Let's do this one day at a time, shall we?
Sunday I made chicken noodle soup, and as always the secret ingredient is chorizo sausage.
I also did some more organising and straightening up for the rental inspection on Wednesday.
Monday I cleaned the kitchen... without any great speed I might add, but I also sorted out some things that might not have occurred to me otherwise, all the good stuff.
Tuesday the wheels fell off my portion of the universe.
I got up early so I could get things ready to clean the bathroom and then sweep/vacuum the floors before mopping. It should have been an easy job and I should have been done by early afternoon at the latest.
However, when I was brushing my teeth I realised that I couldn't hold water in my mouth properly to rinse. I mean I could, but as soon as I went to rinse, it would come squirting out the left side of my mouth. Very fucking weird.
I had a look at myself in the mirror and everything looked okay. Maybe I had a bit of a bloodshot eye on the left side of my left eye, but maybe that's usually there in the morning and I just never look. So I went to have breakfast. And you know how you just know what eating something you eat every morning is supposed to feel in your mouth? Yeah, it didn't feel that way. There was definitely a problem with my mouth.
I remember back... I dunno, let's call it ten years, one of the women I worked with just had a stroke in the middle of the work day, in the middle of the office. And that part of that was that one side of her face just went slack.
So guess what conclusion I started walking in the direction of. Rather than just going "nah, it's fine" and getting on with my day, I changed from "cleaning the house" clothes to "going to the emergency room" clothes, and headed out to the bus stop. Going outside, I realised that while I was clearly squinting my right eye, I couldn't feel anything happening on the left eye. And the bus wasn't going to be there for another quarter of an hour.
Suffice to say I went back to my apartment, got my car keys and drove to the Royal Adelaide. Yeah, maybe not the best idea ever if I was having a stroke, or needed to be admitted or any other incalculable number of potential options, but I couldn't stand around like an idiot... plus the fact that the hospital is now just "outside" the city compared with where it previously was, I didn't particularly want to walk all that way.
Anyway, I got to the hospital, did the check in thing and sat down to wait. I had brought my book with me, so that made things not seem as long. But I'm pretty sure that I'd been placed on the triage list right after the few people who came in before me, but before everyone who came in after, with the exception of one old lady who came in by ambulance.
Even so, I think I had a hour wait, give or take, possibly a bit less.
The very nice doctor man (they're generally very nice doctor men, or else if you're a doctor man who looks after me when I'm in the ER then I think you're very nice... I'm easy like that) saw me after a couple of minutes of pulse and blood pressure and all that good stuff.
He asked me to tell the same story I'd told about three times at that stage, asked me a few extra questions, made me make a bunch of faces and expressions, then got me to put my arms in the appropriate diagnostic position while he pulled, then I pushed, swap position, repeat until decision.
I expected him to do the thing they usually do in these situations... disappear for five or more minutes to consult with some random faceless colleague before coming back to tell me whatever he had to tell me. That isn't what happened.
Instead, once the arm pushing and pulling and facial gymnastics were done he just looked at me and said "it's not a stroke"... which was a giant relief, not gunna lie. And then he followed it up with "have you heard of Bell's Palsy", which I had, but not enough to remember what the hell it was if I ever actually knew.
Turns out that it's a mostly inexplicable infection of the major nerve that controls the muscles of one side of the face or the other. It comes on in about 72 hours and takes up to a month to return to normality, with it disappearing completely in the majority of cases.
But at least it wasn't a stroke.
Although, fun fact I discovered... if you are having a stroke it doesn't affect the muscles that control your eyebrows... the rest of (half) your face, sure, but not the eyebrow. People are weird.
I had to wait around a bit while he wrote up a letter for my GP and a prescription for all the lovely drugs (in this case, steroids and anti viral medication)... but they moved me out of the treatment bay so they could actually use it.
I think I got to the hospital some time around 10:30am and I was home again just before 1pm. Not the worst ER experience I have to say. And that does include the trip across the road to the chemist to get all the lovely drugs and some eye drops.
And then I still had to clean the bathroom and mop the floors.
At least it kept me occupied and gave me something else to think about that wasn't half my face no longer functioning.
It did give me considerably less time than I might otherwise have had though, but I got everything all sorted and clean and ready for Wednesday's inspection. Including a call to Ma when I was finished cleaning (and she was home from work) about all the drama. I put some tape over my eye overnight just to ensure it stayed closed like it's supposed to, and called it a day.
Wednesday I spent essentially the whole day playing DnD and let my rental inspection happen on it's own time.
My face (or half thereof) had clearly progressed or not progressed, or whatever the right term is. Suffice to say that I could tell it was "further along" (I'm avoiding words like "worse" right now) and I could only half raise an eyebrow on that side.
It also got progressively harder to pronounce my B's and my P's throughout the day. I'm not sure whether more or less talking all day sped up the timeline or not, I would suggest not so much to be honest.
