Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Lots of things going on today

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I’m having an interesting day … one that I think I’m more than ready to be done with.

My husband finally had a couple of days off in a row so we’re busy doing some much needed renovations on the house. Yes we’re actually doing the renovations – not just talking about getting it done sometime, someday. It’s started. The living room dining room reno will finally be finished – soon. LOL

My poor dog is totally baffled by what’s going on. She’s wondering what all this banging is and why everything smells like spruce wood and saw dust all of a sudden. Not that she minds the smell.

One thing threw me for a bit of a loop today. I finally got the call I’ve been waiting for from the Human Resources department at my workplace. I’ve been waiting to hear from them ever since I had my first appointment with them two weeks ago regarding going back to work. You know, that appointment that ended up with me being interviewed by five people for over an hour! Yikes!

Well, now they want to see me for at least half an hour. I’m not sure what it’s about this time. It could be yet another interview type meeting or maybe they’ve found a place in the hospital for me. I don’t know. All I do know is that it’s nerve wracking each time. I just want to get back to work – get my life back on track again. I’m starting to feel like a yoyo – back and forth, back and forth I go … Hmm but I bet I don’t compare to the best yo yo at yoyoplay. Uh huh.

A while back I thought it would only be a couple of weeks and I’d have my old job back. That was in January or February … here I am after convincing my doctors that I’m healthy enough to go back to work, and convincing the occupational health department at my workplace that I’m healthy enough to return and getting cleared to return to work and I’m still waiting. Hopefully it won’t be much longer.





My Migraines are back?

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I don’t know if I’m fighting something or if I’m just over tired or if perhaps my migraines are coming back, but I’ve noticed over the last two or three weeks that I’ve had a headache or migraine almost every day.

It’s disappointing that I’m going through this because 1. I’ve suffered from Chronic migraine since I was about 12 years old – not constantly, but on and off since that time and after a very bad period of severe migraines in 2010 I finally started on some medications that seemed to get my migraines under control for the most part.

I’ve been pretty much migraine free for a year and a half so it’s disappointing that I’m having bad migraines all of a sudden. Who knows, like I said maybe I’m fighting something or maybe it’s the weather – we’ve had a very mild winter here in Toronto and our Spring is about a month and a half ahead of itself so I suppose it’s possible that the weather or something could affect me too. I don’t know .. I just want to go back to being pretty much migraine and headache free again! Especially since I might be going back to work in a couple of weeks!

It’s been almost five months since I quit smoking

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Last weekend my husband and I went to Brantford to see his family. It had been my husband’s mothers birthday earlier in the week and the family was getting together to celebrate her birthday by having lunch together in a local restaurant.

We drove from Toronto and met everyone at the restaurant. Unfortunately the meal wasn’t all that great, I don’t really think anyone except my father in law and one of my brother in laws really liked their food. After we finished eating we went back to my in laws for birthday cake and to spend some time talking.

I was talking with my mother in law when I realized that everyone was starting to congratulate my husband and I. I didn’t realize why they were praising use at first, but they it finally sunk in that they were saying how happy they were that we’d quit smoking and they were happy that we’d been so successful.

You know, up until that point I’d actually forgotten that I’d quit smoking. Aside from Christmas this was the biggest, and to be honest really this was a bigger family gathering we’d been to since we both quit smoking in October. We haven’t really been to many large gatherings or parties since we quit, probably because we’ve been avoiding social occasions that might make us want to smoke, but I think we’re probably over that hump now.

I still get the occasional urge to smoke, but it’s usually when I’m at home doing something that I used to do with a smoke. I never get the urge to smoke when I’m out of the house. I worried about smelling other peoples cigarettes but that actually turns me off. Now that my migraine auras are worse and I’ve developed a “smell aura” that makes me hypersensitive to smell I pretty much can’t stand to walk outside stores where everyone is smoking. Sometimes when I take the dog outside late at night one of the first things I’ll smell when I walk outside the door is someone smoking a cigarette and I’ll look around and I’ll see a neighbor a block away standing on their porch having a smoke or maybe my neighbor who loves to smoke macanudo cigars – yes that’s how sensitive my nose is these days.

Anyway, as I was saying, it was nice to have people telling us that they were proud of our accomplishment. I quit smoking on October 12th so I guess I’m closing in on 5 months without cigarettes. That is pretty good now that I think of it. I think I feel a little bit better health wise and we’ve certainly saved ourselves quite a bit of money that literally would have been up in smoke.

