The Crapiest of all Crap Days

Could the day get any worse? I’m sure it could. But right now the glass is pretty much looking half empty. The morning started out semi-okay. The wind was howling this morning but luckily it didn’t snow like the weather forecast predicted. I got up at 6:00 to go to my aerobics class. The bus took forever long and when it finally reached 400 South I realized I had just missed the TRAX by a few seconds. That’s never a good feeling, especially when you have to wait another 15 minutes in the bitter, howling wind for the next train to come. The morning trains are always packed, so by the time it gets to my stop (the stop right before campus) it’s virtually impossible to find a place to sit down. That’s usually okay, but today there was hardly even a place to stand or hold onto when the train started moving. It makes for an uncomfortable trip up that steep slope, that’s for sure. After aerobics I headed to my drawing class. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and it seemed like a beautiful day, except for the wind, and even that wasn’t too unbearable. So I got to class, and that’s where the day started to go downhill. We’ve been working on these charcoal drawings, and it’s a hard medium for me to work with. Plus, my professor is pretty critical of me. Well, all of us really. Probably because we’re not art majors. But anyway, sometimes it’s hard to take constructive criticism when it’s given in front of the whole class, am I right? In the middle of our latest assignment, I glanced out the window only to see that the blue sky had turned sickly gray and it had begun to snow heavily. When class ended it was pretty much a white out. I started walking to the train, but my attempts proved futile with the wind pushing against my body and flinging shards of icy snow into my face. Mike called and said he was on his way to pick me up because he didn’t want me to wait at the bus stop in the blizzard. I thought that was really thoughtful of him. However, it probably took him twice as long to get to campus because of the slick roads and multiple wrecks and slide offs. I was worried about him and Vessel making it there safely. About 5 minutes before he arrived I started walking down to the intersection where I told him I’d meet him. On my way down I slipped and fell on the sidewalk while carrying all of my art supplies. Besides getting my backside completely wet, I also hurt my ankle. To top it off, nobody seemed to give a rat’s. Nobody asked me if I was okay or anything. Man, I’ve seen lots of people fall this year while on campus, and I ALWAYS ask to see if they’re okay, or at least try to make them feel less embarrassed by laughing about it with them. I’m not saying I’m a saint, but c’mon people! Is it too much to ask someone if they’re hurt when they fall on the icy pavement? I just feel like there are so many uncaring people out there. So Mike drove up sometime after that awkward incident and off we went. He was driving the Cavalier and since the crappy heater/defrost broke within the last week we had to drive with the windows cracked to keep them from fogging up. It was quite scary to be honest, because we could barely see a thing anyway, and the snow was coming into our car and getting us all wet just to make matters worse. Mike suggested that we take the Cavalier into the auto shop to get the heater looked at. So after getting home, I followed him in Burple (the Lancer) to the shop on the corner. Mike also asked them to check the steering and alignment because it had been acting funny. On our way back home, I got a call from my nurse midwife’s assistant telling me that she FINALLY called in my prescription and I would be able to pick it up at the pharmacy. I thought, “It’s about time” because I had only been hounding her for a week and a half. That story goes like this: about 2 weeks ago I noticed I needed a refill on my Levothyroxine (the medicine that stabilizes my thyroid hormone levels) so I left a message with my CNM’s assistant to call it in, as she always does. A few days later (a Friday) I went into the pharmacy, got my meds and left, unaware that they had given me the wrong dose. The next day I went to take my medicine and saw that the dose was 150 mcgs instead of 100 like I had been taking. Not really having a choice, I cut a third of the pill off, (which amounted to me basically crushing the pill into powder) and decided I’d just have to call back Monday to get it fixed. I called the pharmacy and told them they botched up my regular dose and they informed me that someone had written down 100mcgs and then scribbled it out and wrote 150mcgs. I told them to just change it to 100 and I’d be on my merry way. Well, they weren’t about to let that happen without authority from my doctor. First of all, why would I lie about something like that? It’s not a drug that I could abuse to get high or something. And if it was, why would I be so adamant about getting the smaller dose? Secondly, if they checked my history they’d see that I’ve always been on 100mcg and that the person taking the message must’ve just made a mistake, obviously, since it had been scribbled out. Conveniently the person who took the message wasn’t there to explain and they couldn’t get a hold of my doctor for permission. So I called her assistant, and of course she’s never available, so I had no other option but to leave another voicemail. For a week and a half I got no response and I continually went back to the pharmacy to see if it was ever called in, and it never was. I left about 5 messages with my nurse midwife’s assistant and she NEVER called it in. Hello lady, it’s not like this is a medication that I can just stop taking for a day or two. So, I talked to the pharmacist and he asked me “Why can’t you just cut the pills that you have?” Okay genius, I’ll do that. How accurate is it going to be to cut my pills into thirds? And really, how convenient for me, right? Some pharmacist he was. So, let’s get to the point. After some amount of calling and hounding on my part, my CNM’s assistant finally called back today and said she took care of it and that I could go pick up my prescription. And the best part is that when she called me back, she gave ME attitude! What, because I left so many messages asking her to do her job? And what makes me angrier is that neither the assistant nor pharmacy will confess to making the mistake, because they’re only out to save their own butts. Okay, so back to my original story…

