Saturday

Good morning everyone.  Hope that everyone out there is well and enjoying their weekend.

For me ... not so much.  I have not had a very good week at all and I am not sure what to do about it yet or in the end if I will have many choices.

On Tuesday right from school I dragged my self into the Emergency room at SJH because my entire right side was not working.  After many many hours of waiting around I finally saw a Doctor and he told me that I have something called "Lumbar Radiculopathy, Sciatica".  In other words sciatic arthritis.  All of the problems are coming from my spinal cord caused from a herniated or slipped disc.  I do have to tell you that this is very painful ... I did however think that once I got the medication that I was proscribed in my system that I would be feeling better.  I am in "not so much pain" but it is still very painful and the medicine is keeping me very tired all of the time. 

I had a long talk with the Doctor in the emergency room and he tried to assure me that he could get me comfortable enough to get through school and graduate.  That is a very good thing.  He also said that if anything changes I need to go right back to the emergency room and they will need to operate ... he said that they should operate now but since I am in school and want more than anything to finish that he would try and keep it under control for the time being. This entire weekend I have been doing as I was told, going from heat to cold pressed on the hip area, taking the pills, doing the exercises and more than anything keeping off of it and giving it a rest ... but, I have to report that I am not much more comfortable than I was during the week.  

I only have 6 more weeks in the kitchen at school so I am hoping that I can work through this.  Now that school knows that I have a "real problem" I am hoping that they will work with me.  If I could go in there and do the cooking and avoid lifting and bending ... that would really help.  That is when it hurts and gets really bad is when I am standing on my feet for 4 hours and then all of the lifting and bending getting ready for the next day.  Also, the running back and forth to get the mise en place ready from the dry storage and the walk in cooler ... neither very close to our kitchen.

There is no way that I want special treatment but I need to take it easy or this isn't going to work for the next 6 weeks.  I want more than anything to finish school and graduate and get some sort of job in the culinary world.  Maybe it wasn't/isn't meant to be ... I don't know the answer to that.  I do know that I have worked very hard so far to do as well as I have and I am not willing to just give it up because of a hip problem ... at least not yet.

Starting this Tuesday we are going to start cooking our assigned Countries for our families that we invited to to lunch on our assigned day.  You all know that my assigned country is China and I will be cooking for Darcy, Renee' and Roger on the day before Thanksgiving.  We are all very excited for this day ...

So, for now I will stay positive and believe that I can do anything and one of those things will be to finish this and graduate.  

Take care and I will write again when I have more to report ... about school ... after all this is a cooking blog, right?  Have a really great day ... good bye for now from 1HappyChef.  :)