London Diary, Day One: Burnie McStuffy McPainie McPeesalot

Deb: I sent a private email to Barb and three other dear friends today about the glamourous saga of my take off and arrival in London. Barb dared to ask if I would do it as my first post. I have accepted the challenge. Please do not feel jealous of the jetset glamour and whirlwind adventures I am privy to. I cannot help it if my life is just that damn sweet and privileged.

It started two days before I left when I woke up with huge shooting pain in my lower back and a deaf ear. The ear was a result of wax buildup which I have developed since age 50. The fact that I poured cooking oil into it to soften it for my doctor to flush out didn’t help. As it turns out, there was so much wax the oil got trapped behind it and rendered me deaf. Not to mention the fact that I used (who knew) my husband’s expensive extra virgin olive oil.  I mean, who among us would not want to grab a little of the extra virgin, so long gone?! So my doctor flushed the wax out and, because of that fine expensive oil, the wax shot out, right past the medical robe and the metal ear bowl and onto my new pants. My doctor’s humourous response was, “At least it was YOUR wax.” She’s right. Thank heaven for small favours.

When I got home after the flushing I really had to pee and I went to the powder room and felt not relief, but searing burning pain. Phoned the doctor I had just left who told me (given that I was leaving the country) to come back up right away. The result as I suspected was a urinary tract infection, the first bout of which I had just had in August. The explanation for this reoccurrence had everything to do with my aging body parts and that darling of the female set: post-menopause. So she put me on Sulfa again, which when I took it in August made me gag and wretch. HORSE PILLS, I TELL YA!

At this point in the day, the pain in my back was so bad that I could barely stand, but my wonderful Chiropractor, the lovely Sasha, worked me over for a half hour! I got home to find that the treatment was not only wearing off, but that my buttocks were now covered in bruises as a result of the cure. I followed that up with a massage and now my butt is so sore that not only can I not sit down because of the internal pain, but I cannot sit down because of the external pain. Win win!

So, bless Sasha’s heart, she came in on Saturday, her day off, and worked me over again to little result. I think my back needed a break, but there was not time as we had to go for it. So ice heat ice heat ice heat muscle relaxers later, I was packing in slow-motion sporting a good Robaxiset buzz and a silly grin which was accompanied by nausea. I would start to pack toiletries and wonder, “How did I get on the floor playing “gimme it” with the dogs?” Add to that the fact that I woke up on the day of travel with a swollen bottom lip sporting a burgeoning cold sore. At this point I am staring into the mirror laughing my battered ass off. You gotta laugh.

The following excerpt is from the email I sent to aforementioned friends. The credit for the term “downstairs lady” should go to my brilliant and hilarious friend Teresa Pavlinek who has coined with this phrase a whimsical name for the female anatomy.

Dear Cheryl, Barb, Annette and Sheila,

So get to the airport and back is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.  Nausea from the Robaxiset is wearing off, but I am now in a full body sweat.

Limping along with a stiff upper lip, which is chapped and dry from the herpes meds, I manage to stumble to the Air Canada lounge and have a bite and a glass of wine to sooth my tummy. Then I take two Advil, which actually work quickly and quite well. Once on the plane I realize that although my back is better I am getting Colin's wretched cold BIG TIME, so stuffed up am I becoming.  So in no particular order, I take Tylenol, Coldfx, and of course Sulfa for my needy, burning downstairs lady.

I have a bite of food, watch a movie, take a nervie-dervie (sleeping pill for blog pepes who don’t know my vernacular) and sleep through to landing. Wake up having missed breakfast on the plane, driver picks us up and we get stuck in horrible traffic.

Hunger and dehydration nausea is building faster than a downtown condo. Get to the hotel which is beyond the beyond of chic, come up to the room, order breakfast, sit on the bed with Colin on the other side of the beautiful rose strewn dining table, eat perfect French toast until I feel my stomach is ready to accept the Sulfa pills to aid the woes of the “downstairs lady.”

Perched on the embroidered silk bedcover, I put the pill in my mouth, gag for all I'm worth and piss all over the bed. As I run screaming, gagging, laughing into the washroom, my husband follows me with a hand towel wiping clean the evidence.

HELLO London! The Clampetts have arrived.  

“Come and listen to a story ‘bout a gal named Deb,

A poor simple slut who just pissed a hotel bed.

She picks herself up, cause she's got nothing left to lose

And heads to the smart shops to buy her some shoes.”

***The following is the part that Annette, she of the great wit, added as response:

“So Deb sent an email to her friend named Annette

Who heard about the peeing and had to take herself to bed

Cause when she heard Jed singing about some bubbling crude...

Annette had no idea that it really was so ruuuudddee.

Pee that is ... Colin's knows...

Holding a towel ... away from his nose!”

JEALOUS YET????? I know, I know, I’m a jetsetter, what can I say?