Robin Ellacott has always wanted to be a private detective, and temping for one for a week seems like a possible dream come true before she goes off to be properly married to her new fiancé. She didn’t count on Cormoran Strike being both good and highly in need of office help for his new case — a brother of a celebrity who committed suicide wants Cormoran to find out if it really was suicide.
What I Liked
The case is deliciously messy, with therapy, adoptions, birth mothers, sordid histories, difficult families, etc. And for the first time when Cormoran and Robin both want the same thing but are afraid to say it outright, it’s fun to see them struggle to keep Robin past the first week (even if their reluctance to speak candidly is way overused as a plot device later). And I love the solution to the issue of the witness who couldn’t have witnessed what she claimed to have seen and heard, yet smacks of some semblance of truth.
What I Didn’t Like
There is a lot of confusion about what happened the night Lula died, and major players are relatively ignored for long periods of time with very little explanation of why. Some of it lacks a way to coerce cooperation if the person isn’t interested in cooperating with a private detective; some is just a red herring left to rot too long in the story.
The authoritarian regime of Altered Earth was interesting to visit, although the trajectory from Point A to Point B is left a bit weak. Where there is actually some action, with an Emergency Combat Hologram and playing hide and seek with newbie, low-end drones, the show is decent. But many of the episodes feel like a VERY long episode that should have been a two-parter like it was on Voyager. Season 1 was way better. And don’t get me started on Picard trying to be the “old wise man” imparting great pronouncements while having NO sense of connection or chemistry with just about anyone. Even Guinan feels very forced.
List of Episodes from Season 2
S02E01
The Star Gazer
None of our tomorrows are guaranteed. Particularly when large-scale anomalies appear out of nowhere, calling your name. However, it might be better than Q calling you.
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S02E02
Penance
In an alternate Q reality, a safe galaxy is a human galaxy. President Hanson, Rios, the Borg Queen and others are more confused than present for Eradication Day.
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S02E03
Assimilation
LA in 2024? Wasn’t that a Voyager episode? Any 29th century tech sitting around anywhere? No? Oh, well.
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S02E04
Watcher
Guinan may be a listener, but only when you say something interesting, like your name. Oh, and ICE grabs some of the time travellers.
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S02E05
Fly Me to the Moon
Picard’s ancestor probably isn’t helped much with Q as her therapist. And Data with his child in a bubble is a bit creepy.
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S02E06
Two of One
Jean-Luc meets his ancestor, gives her a pep talk, and there’s a bunch of gala stuff going on.
🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
S02E07
Monsters
A trip inside Jean-Luc’s head and past is not particularly interesting.
🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪
S02E08
Mercy
Guinan and Jean-Luc are arrested, everyone else just wanders around accomplishing nothing. Good line from Guinan that the boy who met a Vulcan had to have that experience in order to grow up to be the FBI agent to arrest them.
🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪
S02E09
Hide and Seek
Okay, an Emergency Combat Hologram is pretty cool. As is playing hide and seek with newbie Borg at Chateau Picard. Hippie love moments? Meh.
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
S02E10
Farewell
In the past, double the ancestor, half the risk, a bit easy; but that project Khan file sounds intriguing. In the future, Agnes is Guardian of the Gate? That sounds intriguing too. A bit shmaltzy in places though.
🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪
The Bottom Line
Not as enjoyable as Season 1, needed more action or a lot of editing.
I haven’t been blogging much in the last little while. Some of it is that I don’t feel I have much to share that is worth sharing right now. Some of it is a few practical constraints. And some of it is just life interfering.
About 10 weeks ago now, I apparently hurt my back. I say “apparently,” as I don’t remember specifically injuring it. No moment where I lifted a car to save a child and felt my back go, “Ugh.” No slipping on ice and feeling my back go in a direction it wasn’t meant to go. I vaguely recall putting on my left compression sock one day; I was turned a bit on the edge of the bed; and as I finished, my hip kind of popped. That’s a bad description, more just like the joint jerked briefly. It wasn’t like a joint cracking, nor something slipping out of alignment, more like my hip slipped back into the socket awkwardly. It felt odd, but it wasn’t painful. And it is only in retrospect that I wondered later if something happened. Because a few days later, my left lower back, just above the hip went crazy. Incredible pain. Settled down to regular twinging and spasms for 2 weeks, saw doctor, planned for physio. Then chaos ensued. I was going to the washroom, stood up, and it felt like my whole back was seized by a vise. I needed Andrea to come and help clean me up, then in the living room on a heating pad. A week later, I ended up calling an ambulance because the pain started again and wouldn’t stop. A solid 7-8 on my 10-point scale, with occasional 12s that had me literally screaming.
