going to end up no matter what.