The last few days have been less than stellar...
Friday morning appeared to start well - I woke up on the right side of the dirt, but it all went down hill from there...
I was sitting in my home office working on the computer when the power went off. No biggie, right? I mean, it was light out, and all of the computers are on UPS. Even though they all have UPS signaling enabled so they can shut down automatically, I figured I'd shut them down manually just to be safe. Only one problem... even though the monitor is also on a UPS, apparently, the UPS does not have enough "juice" to power the monitor. I guess that's why those UPS units had such good rebates... Okay, I thought, well, I'll just plug the monitor into one of the larger UPS units in the office. Okay, minor problem: the power cord isn't long enough to reach. No biggie, I'll just run out to the garage and get an extension cord.
Did I mention that the power had failed? Yes, that meant it was dark in the garage. But, there was enough light to allow me to navigate (barely) in the garage, and I knew exactly where the extension cords were any way. Of course, I also knew that the UPS units are all small, so they only have a few minutes of power, so I was in a bit of a rush.
Oh, did I mention that I was barefoot?
Oh, and did I mention that there is a four inch concrete step up from the garage floor to the house?
I think you get the picture, but in case not...
Dark, barefoot, in a hurry, concrete step...
Yes, that's right, I forgot the step was there and didn't see it, and kicked the step full force with my left foot. Next thing I know, I am flat on my face on the floor, writhing in nauseating agony. When I could finally recover my wits, I saw that I had pulled up about 1/2 the nail on my big toe, and that my computer glasses (which I had been holding in my hand) had assumed a new interesting (though thoroughly unusable) shape.
When I tried to stand up, the pain in my left foot was searing.
Unfortunately, Jeanie had left the day before to help her parents prepare for a big family reunion. So, there I was, alone, in pain, and not very mobile. The thought of just laying back down on the garage floor held some level of appeal, but...
I hopped into the kitchen, grabbed an ice pack from the refrigerator, and hopped into the bedroom where I laid down on the bed, still feeling nauseated, and elevated and iced my foot. I figured that after ten or fifteen minutes, I would be okay, and could resume finishing our tax return so I could head off to Jeanie's family reunion.
After fifteen minutes or so, the pain had subsided somewhat - as long as I didn't try to move my foot at all, much less put any weight on it. It was at that point that the thought occurred to me that I might have broken my foot.
I decided to call our doctor. The good news? Our doctor's practice is really good about working patients in. The bad news? Our doctor left the practice. Fortunately, the practice had automatically moved all of his patients to the "other" doctor in the practice, and while he couldn't see me, one of the PAs was available to see me.
So, I drove myself over to the office, which fortunately is fairly close to the house, and I was seen pretty quickly.
Thankfully, x-rays indicated that nothing was broken.
The PA gave me a prescription for Toradol and a Toradol injection to "get me started." I guess I was somewhat out of it, as I caught the anti-inflammatory and non-drowsy part of the Toradol explanation, but missed the pain killer part. That led to a humorous scene with my nephew later that day, but, I am getting ahead of myself.
Just after I got home, there was a knock on the door. I managed to hobble to the door before the mail person had gotten back to her car, so she came back to the door to hand me a certified letter.
I don't know about you, but I have yet to ever receive a "good" certified letter. This proved no exception to the rule. The letter turned out to be from an attorney that my mother had retained questioning how I had been managing her finances for the past six years.
The amazing thing is that I had had dinner with my mother the night before, and she had given no indication that this was coming. To say the least, I was floored for the second time that morning.
The good news is that I've had to deal with this kind of crap from my mother many times in the past, so at least I have some experience with it and I know that eventually "it" passes. The bad news is that I've had to deal with this kind of crap from my mother many times in the past, and it still hurts like hell - in fact, I believe that the pain it causes is cumulative.
Anyway, even though I was still in considerable pain, I didn't want to disappoint Jeanie or her parents, so I dragged myself to the car and made the three hour drive.
