Déjà Vu All Over Again

You’re probably used to my cheerful, optimistic posts and my sunny disposition. Maybe sometimes you even want to know if I’m for real or if it’s hate hate hate and more hate when I close the MacBook Air for the evening, despite the fact that most posts end on an up note.

Well if you’ve been skeptical you’re in for a treat tonight because I am royally pissed off. I had a hell of a morning.

It all started last night when I had trouble falling asleep. I deliberately don’t look at the time when I have trouble settling down because knowing just how little sleep I am about to get in the best case scenario just makes it worse. I highly recommend this tack if you haven’t tried it. To further induce the Zzzz’s I put in one earplug in the ear facing up. The pillow against the ear facing down muffles sound enough on that side and I don’t want complete sensory deprivation in case the riots start again or the rats come back and run up the stairs or something.

Then I had a series of nonsensical and mildly disturbing dreams none of which I can quite recall but some of them involved my two illegitimate children with different fathers and my attempt to explain this situation to someone in an office I have never been to for unknown reasons. I promise this was just a dream, dear. When I woke up I immediately knew something was wrong because there was far too much light in the room for it to be 6:30. I looked at the clock. It was 7:09. My older daughter’s bus comes at 7:30.

I uttered expletives à la Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral although I wasn’t late for a wedding and hurtled myself up the stairs to wake the kids.

“Get up, sweetie,” I said to Isabel. “Mommy overslept and it’s already ten past seven.” You only get away with referring to yourself in the third person if you are a mother, a grandmother or Bob Dole. Miraculously she kicked into action, realising the gravity of the situation. She was downstairs, dressed, with teeth brushed within about seven minutes. I even managed to make her lunch, brush her hair and argue with her about how cold it was or wasn’t and why she did or didn’t need a parka before the bus showed up.

I then ran upstairs and took a Tamoxifen, which I normally take at 6:30, right when I get up. At that time I also normally take a levothyroxine for my underactive (formerly overactive) thyroid — yes I only get weird things for which I have to take daily pills, ruining forever any desert island fantasy I ever start having (it goes something like this: I am stranded on a desert island… oh crap if I don’t have my pills I would die — fantasy over). I take the thyroid medication at 6:30 for good reason; I am not supposed to eat for one hour after taking it (or take it for two hours after eating) and I want my breakfast as soon as possible.

But this morning I did not take the thyroid medicine with my Tamoxifen because it would have meant waiting until past 8:00 to eat anything. Unacceptable. I figured I would eat first and then wait the requisite two hours after eating and take it then.

A bit later this morning I was in my room studying my reflection and came to the conclusion that as much as I don’t want it to be true, my eyebrows and eyelashes are falling out AGAIN. I am not very happy about this. I heard it could happen but I had really thought the issue was done and dusted, as we say here in England. Yogi Berra’s quote came to mind: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” But that was the only funny thing about it. While studying my patchy lower left lid, the phone rang. I missed the call. Plus our land line is broken anyhow so although you can place or receive a call, the instant the call connects it is dropped. So you get to hear or say “hell-” and click it’s dead. WTF. I pressed the caller ID button and saw that it was my husband, who was calling the landline even though he knew the phone was broken. WTF again. Maybe he had heard about my two illegitimate children…

I called him back on my mobile phone. While speaking to him, I hustled over to my night table where I was supposed to take that thyroid medication, having eaten breakfast a while before. Because I was distracted, however, I took another Tamoxifen. Swallowed it right down about a nanosecond before I realised what I had done. “Shit,” I thought. I got off the phone with my husband and then called the nurse to make sure two pills in one morning wouldn’t kill me. Of course it wasn’t that big of a deal. They said it would be fine and that I should resume the normal dose tomorrow. That was a relief, because I didn’t really want to have to shove my fingers down my throat even though I had just seen Clare Danes do a hell of a job at it on Homeland only last week.

After suffering about five minutes of psychosomatic nausea, I took the thyroid medication as previously planned and decided to try to fix the phones. I rebooted the base station for the cordless handsets, which of course did nothing. That means I have to call Virgin and try to talk to an actual person tomorrow, since the computer and the automated call centre have informed me that my line is working perfectly (super). And the last time I had to talk to Virgin I reached a nice lady at a call centre in India and had to explain that they had given me a phone number that had already been assigned to the urology department at the Royal Free Hospital. You cannot make this shit up, people.

So, let’s take stock of my day so far: slept through alarm, felt like head was run over due to not enough sleep, confirmed eyelashes and eyebrows thinning, phones broken and attempt to fix them unsuccessful, almost poisoned myself with anticancer medication. Not great. Oh and did I mention the nagging post radiation pain on the underside of my right “boob” that drove me nuts all weekend because it not only hurt, but along with the newly thinning eyebrows and eyelashes, served as a constant reminder that I had cancer and have had all this revolting draconian crap done to my body in the recent past?

So I did the only thing I could do to turn things around. I rallied and went to the gym. And it did help. What really helped, though, was meeting my husband for a greasy cheeseburger at The Albany (pub really near Great Portland Tube Station) after my workout. A burger was just about what the doctor ordered. And now I am going to bed, sort of on time, thank you. Right after I ever so gently remove my mascara and try not to disturb any weak lashes in the process. Those fuckers had better grow back fast.

If this continues I might have to get lash extensions or just flat-out fake lashes. Fake boobs, why not fake lashes too? Hell by the time I’m through I might be 75% plastic instead of 75% water.

Here’s to hoping tomorrow is a better morning. G’night.

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