I got better drugs, I did some physio. But what made the most difference? Heat and a back brace / weight belt thingie from Amazon. It basically wraps around like a belt you would wear while lifting weights, and holds everything in place where it should. I’ve had twinges since then, but even on the first day of the worst pain, I could still move around if I had the belt on. Fast forward to the end of the ten weeks, and I’m feeling back to somewhat normal. I just did a trip to Peterborough/Lindsay for a funeral, and I was terrified by the likelihood of the trip plus a different bed screwing me up. Nope. I’m back home again, and feeling okay. Sure, I’m still wearing the brace a lot to be safe, but slowly emerging into movements without the physical support. Best investment I ever made.
But during that time, I’ve been spending a LOT of time on the couch in the living room as a couch potato. I definitely wasn’t looking for more time in front of a computer blogging. I barely was able to make it through my work hours early on. Quite a few days I finished work, hobbled up the stairs, and sat for 2h with the heat on my lower back. The weird part? After about 5w, the left side was fine — just in time for my right side to flare up. Sigh. Anyway, I haven’t been able to be at my computer much, so no blogging. I haven’t even really been responding to email or texts, just short notes.
Which brings me in part to the title of this post. You’ll occasionally see amateur philosophers trying to wrestle with some ancient themes like the difference between a life well lived and living well. Or in my case lately, more like “well, living”. In my brain, I am often thinking about growing, learning, goal setting, etc. Instead, I’ve been figuring out which show to binge that I would not get bored with quickly. ST: Voyager, ST: DS9, CSI: Miami, Lucifer, The Flash, and another 20 or so are in my on-going queues. Andrea has even joined me for NCIS: LA, which back when it was part of my live watching, was always at the bottom of my list compared to just about any other new show. It’s okay. Pretty formulaic, interspersed with soap opera crap that I would normally fast-forward through but you can’t really do that when watching with someone else if you want to stay married. Put the remote down! hehehe
But this past week, we had to go to Lindsay for a funeral. Uncle Scott, Andrea’s mother’s brother, passed away 2 weeks ago and they scheduled the service this week to give time for everyone to make it over. I’ll share some links in the future, probably a whole separate post about his life, but while I was sitting in a pew reflecting on his life, and my own, I came back to the old chestnut. Is it better to live a life well or to have a well-lived life? They are not the same. One looks more like living every moment to the fullest, grabbing every opportunity that comes your way. The other might look like someone who is happy with their life in whatever form that is (a warm family, healthy bank account, big house, or lots of friends). For what it’s worth, Uncle Scott did both. Andrea’s eulogy talked about how if you ever wanted to see someone learn to water ski by sure force of will, regardless of whatever obstacles the universe had placed in his path, it was seeing Uncle Scott do it. And his infectious smile that made everyone feel better just being near him. An innocence of spirit that we all lose over life, but which Uncle Scott kept. More on that later.
But for me, I don’t feel like I’m doing any of the three. I am not particularly living well, ensuring a well-lived life, or even “well, living”. My sense of mortality is stronger than it used to be. Some depression has lingered longer than it should have been allowed to visit. And some of that is just a series of things…the pandemic. Andrea’s cancer. And a ton of stuff over the last six months for Jacob. With no clear answer or cause.
I often hesitate to talk too much online about Jacob’s stuff because it is not my story to tell. I try to focus on how I’m dealing with other people’s stuff, what I’m thinking, what I’m dealing with myself, etc. But it is difficult to do so without talking about him and the load he’s facing. Basically, to the extent this is the diagnosis, Jacob likely has a concussion. Some symptoms fit, some don’t, but he never really had a head injury. We know he fell about 2w before the symptoms started, he was coming out of school, missed a step, and fell hard on his upper body. A good jolt that maybe did something else. But he had headaches constantly (now diagnosed as tension headaches) and increasing dizziness, along with fatigue etc. We’ve dealt with most of the headache stuff, at least to the extent that it wouldn’t be as debilitating, but the dizziness is messing him up. What does that mean in the grand scheme of things? It means he’s been out of school almost 5m, attending 2-5 days per month at best.
