I have arrived at Old Forge, New York.
But long before my arrival there, I had started the day with best intentions. Well, I had them the day before too, having packed the car 24 hrs before the proposed departure time of 6am this morning, Sunday (August 25th). However, I woke yesterday with a medium-sized migraine that I thought I might outlast. But it grew and deepened and I started looking around for my usual headache meds, which were nowhere to be found. Excellent. When a migraine comes on, everything sort of fades away into a grey fogginess as your own brain tries so very hard to kill you, slowly and with malice.
I lapsed slowly into this fog and and took to bed about 8:30pm. Screeching wheels of some kind individual on the road outside woke me and I slumped inwardly to see that a) it was only 12:30am and b) that my migraine had worsened. For perhaps 20 minutes, I wrestled with the desire to remain where I was and the certain knowledge that the migraine would undoubtedly keep me from further sleep unless addressed. Toss, toss, toss….
At 1am I dressed and sunk onto the edge of the bed in the dark, summoning the energy to drive myself to the nearest hospital (Bowmanville), to see a doctor about some pain medication. The grey fog swirled around my head and then my feet as I watched them walk themselves downstairs to get my car keys and wallet. About a month ago i had performed exactly the same procedure with the exact same destination. I had filled that prescription and it was the same one I could not find for love or money earlier that evening. I dreaded going back to emergency. It seemed such a waste of Health resources, just for me.
Nevertheless, I drove the 10 kms to the hospital carefully, scoffing at the sign requesting a parking fee (it then being 1:30am or so). There were a few people already waiting in Emerg, and over the next 2 plus hours there were two true emergency arrivals in addition. I waited patiently, first in the Triage area, then in the waiting room, then in a Ward, next to a bed, on a chair. I guess I was gestured to a chair to avoid causing a need for housekeeping to “re-set” the bedding as a result of me just sitting on it. I felt that was fair, if so.
At 4am, I was seen by the very same doctor who had seen me a month earlier. He seemed surprised to see his name on the chart from my previous visit, but was very kind and thoughtful. He immediately renewed the previous prescription, without telling me what an idiot I was for having lost the first one. Asking then where the nearest 24hr pharmacy was, with a staff pharmacist, I learned that it was 20 minutes away in Oshawa. The doctor and nurses looked at me doubtfully. They had kindly given me a bolus dose of my usual migraine medication, but figured I’d be going home I guess. As I had planned to leave for the Adirondacks later that same morning (ha!), I drove on to the pharmacy.
My goodness there are some weirdos out and visiting pharmacies at 4:30am. Skin heads, guys with half their head shaved and lots of tattoos and loopy-looking girlfriends (to whom I mentally-sent thoughts that They Could Do Better, Much Better!). The kindly, but distant pharmacist (who wouldn’t be, at 4:30am on a Saturday night/Sunday morning?) took my prescription and warbled at the stated quantity of pills on the prescription and seemed pained to have to deliver. He didn’t have the quantity on-hand, and didn’t have the right pill dosages. He warbled and hemmed and muttered quite a lot and then said it would take 20 minutes to dispense the 2 boxes of 6 pills each that did have. I frowned inwardly, but said OK like any good Canadian and started to wander the Shopper’s to look at nothing in particular for the next 20 minutes. There were rows and rows of baby needs, which mad me sad for some reason (perhaps the knowledge that I would never again have any babies of my own, beyond the two I had already been so fortunate to have gotten to 9 and 12).
After 10 minutes I circled back to the pharmacist’s desk to see poor fellow up to his elbows in a floor-standing printer’s innards, with toner cartridges arrayed beside him on the ground. groaaaaaaaaan…. To my surprise, he started putting them back in and banged the printer door shut and stood up. Still no smile escaped him. By now I had pegged him as middle eastern and perused the posted ledger of pharmacists at the Shopper’s. Surely he must be Gamal Allay? I turned that name and its pronunciation over in my mind as I turned back to the shelves and rows of stuff that mostly mystified me. Could there really be a need for twenty different kinds of body wash – for men?