Have I ever mentioned that my nephew is a dentist? Well, we were chatting, and he related this humorous story about one patient he had that had recently had a root canal. Jay had prescribed pain killers to manage the patient's pain and had given the patient his first dose at the office. The next day, (which happened to be a holiday) the patient calls Jay's office complaining of significant pain. Jay calls the patient back and starts talking to the patient about the nature of his pain, and asks if he's taking his pain medication regularly, to which the patient responds "oh..." Being the razor sharp diagnostician and healer that he is, Jay suggests that the patient has to actually take the pain pills in order for them to be effective.
So, later that night, Jay's wife asks if my foot is getting worse, as she noticed that I was starting to limp more. I respond, "why yes, now that you mention it, my foot is hurting more." She then asks if I need to take another pain pill, to which I respond "well, I haven't been taking anything for the pain, but I am a little behind in taking my anti-inflammatory." So, I hobble out to the car to get my pills, and decide that since I didn't really know much about these pills, maybe I should read the patient information sheet the pharmacist so nicely included in the bag. Short story long, I found it very amusing when I learned that Toradol is an NSAID - i.e. a pain killer!
The one highlight in the whole saga (no, it's not over yet) was the reunion weekend. I really enjoyed my time with Jeanie's parents and her nephew and his family, as well as getting to see many other members of Jeanie's family. I also really enjoyed the food, although the scale was unforgiving of my excesses.
Because I had not finished our taxes, I left Jeanie at her parents and headed back home Saturday late afternoon. I ended up being really tired when I got home, so I decided the best thing would be to go to sleep, and get an early start on the Taxes on Sunday.
I have used TaxCut for a number of years, along with its companion product, DeductionPro, and have never had any problems. Oh yeah, but this was this weekend...
Since we had moved during the 2005 tax year, we had made lots of donations to Goodwill. Not only was the volume of donations larger than usual, but the types of items we donated were more varied - not just the typical pants, shirts, jackets, handbags, ... of years past. Now we had receipts for things like a recumbent exercise bike, a sewing machine, a TV, kitchen ware, ... DeductionPro's ability to deal with these items was severely lacking as was its ability to speed me through the entry process for the large number of typical items.
As if that wasn't enough, there turned out to be a bug in TaxCut which caused me hours of frustration. The bug was due to a problem with the way TaxCut handled the W2 state withholding entries for our old state vs. our new/current address. Even though I had entered our address with the proper state (FL) early in the interview process, apparently, after I had entered the W2 state information as listed on the actual W2 (NC), TaxCut automatically changed the state for our home address to NC! When I went to run the check for errors, the program flagged the mismatch between the state in our address and our zip code. So, I went back and changed the state for the address to FL. This caused the program to automatically change the state on the W2 to FL! Of course, this created other problems. I finally figured out a work-around - I changed the entry for my W2 information so that the first line had FL in the state code, a blank employer ID, and zeros for the amounts, then entered the NC information on the second line - but the whole process caused me a fair amount of stress and frustration.
I managed to finish the taxes by mid-afternoon on Sunday, and decided that I deserved a treat. So, I limped out to the back porch (oh yes, my foot was still hurting) grabbed the hammock, and put it up on the stand in the back yard. Since I knew I was only going to be out for an hour or so, and since I never "get sun" on my chest or legs, I only applied sunscreen to my face and neck.
Memo to self: by April, the sun, even in northern Florida, is VERY strong. One should ALWAYS apply sunscreen, no matter how briefly they expect to be out in the sun.
Well, hindsight is 20/20, and I now have the whopper of a sunburn on my chest, belly and lower legs to serve as a painful lesson.
Unfortunately, the prescription for the Toradol was only for five days, which meant that I ran out yesterday. It's tough to sleep when every little movement of the sheet causes discomfort...
Digg It!
Bookmark it!
Posted by David at April 20, 2006 06:21 AM