Separate from the stress of the injury, we have been dealing with a lot of chaos. Every day is a game-day call. Is he okay today? Can he go to one class? Two? All day? Nothing? Does he need a lunch? A ride at 8:30 or 10:15 or 1:30? Or rides home at 10:15, 11:30, 12:30? 1:53? Is Andrea in the office Tues and Thursday this week? Am I in the office Monday / Wednesday? If he’s home on Wednesday, can he be by himself? Is there nausea? Does someone need to stay with him? He is struggling with day to day stuff, is it fair to ask him to take a cab one way by himself? Can he handle the mental load of his own transport, on top of everything he already deals with?
For those who like sports metaphors, most of the time, it comes down to a game-day question…is he in the game today or on the bench, and am I taking him to the stadium or not?
Andrea has been handling most of the load for scheduling things, I handle transport. We switch off for who goes in with him, but since she’s been with him for the neuro conversations, often it is better for her to do the next specialist too so she can answer what the neuro said. Some we do together, if they’ll let both parents in at the same time (some are still on single parent accompaniment because of COVID protocols).
I’m not sure how much of my beliefs as a parent are derived from personal experiences and how much professional, but they are both being challenged. I have a strong personal belief in self-empowerment and helping Jacob have the best information to make good decisions that are his own, up to the level of his capacity.
In my work-mode, I would say that it is a strong belief in human rights and the right to self-determination, to make the decisions that affect your life rather than having them made for you. I did a lot of work on the UN, and interacted with children’s rights issues, as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. You often see references to these rights being simply summarized as “No decisions about us without us”. It often finds itself in the realm of guardianships, the role of the state for children or persons with disabilities who cannot “stand for themselves” legally for whatever disqualification is in the statutes…age, infirmity, whatever. Yet it could equally apply to reproductive rights or MAID. Nothing about us without us.
For Jacob, that means I strongly push for him to be the person they see as the decision-maker, with Andrea and I more and more as trusted advisors. He is smart and has a good head on his shoulders, with a good heart. I trust him to be him. Yet when it comes to 8:00 a.m. in the morning and he is saying he is too sick to go to school, the V&E questions hit…do I trust him to be judging that completely correctly, that he really can’t go, or do we disregard it as mere teenage resistance and “force” him to go? A concussion is not something you just beast your way through, but you also can’t just wait until your brain feels better. If you don’t push at all, you don’t heal.
Some days it is draining, other days it is stressful, most days it is both. And we’re not even the one with the issue.
I have been feeling a sense of loss of control in recent weeks. That we don’t have a handle on his recovery. However, to be more accurate, I mean that I, myself, do not have a good handle on his recovery and what we’re actually accomplishing. Andrea’s doing awesome for her contribution, but also struggling under the load. I feel like I want to push more, do more, see better results, help him more than I am. I want to manage things more, maybe with no better results, but at least less of a sense of helplessness and less of a sense of deferring too much to Andrea’s mental load. The back stuff knocked me off my game for 10w. Hell, there were days when, even with the back brace on, I couldn’t load the dishwasher or do laundry (two of my main household tasks). Andrea’s been picking up my slack too. Sigh.
Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh yeah. We have some glimmers of what’s going on, we have some plans we can implement to make things better. And while we have a bit more uncertainty than we would like for some possible surgery over the summer (unrelated to the concussion), I am primed to take leave to help J with rehab. In the meantime, I’m trying to organize my thoughts on how to help him. And we can’t keep juggling work schedules and personal schedules.
So, I’m going to take three weeks off to do almost nothing except help Jacob when needed. Even if that means taking him to school for an hour and sitting in the parking lot waiting for an hour or two until he has to leave. After that, we’ll hopefully know what is happening for the surgery. But, for a short break, at least it will alleviate some of the juggling.
It isn’t living well, nor even well-lived, but hopefully it is something better than simply “well, living”. Fingers crossed (btu hten I typf lke hist, so maybe I won’t cross them).
So, I’ve often had a challenge with my lower back, particularly on my left side. The problem area is just above my hip, slightly around the back, somewhat adjacent to the small of my back, and a tad lower. Some of it is my weight, some is my posture, and some is a weak core. Regardless, it’s bothered me on and off for some 15-20 years. Often if I’m worried about doing X activity for health and fitness, my lower back worries me the most. Massage and chiro keep me upright, most of the time. Or I take something like Robaxecet when needed.