There was a security call over the loudspeaker system to observe aisle 8 and 9. I casually glanced up at the aisle I was in. 8-9. Huh. I turned around. No one was behind me. A friendly-looking guard strolled up and asked “Waitin’ on yer script?”. I nodded, dumb. Me? A thief at 4:30am? Me? What about the guy I’d seen with all the tattoos and his girlfriend to whom he shouted at while on the other side of the store? I smiled quietly at the dangerous presence I clearly presented, and shuffled on up the rest of the aisle to see if the 2 boxes had been adequately counted enough times to cover the necessary 20 minutes. And behold, there was Gamal. approaching the counter just as I was.
He dithered over the quantity once again and held one of the boxes close enough to my face – for me to read the prescription label – that I had to lean back a bit to focus. Yes, yes, he’d made the quantity clear I said. “Is it clear, what I said?” he asked again. I frowned a little and said “yes, everything was clear.” Give me my 12 fucking pills and let me go, I screamed inwardly, but smiled instead. I felt flippant and said “Shokran” as he handed the small bag to me. Shokran is “thank you” in Arabic.
His head jerked up and he looked amazed. “How did you know I…”
“I thought I heard it in your voice” I replied.
“Yes,” he said, I am Egyptian.
I noticed that he was immaculately groomed; perfect fingernails, totally even haircut, soft manner, glasses. Upper class Egyptian, I figured, and newish to Canada, but humbled by having to work the graveyard shift at a Shopper’s Drug Store in Oshawa, Ontario. I softened from my inward outburst (is that etymologically possible?), and looked him in the eye.
“You must be very worried for back home”.
He took off his glasses, “Yes, they burn some churches and…”
“You’re Coptic?” I couldn’t help interjecting.
“Yes,” came his soft reply, ” They stop building of churches and burned some. How you know about Egypt?”
I mentioned my older sister was an Egyptologist and that I’d travelled there four times now.
“You like Egypt?”
“I love Egypt. I’m so sorry”.
He nodded and stuck out his hand. “Thank you for thinking about Egypt. I hope you feel better soon” he said.
I said Shokran again and wandered out to my car in the vacant lot outside under the huge mercury vapour lamps and drove home.
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Collapsing into bed at 5:15am, I was already feeling the benefit of the hospital’s bolus dose and grateful for my pillow. Would I wake at 6am? I’d already made a deal with myself to sleep past 6am and then 7am and finally settled on 8am, with a 9am start.
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I woke around 8am, somehow, and felt much better. The migraine had receded almost entirely and I felt fit enough to get on with the day. I showered, hugged my kids and said goodbye to Carrie and drove off, intending to get a coffee almost immediately at Tim Horton’s (which I did, large with one cream and two sugars). But after sipping it once reviewed the hood of my car and pursed my lips at its dustiness. I turned right away into a self-car-wash, and cleaned it right nicely. Ultra satisfied with my Subaru’s sparkly newness, I drove off onto the 401, unaware a call had come in on my cell phone while I was showering the car. Carrie had called pointing out I’d forgotten the very migraine medication I’d spent the entire previous evening acquiring. It wasn’t until more than an hour’s journey down the road that a casual glance at my cell showed the missed call.
I had planned to stop then anyway and eMail Carrie that I was fine and not sleepy or anything. The news of my forgotten meds was crummy, to say the least. Who likes to backtrack on a journey, especially at the very start of it? I debated, and debated, but knew I would have to turn back. Of course I did, and so blew over two hours of travel time just to get back to where I would be setting forth once again, from the furthest point I’d reached the first time. Sheesh, that was crummy.
But now I am here and in the United States, and in a campground with a ton of other people. Oh well, it wasn’t so bad. My Forester was set up for my sleep in the back, I wasn’t hungry (after the trail mix I’d been munching in the car with relentless vigour – blergh), and I had a full tank of gas.
Old Forge, the touristy town I’d passed through to get to this campground (chosen at random from a highway sign outside town), was where I’d go tomorrow to look up some sort of Park Office for trail maps and the like. I’d somehow driven into Adirondack State Park without having gone through a Park gate, such as I was used to back home. How peculiar. No Park entry fee? No central office for tourists and mountain riders, hikers? Well, perhaps I’d find that tomorrow in town. But it was weird anyway to not have any Park formality, per se.
Its past 7pm and I’m tired and yawning. I will pull up from this picnic table and get ensconced in the car and see whether 20 rounds of Solitaire will let me drift off.