This morning, I left my sister’s condo at 7:30 to drive to the hospital. We made it exactly at 8:30 and got to admissions. I was taken back to the presurgery area, asked 200,000 questions and then waited for my transfer to the interventional radiology room.

At 10:30, I got on the gurney underneath a wonderful warm blanket, rode the elevator to the 8th floor and was driven into the room. On twitter, I jokingly called it the “room of doom.” I had no idea.

The doctor introduced himself, took a look at my chart and then asked me a question. You see, on Thursday a nurse had called to ask about my medications. I told her of the 2 that I was currently taking (I have prescriptions for a pajillion, but these 2 are the only ones I really take.) I hadn’t taken either of them in a few days when I spoke with the nurse and she said they were both okay.

Myelography is challenging because the contrast that is injected lowers the seizure “threshold” so any medications that have a similar effect, have to be discontinued 48 hours before, otherwise the risk of seizures can be too high to be safe.

You see where this is going right?

I took one of the two approved medications last night. Only the nurse was wrong. It wasn’t okay. It was a seizure threshold lowering drug. And I took it.

And so at the 11th hour, while I was literally moving to the table to start the procedure, they cancelled it. They CANCELLED it. I have waited 10 days for this test, we found a perfect time, on a Friday before a 3 day weekend, we worked out incredibly complicated plans with family and friends to get me taken care of while my mom was out of town and my husband was on call overnight. (Before I get the hate messages, of course I’m glad we caught it and avoided a seizure. But ALL OF THIS could’ve been avoided and that is incredibly frustrating.)

And it was all for nothing.

Fucking nothing.

So now I have to do it again next Friday. I have to miss the exact same freaking classes, to be at the hospital at the same time, to go through this procedure that I should already be finished with. It’s like I’ve gone a week back from square one.

The nurse apologized, and I appreciated that, but I am just upset and sad and frustrated. I wanted to get this finished and behind me. I wanted to minimize the time I missed in school, I wanted to minimize the disruptions to my life. And this is the profound opposite of all 3.

I tried so hard to keep a positive attitude going into this test. I just wanted to get past this. I wanted to get answers, and now they are at least another week away.

It may seem silly at this point because after 5 months of headaches one week really shouldn’t mean much, right? But it does. It’s 7 days, or 168 hours, or 10,080 more minutes of pain. It’s 7 more sleepless nights. It’s 7 more excruciating mornings of getting out of bed when my body wants nothing more than to stay horizontal all day. It’s 7 more days of slapping on that happy face and pretending it’s all okay. It’s not all okay.

This is not how today was supposed to go.

This is not how my life is supposed to go.