Last July, we went on a road trip through New England for 3-4 hours daily in the car. It bothered me a little, but we took a massage machine (two balls that pound on my spine) with us, BioFreeze, and a cushion for extra lumbar support if needed. Two days out of 14, it bothered me — one night at a hotel around day 10 or so and one night in Niagara Falls when we were walking over to a restaurant. That night, it was BAD on the way to the restaurant, but a Robaxecet pill later, and I was all good for the walk home.
In other words, it was controlled.
Until it wasn’t controlled
About five weeks ago, it started to nag at me. Biofreeze and muscle relaxant pills didn’t really help. I put up with it for two weeks, but it would twinge and spasm from time to time—just enough to be uncomfortable if I sat too long. I did back stretches, considered chiro, and finally went to get a massage.
The Registered Massage Therapist (RMT) was new to me, although I’ve seen her name at the clinic for a while. She met with me but didn’t want to treat me as she was afraid that whatever she loosened would / could cause more problems i.e., loosening areas that were actually protecting my back in compensation for whatever was going on. So, she insisted I see my regular doctor first and maybe get X-rays.
So off I trundled at the end of week 3 or so. He talked to me, did a basic exam, decided x-rays weren’t required unless physio didn’t fix me up, and off I went. Note that up until then, my pain was relatively under control. It might go to a 6/10 on a bad day, but that would be a quick twinge, not sustained pain.
On the Saturday and Sunday of that week (i.e., 1 and 2 days later), my back pain scale went to 10. I had some severe lockups, with the whole lower back engaged in a spasm, so much so that I actually screamed. I was even crying a couple of times when it didn’t subside. I needed to sit on the couch with a heating pad and couldn’t do much else. It was severe. But once I sat down, the pain would last maybe 20 seconds and then stop. Until I moved the wrong way.
I’m booked for a physio but that was week 6 (next week) to do the full intro appointment (1h). In the meantime, I saw another RMT in our orbit who is also an osteopath. I saw him Wed of week 4; my quads and hamstrings were SUPER tight, so he stretched and massaged until I could move again. Felt great. Lasted all day, and then on Thursday, I was twinging again. It was not like the previous weekend, but I still hit a 6-8 regularly until I sat down or relaxed my back somehow. The heat helped, but not as much as usual.
For Friday at 3:00, I had a massage booked with an RMT that I use regularly, as does Jacob. She’s awesome. I was really looking forward to the muscles releasing. Instead, I had a huge attack at 2:00, just as I was getting ready to see her.
For context, just before that, I finished work at about 1:45 p.m.; everything had been relatively fine all day. I had lunch; everything was good. When I went to the washroom, my back started to spasm. I stood up, and all hell broke loose in my lower back. Sitting or standing, I couldn’t get it to stop.
Under the heading of embarrassing, I had to call Andrea from upstairs to come help me, AND I even needed her to wipe my butt. I couldn’t bend to reach. Sigh. Cue the mental distress part. My pain scale reset so that I was now hitting 10/10 almost constantly. It wouldn’t stop.
I eventually made it up the stairs while she called an ambulance. It was the worst pain I had ever felt, and I wasn’t going to drive myself or take a taxi to the hospital in case I made it worse. But I wasn’t in a life-threatening situation, so I had to wait 3 hours for the ambulance to come. I finally stopped the pain on the couch with a heating pad, as long as I didn’t move. At 5:30 p.m., I had to go to the washroom again, and while it wasn’t fun getting there, the residual heat from the heating pad was keeping it loose. Until 10 minutes later when I tried to stand up again and it was pure torture. Andrea helped me again, including getting back to the couch. Twenty feet felt like 20 miles of torture. It took another 10 minutes for my back to calm down on the couch.
Enter the paramedics
So the paramedics arrived, checked heart and other vitals, all good. They gave me an option — go out on the gurney, which they thought would hurt a LOT, or power through it to walk to the ambulance. I powered through. Long, slow, and very painful. I’ve been in an ambulance not too long ago in tortoise years, and I know it feels like you’re riding in the back of an unaltered pickup truck. Very raw, little padding. I rode sitting up, holding on to some webbing beside me. Every rock, bump, turn, acceleration or deceleration I felt in my spine and lower back. I tried to chat the WHOLE way there to distract myself. My review? Twenty minutes, 1 star, would not recommend.