We drove to the pharmacy today and the clerk said there wasn’t a prescription there for me. I told them it had to be there because my CNM assistant just called and told me it was. They said maybe the call she made was still on their machine but they wouldn't be able to get to it for at least another 30 minutes because they were all going to lunch. What a joke. So Mike suggested we go get some lunch across the street and wait for them to get back and fill my freakin’ prescription that I have already waited a decade for. At the restaurant the waitress was a real ball of fire, let me tell ya. I asked for a sandwich and it was supposed to come with fries, but I didn’t want fries so I asked to get a pancake instead (so I could give it to Vessel.) I figured it would be okay since the price of one pancake and a side of French fries is the same price. The waitress told me that it would be a dollar more. It seems trivial right? But, I was about to blow up. Why would it be a dollar more to order a pancake when it is the same price as fries and I’m not getting fries anyway? Instead of fighting her about it, I just got a side of mashed potatoes instead, and somehow those aren’t extra, but a pancake is. Go figure. At the end of lunch I called the pharmacy, and yup, still hadn’t gotten around to filling my prescription. By this time I was pretty frustrated. Mike tried to calm me down and said he’d go get it tonight before his class and we got in the car to drive home. About 2 blocks away from our house we were stopped at a red light with about 5-6 cars in front of us. And then all of a sudden…BAM! We got rear ended…HARD. I was pretty much in shock from the impact and then Vessel started SCREAMING and all I could think was “Is my baby okay? Is my baby okay?” We ended up pulling off to the side of the road and the lady behind us followed. We all got out of our cars to assess the damage. Unfortunately the lady didn’t speak English and all she asked was, “Ok? Ok?” and then was about to get back in her car and drive away until Mike stopped her. Uh…no, no, no lady, you’re not going anywhere. I call the police and explained what happened. They got to the scene about 10 minutes later. While we were waiting, Mike tried to calm Vessel down and I just sat there hoping and praying that he didn’t have a neck injury or something. The lady must’ve hit us going about 40 mph (at least) and why she was driving that fast with the roads the way they were is beyond me. The police officer showed up and got all our information which took forever. That was pretty unfortunate since Mike had a homework assignment to complete before his class which was to start within the next couple of hours. The cop got our info and then turned to the other lady to get hers and she didn’t understand anything he was saying. It turned out that she didn’t even have a license. I just wanted to scream at her! I mean, what if because of her stupid lack of judgment, Vessel or any one of us got hurt? I can already feel my back and neck getting stiff. I wonder how it will feel tomorrow. It jolted us pretty bad, so I hope it doesn’t cause us back and neck problems down the road. It just really blows since I already have problems with my neck and back from past injuries. It just seems so weird how it all happened and I can't help but think if my doctor would’ve just called in my prescription correctly the first time, or at least been prompt about fixing the problem, we wouldn’t have had to go into the pharmacy today and wouldn’t have been on the road and wouldn’t have gotten hit by another car! And if we hadn’t taken our white car into the auto shop today we wouldn’t have been driving the beautiful blue car!!! The timing is just so great, isn’t it?

After all that crap, we got home and Mike received a call from the auto shop with an estimate for our white car. $100 just to LOOK at the heater and who knows how much more to fix it. And $700 to fix the steering because the rack-and-pinion (whatever that is) is broken. I don’t know how we’re going to pay for it. We’ll most likely have to use Mike’s scholarship money to get it repaired. And that reminds me of another upsetting dilemma. I was awarded a scholarship for the 07/08 school year, and I just found out about a week after school started that the financial aid department withdrew my scholarship because I didn’t attend school during the Fall semester. I didn’t think it would be an issue since I was awarded a scholarship the year before and took the Fall off to, ya know, have a baby. They told me I’d have to write a letter of appeal to the scholarship committee which is exactly what I did. And they denied my letter!!!! I need that money! I’m just asking for my Spring portion, which I should be entitled to. I called in August to let them know I wouldn’t be attending, and nobody ever informed me that by doing so I would be relinquishing my scholarship money for the Spring semester. And ironically, they have no record of me ever calling to let them know I was taking the Fall semester off. I’m still going to try and fight it, but it sounds like it’s a losing battle. It’s very exasperating. In addition to all of this stuff I am also having some personal struggles right now. Why does it seem like the crap in life gets handed to us all at once? I know, I know, it really could be worse. I guess groaning and mumbling about it isn’t going to make anything better. And here I am complaining to you all when I should be studying for my statistics test. *sigh*