Renal 911

I'm noticing a change in the seasons. I've started rearranging furniture and building shelving, which means it's almost time for finals again (next week, in fact). Of course, being not the sharpest tack, I decided to do all this home improvement while my back is recovering from last week's "flooded bathroom-induced" re-injury. So, technically speaking, I'm gimped up on heating pads and NSAIDS for... well, with my record, probably the rest of eternity.

I actually don't recall what exactly hurt my back in the first place, but considering I was wincing and twitching during PBL a week before my last final, I highly suspect it had something to do with shelving. Luckily, my PBL facilitator let me lay down on the examination bed in our room (every room comes with one and I finally discovered why!), and my back *slowly* healed over the next few weeks.

But then, disaster struck! It turns out that Phi Chi pipes are older than God. When I came home one day last week, my bathroom was flooded and said pipes had disintegrated. Naturally, the plumbers we called not *only* made fun of Phi Chi (who doesn't like being asked "So you're slumming it by living here until you can make the big bucks, huh?"), but they also left the first day without halting the flow of water out of my pipe. I spent an excrutiating evening carting wet towels to the washing machine and trying to figure out how to stop the leak (first knowledge gleamed from this adventure - duct tape does NOT in fact work on pipes).

I finally did manage to rig up my toilet to no longer fill (for some reason, when the toilet is constantly "running," even though the water is supposedly turned off, the leak stopped). The next day the plumbers sledge-hammered my wall and I got a new toilet... and a sore back from all the wet towels.

So now I'm getting nice and cozy with my heating pad and renal powerpoints...and praying there will be no more excitement in the next 2 weeks.