Arrival at the hospital showed 6-8 paramedic teams waiting with their patients for hand-off and a very busy ER. Since my problems weren’t life-threatening, they put me in a wheelchair, dumped me in the waiting room and went back to helping patients who really needed it. If I had known the ride in the ambulance would be so basic, I would have just taken a cab and hoped for the best. That isn’t really a fair assessment, as their main benefit besides transport was telling me what to do or how to move so I wouldn’t aggravate the situation.
I got to the ER just after 6:00, triaged at about 6:30, and then sat there in a wheelchair with my pain under control as long as I didn’t move too much. I had taken Robaxecet just before 6:00 at home. But if I stood up or moved too much, the spasms started up again.
I was alone, but I decided I needed an advocate if possible and called Andrea to join me if she was willing and able. Jacob was okay staying at home by himself, so she came. On the positive side, on Wednesday, I had ordered a wrap-around lifting belt/back brace, which arrived just as we were leaving in the ambulance. She brought it with her, and I put it on. Most of my discomfort when I moved went away. I could even stand up and take a few steps.
At 10:00, I had Andrea go tell the triage nurse my pain was increasing from sitting so long, and they said they’d bring me some pills. Two hours later, no pills, and I wanted to get myself out of a seated position. If necessary, I was willing to go home. Andrea went back over to see if there was someplace I could lie down to get the pressure off my spine, but they instead gave her Tylenol for me and a promise I would be seen very soon. “Very soon” turned out to be an hour to be escorted into the back to the secondary waiting room.
We found a place to sit; I even used the washroom on my own with the brace for support and didn’t die. I even managed to walk up and down a 30-foot space. But there were still 7 people ahead of me, apparently. I dozed off in the chair for 30m, but otherwise sat around until 3:00 a.m.. Nine hours after arriving at the hospital, I was going out of my mind. The pain was constant at this point and had risen from a constant 3-4 to a constant 6/10, and mentally I was done. I told Andrea, “I want to stay, but I can’t take this anymore. I need to lie down, or I’m going to lose it completely”.
The nurse agreed to put me in an exam room with an examining bed at least, that was at 3:05 or so, and I laid down on it. It took a bit to find a comfy position, but I slept for 45 minutes. Andrea was struggling too as there was no comfortable place for her. She had her head down on a hospital table. The doctor came in at 4:30 a.m. — 10.5 hours from arrival — and was very abrupt. It was clear that she thought I was wasting her time. I told her the pain was enough to make me scream, and my family doctor had told me if one of two things happened (spontaneous bowel release or increase in pain), I was to go to the ER. Hence, I was there.
She gave me some pain meds by IV and a muscle relaxant orally, and I went for X-rays around 5:30 a.m. The final result was that they showed nothing structural going on. They cut us loose at 7:30, home around 8:00 a.m. or so. It took roughly 14 hours to get a prescription for the pain that had me screaming at home originally. Sure, I got X-rays, pain meds, and a muscle relaxant by IV, which were worth it. And the prescriptions have worked well. But I don’t know that I would go again. I was literally losing my mind sitting there.
She gave me a prescription for five things, four of which were just over-the-counter, although two were prescription strength. The extra one was for reducing the muscle spasms. She told me to follow up with my regular doctor.
Not the best of headspaces
I was not in the best of headspaces for Saturday and Sunday. I’ll tell you, quite honestly, that if I had an off-switch during the worst of the pain on Friday, I’d likely be shut off now. I just needed it to stop. Fourteen hours at the hospital waiting for SOME sort of help did not improve my mood. I was ready to leave at midnight if they didn’t promise “soon,” I would have left at 3:00 a.m. if I couldn’t lie down. In pain with no help = go home now and curl up.
Which I did for the rest of the weekend.
My brain goes to the question, “Is this it? Is this what my life will come to?” I have no resilience for chronic intense pain, nor am I excited by the idea that I can’t sit at a computer for any length of time to write. My whole retirement plan revolves around the ability to do basic mobility and type at my computer. If I can’t, life really isn’t worth living for me.