But we had a new DM for this particular part of the adventure, and as is always the case, those people who are excellent at playing their characters also turn out to be excellent DMs. And it was a smaller table size, only four of us, so all in all, a pretty good time was had.
And I got to play a character I haven't touched in forever and work out who the hell he needs to be... or who I'm going to turn him into. Which is always great.
The only issue came at lunch time, when I went down to the food court and looked around and wondered what in the ever loving hell I would be able to eat for lunch. I'd already worked out that I was unable to drink from a pop top bottle of water, so I did a lot of wandering before ending up getting chicken nuggets. Still a challenge, but I made do.
After DnD I headed home, found the "Thank You" card from the inspection (I swear that they are never consistent about what they leave behind, ranging from the card to nothing to a full report sheet), and made the dough for ciabatta loaf that needed to be left to rise for 18 hours, before heading out for the evening game.
We've all been freaking out about taking on a beholder (a big floating eyeball monster with a bunch of eyeballs on stalks for the uninitiated) since our last session a couple of weeks ago, and we geared up with a plan and whatnot... only to have our ranger/rogue score two natural 20's, one in the surprise round and one in his first attack, single-handedly killing the monster.
The amusing thing was that the ranger/rogue's player had spent the previous two weeks learning to 3D print so that he could print a beholder mini and then paint it in order for us to have it for the game. And it was out on the table for a grand total of about 5 minutes. I mean he did it to himself.
Thursday was mostly okay... except by that stage I realised that a) I need to eat my breakfast with a teaspoon in order to prevent appearing to be a toddler with a face full of breakfast and b) I need to drink all liquids, both hot and cold with a straw.
So yes, that does in fact mean that I have used a straw in my hot coffee during the latter half of this week. Come at me bro.
But seriously, it meant that my face had finally settled into the final "nothing much works on the right side" final form it'll be in for the remainder of the month more or less.
The only thing of interest I did on Thursday was turn the dough from Wednesday afternoon into an amazing and huge (yet very crusty, in the good way) loaf of ciabatta bread. By the time I got around to shaping the dough and then letting it proof again, I think it spent about 20 hours sitting around doing sweet fuck all and about 10-15 minutes of me actually interacting with it in any way, plus 45 minutes in the oven.
I also decided to introduce the hand mixer to my chicken noodle soup, since it was just getting too damn hard to eat, given that the teaspoon method takes for fucking ever. I also resorted to a big fat chunky straw for what was left after some bread dunking. This is my life right now. Straws.
Friday I had my GP appointment in the early afternoon, but on the way to the bus stop my back had a bit of a dummy spit at me. I mean I get it... sitting in the ER for however long, plus cleaning the floor and moving furniture and whatnot, then the usual Wednesday sitfest, I totally get it. Annoying, but I get it. I might need to go and see my chiro early next week, even though I only saw her last Friday. Again, annoying, but I'd rather go than not go.
I also made the dry mix of a cinnamon and cranberry loaf before I left... except it turns out that instead of putting 1.5 teaspoons of salt in, I put 1.5 tablespoons (or 4.5 teaspoons) in. And that's never good (more on that later).
To be honest I probably could have skipped going to the GP entirely. I only did it because the lovely ER doctor recommended it, but it turned out to be a big nothing really. I mean don't get me wrong, my GP is a lovely old duffer, and he did make a suggestion about the steroid tablets which I'll probably follow, but it was really just a "how you going" check and not much of anything really.
He did comment on how well I was handling it... and yeah I get that, but that really comes down to two factors. The first being that at least it wasn't a fucking stroke. The second being from an episode (A Quarter to Midnight) of the 1980's British kid's show Press Gang... "panic later, it's an old girl's trick" (that's how I remember it anyway)... there's nothing to panic about yet, so why panic now, if I need to panic later I'd rather save my energy for that.
Mostly though it was about ten minutes of chat and then I came home again.
And I set the bread off, but honestly, it did feel like something wasn't completely right in the first hour or so... but I assumed it was more about the fact that the recipe had milk and sugar in it, as opposed to the excess of salt.
Today I got up earlier than usual (well, with the exception of this week anyway)... because there's something about waking up with your eye taped shut that just engenders a sense of wanting to be up and about the day... plus I had dough to shape.
So I got the ill-fated loaf ready for it's second proofing, and was ready to go before Ma even got here. Which meant that we had an early start at the supermarket and were back earlier than usual.
I decided on tomato soup this week. I mean I definitely needed something that was already blended... and I haven't made tomato soup this season yet.
Then we came back here, I put the bread in the oven and we did the usual unpacking before trying the bread. I felt like it was way too salty, but I'd also put some salted butter on it, so I honestly couldn't completely tell. But later when the bread was totally cool and I didn't add any butter, it was super obvious. A shame really. But we'll call that a trial run and try again later.
We ended up going to IKEA to get the last of the chairs for my table, but we only did the lower floor, because there wasn't much point doing the whole thing.
And that was it really.
Like I said, a challenging week... with more to come it would seem.
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