Now I’m a super Smeller? Thanks Migraines

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I had the strangest thing happen to me earlier today. I was filling out a form and for a few minutes I forgot the name of my street.

Yeah … I really did. I couldn’t believe that I couldn’t think of the name of the street that I’ve lived on for close to ten years!

I know why it happened though. Last night I increased my dose of Topamax (my migraine medication) to 100 mg and as I’ve mentioned before that medication comes with all kinds of wacky side effects, and memory issues are just the tip of the iceberg. LOL Even my typing and spelling for this post is way off. I’ve had to correct just about every sentence.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with a new doctor, an endocrinologist, and since it’s a first visit and I have to fill out forms and provide a lot of information about my medical history and current meds ie Synthroid dose, pain meds and probably even the chromium supplements that I started earlier this week, I think I’d better get organized and write them down tonight just in case I forget them tomorrow just like I did my street name earlier today. Man that was weird.

I still can’t believe I forgot my street name!

Another weird side effect that I was sure was coming from the migraine medication is that I’ve become what I call a “super smeller“.

I started to notice this side effect in early October when I started taking Zyban to quit smoking and I thought it was the Zyban that caused it … but I stopped taking that medication in November and well … I can still smell things way tooooooooooooooo good. I mean … I live in a semi-detached house (built in the 1920’s) and suddenly I can smell when my neighbors are cleaning their home (just in the last two weeks)?

I know I’ve mentioned how I think my dog smells now. She has this skunky smell and lately I can smell her breath. Everyone else still says she’s one of the only dogs they know who’s breath doesn’t smell, but to me when she’s panting her breath can stink up a whole room … yes … that’s how hypersensitive to smell I am lately.

I did catch a break this week – for the first time in months! I spent yesterday enjoying normal smell. I know it sounds weird. I m sure the whole last half or maybe this whole post sounds strange (the wonders of migraines and migraine medications?) but this is my life lately. Anyway .. yesterday was my first normal smell day in ages and you don’t know how nice that was.

I saw my family doctor yesterday and I told her that I had a normal sense of smell and she said she really thought it was my migraines that was causing the hypersensitivity.

It’s true that migraines can cause people to be extremely hypersensitive to smell … but if that’s true that would mean that since October or perhaps even earlier, I’ve been in a constant state of migraine that’s only just broken … that’s terrible! I actually do believe that’s possible because ever since mid-September or so I’ve had these flashes at the side of my eyes (I call them Roman Candles going off). the flashes happen every five minutes or so taking turns on each of my eyes (yes another very weird thing I’m living with). My neurologist sent me to an Ophthalmologist in early November to make sure that there was nothing wrong with my eyes and that the Tomapax wasn’t causing Glaucoma or anything, and now both of them have come to the conclusion that my eyes are perfectly healthy so what I’m experiencing must be migraine auras … yes constant 24/7 migraine auras …. so why not constant 24/7 several months long hypersensitivity to smell too? I have had headaches and migraines during this time period as well, but not constantly.

Yeah .. my life has taken a weird turn … yes it has. Hopefully the increase in dosage of my migraine medication will turn off all of the migraine side effects the painful ones and otherwise. I’ll let you know .. I’ll also let you know if I forget any other strange things.

Baking my first cheesecake

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If I feel up to it, tomorrow I’ll bake my first ever cheesecake.

When my husband and I went shopping last weekend we got all the ingredients that I’d need to make at least two pumpkin cheese cakes. Of course … I spent Sunday and Monday busily baking cookies and then I had doctors appointments the rest of the week so there’s been no more baking since then.

Since this is the first cheesecake that I’m attempting to make I thought I’d make one for my husband and I to try and if that works out, I’ll make a second one closer to Christmas to take to my in-laws for Christmas day.

Hey we can freeze half of the first one if we want to – otherwise between the cookies and the cheesecake I’m pretty sure I’ll be looking for diet pills for women in the new year! You should see the top of my friend where I have bags and bags of all the cookies I’ve made stored. I’m expecting a cookie avalanche any day now.

The reason why I said I might bake the cheesecake tomorrow if I feel up to it is because I started taking more of my migraine medication on Thursday. Remember that anticonvulsant – Topamax that I started taking at the end of August that made me feel so weird for several weeks? Well I’m taking an extra pill each day now and I’m back to having some more weird side effects and I’m extra tired. It’s the tiredness that might keep me from baking tomorrow … but if I don’t bake the cheesecake tomorrow I’ll get around to it on Monday or Tuesday I’m sure.

Have you ever baked a cheesecake? Did it go well? Any tips for me?

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