I’ve been spending way too much time thinking about what a test for quality of life would look like for me. Some sort of quantitative measurement. I keep thinking about a TV episode I saw. Maybe it was on Bones? Castle? Something where the dead guy of the week had been killed by a smart house that he had designed. It looked like someone had perhaps hacked it and killed him; in reality, spoiler alert, he knew his mental faculties were deteriorating, and he set an AI test for himself…every day, the house would give him a puzzle to solve. He was a scientist and mathematician, and he set it as a moderate-level puzzle, not genius-level or anything. If/when he couldn’t solve it, the house would kill him, as he programmed it to do. That episode resonated very strongly with me. I define myself very strongly by my mental faculties. If/when they diminish, what’s left will no longer be me, at least not by my standards.
Nevertheless, with the meds in my system, I managed to work half days from Monday to Wednesday this week. Did I mention that the end of the fiscal year is the worst time for me to be off work? My team has $3.5B in programming per year, and $2B of it goes out between January and March. I still have $750M to go. In addition, my team is working on a huge part of a very large report, and it is legislatively required to be finished by Tuesday next week in English and Friday in French to meet all the deadlines for a Ministerial release. Fun times. And yes, of course, my team can function without me. But it does that better when it’s planned rather than a sudden absence.
I’ve been taking the pills and wearing the brace all week. And to be honest, even with my mood dampened on the weekend, it’s been going pretty well. Even with the new scale for pain, nothing is going above a 6; even then, it’s only a twinge. Sure, I’m being REALLY careful to not aggravate it, but still, the brace and muscle relaxant are making a huge difference.
Reborn faith in healers
On Wednesday, I managed to see a resident at my doctor’s clinic. Honestly, it was a completely pleasant experience.
Over the last two years, Andrea, Jacob, and I have had a number of less-than-promising experiences with the health care system. Almost all of them involve situations where our family doctor is not “enough,” but it’s not quite “emergency care” either. Andrea’s bearing the brunt of many of them for herself and Jacob, as CHEO only lets one parent go in for the appointments. I chauffeur to the door; Andrea takes over from there.
This time, I arrived and managed to make it to the office after a long walk across a parking lot, down a hall, waiting about 10 minutes to check in, and then sitting for 2 minutes, all with relatively no pain other than a few twinges. I waited maybe 5 minutes, and the doctor called me in pretty much to the minute for my appointment, and you know what?
She was completely lovely. She had a positive attitude, was friendly, and took her time to explain things to me. I brought her up to speed on what I had experienced so far, and I told her I had three main questions, all of which seemed very logical to her. She answered them in turn.
First and foremost on my list was that if the hospital X-rays showed nothing, was there any additional follow-up needed? An MRI, maybe? Dr. Harper walked me through it, talking about the limited benefits of the various options and the low likelihood of finding anything if the X-rays didn’t show a structural problem. And that the solution would be the same anyway—likely physio, which I had already booked.
Second was the current mix of meds. I am on a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) already, and the doctor at the ER had prescribed me another (without checking the meds I was already on). I had already confirmed with my in-family pharmacist that they basically did the same thing, and I had decided not to switch over since there is a risk with stopping one that my stomach will rebound with a vengeance and give me reflux big-time. The doctor confirmed I could stick with the existing one. I could switch to the over-the-counter version for the others and use them as needed. Which left one (a back spasm reducer) that was set to run out after a week. She extended it by two weeks for now, and we’ll see how physio goes. We can revisit it in a few weeks if I need it longer.
Now, third on my list was what to do if/when I have a major attack again. Going to the ER was a waste of time and healthcare resources. But, unfortunately, there aren’t many good alternatives. I can take multiple inflammation reducers (mostly Ibuprofen and Acetominophen products), keep the brace on, and lie down immediately. Hopefully I’ll also have some stretches from the physiotherapist that could help in the moment. And if it happens again, I’ll have to bear through it and get a refill on the pure spasm reducer.
As I said, it was a very helpful session and a perfectly lovely experience. Unfortunately, the office I go to frowns on adopting residents who rotate in and out through their training. By the next time I go, she’ll likely be gone.
In the meantime, I’ve been able to write yesterday and today without too much aggravation, and I worked two full days this week, albeit a bit staggered for time. I haven’t gone into the office as I’m using the heating pad three to four times a day, and I can’t plug the heating pad in at my desk (without a risk of blowing a fuse or worse, apparently). I’m working from home for now. When I do go back, it will only be to the satellite office for a while, as my main office has way too long a hike from the parking lot to the actual office area; the local office is a much shorter walk.
