January 23

 Back to my story-

    January 23 dawned and we woke up and got ready for the day feeling groggy and disoriented.  With some coffee in our systems we headed out and met my mom. Even though James' thumb surgery was in the Health Sciences complex where our hotel was, I was in no shape to walk that far and she dropped us off at the front doors of the Rehab building.  Interestingly, it was the same building where the Rheumatology Clinic is as well as the Infusion Clinic.  Those are two places I have now become quite familiar with.  But we went up to the 5th floor where the outpatient Plastic Surgery is located.  

    We were directed to a waiting room where we joined a few other people in varying states of injury.  James and I pulled out our phones and scrolled through the news headlines.  As I recall, at that time the headlines were about a young doctor in China who had been sounding the alarm about the Coronavirus in China and who had been silenced by the government but was now fighting for his life in ICU.  Or maybe the headline was that he had now passed away.  'How bad was this coronovirus?'  I wondered. It sounded pretty scary and so mysterious.  Would it be contained?  Was this all being overblown in the media?  Or would it reach Canada and become a reality for us too?

    Soon James was called in and I went with him to his little area/chair where they would hopefully fix his thumb.  Everything took a little too long though and I had to leave to make it to my appointment in Arborg. I felt bad leaving him alone to face the pain.

    My mom picked me up at the front doors again and off we drove to Arborg - just over an hour's drive north of Winnipeg.  James did fine with his thumb and his dad picked him up an hour or so later.  I would get to be his nurse who did his dressing changes for the next week or two.  Thankfully, his thumb was salvaged although he lost a bit of bone and doesn't really have feeling in the tip of that thumb anymore.

    My appointment with my family doctor, Dr. A., was kind of weird.  I went into that appointment feeling like I kind of knew my diagnosis already - I had been told by Dr. K earlier that I probably had SLE - or Lupus- so I had begun processing this already.  All I really wanted from Dr. A was a referral to a rheumatologist so I could get on with the official diagnosis, treatment plan, education, etc. and I could go back to health and living my life.  I even had the name of the rheumatologist I wanted to be referred to - as I'd done my due diligence on rateyourmd.com.  I think maybe I have some control issues...

    My mom had come into the appointment with me.  She was more concerned with the fact that I was obviously not functioning well - barely walking, pale, fatigued, etc.  I think she would have liked my doctor to admit me into the hospital that day.  I was more in denial.

    Dr. A agreed to the referral although she admitted she was not very familiar with autoimmune diseases and didn't even mention Lupus to me.  I was a little confused.  She also listened to my chest and her brow furrowed.  She sent me for a chest Xray and more bloodwork.  I felt a bit impatient - that wasn't why I was there - but whatever...off I went to the lab and Xray room where I had spent much time in and out of back when I worked as a nurse at the Arborg Hospital.  Xray rooms always feel so cold.  They're never a comforting place to be - especially when you're already feeling sick.  "Breath in, hold it - Okay".  "Turn to the side - put your hands up on the bars". "Breath in, hold it, don't move - okay".  Done.

    After my appointment, I had another appointment back at our farmhouse with Adrian, the guy from the Home Hardware store that we were ordering our new kitchen cabinets from.  He was doing an onsite visit with myself and the electrician to figure out some of the final details.

    It was 1:00 in the afternoon - I was exhausted - I had been through so much in the last 24 hours never mind the weeks leading up to it.  But there I was, in the middle of our renovation project, deep into talks about electrical outlets, lighting placement, feet and inches of cabinets with these two men.  It just felt kind of comical to me.  I don't think I even tried to explain to them what was all happening with us medically - it just felt too absurd.

    By the way, in the end, my kitchen turned out beautifully!  More on the renovation story to come as it all kept happening along with our medical woes.  The level of how much I cared about it all became lesser and lesser of a priority - but decisions kept having to be made and eventually it would all be completed.