Saturday, September 04, 2004
Everything But the Kitchen Sink!
let's see. dan's been at burning man for a week now; he should be back by mid-week next week. the cats and i have been puttering around the house, not getting much done. i had big plans to organize large areas of the house, the way i did when dan was at burning man last year, but that hasn't happened. i've started taking some new meds that leave me feeling a bit worse for wear. two of them are for sleep, and wonder of wonders, when i take them along with all my other sleep meds, they seem to help! the problem is that i looked up their side effects in my trusty book of pills (subtitled "things you'd rest easier at night if you didn't know").
so i'll continue the pills until my next doctors appointment later in the month, and just hope for the best. i don't scare easily, but the side efffects of these meds--oy! i'm on low doses of each, so maybe that will make a difference.
i also finally started taking part in the clinical trial for cfs and fibromyalgia, through a company called genomed. depending on your blood pressure, you take either an ACE inhibitor or an angiotensin II receptor blocker. i have very low blood pressure, but i have medications i take that can get it up into a fairly normal zone, so i'm taking the latter of the two meds (you can only take that med if you can keep your blood pressure up). i check my pressure every day w/my nifty digital blood-pressure monitor, and everything's good, blood pressure-wise.
the only problem is that one or more of these meds is making is really tired and fevery-feeling (but no fever). so i've mostly been just sleeping. (until midnight a few times, unless i set my alarm! i feel like i live in a sort of alternative universe sometimes!)
oh, anyway, the clinical trial meds are being tested to see if they work as anti-inflammatories. i've been hearing about inflammation being implicated in many illnesses recently, so i'm willing to see if i, too, am inflamed. it's supposed to take three weeks for any improvement to occur. i'll have been on the med for two weeks in two more days. hope something happens!
i must say i was proud of myself on thursday. work up at midnight; felt bad. but watered the plants, changed all the litter boxes, did all my yoga/stretches, and paid all our bills. i watched a three-hour ken burns presentation of the life of frank lloyd wright while i paid the bills, which helped (i'd seen program before, but wright's life was amazing enough for at least two viewings).
then, to make sure the bills started wending their way to their destinations in a timely fashion, i slunk out of the house at 5am and dropped the mail off at the post office. (frank lloyd wright had just given his final interview--to mike wallace, who was almost rendered invisible due to the immense amount of cigarette smoke swirling about him.)
then i started worrying that our credit card bill was sitting at our post office box, and that by the time dan got home and went to the post office, the bill would be paid late. i also started worrying about not having enough money in the bank for our first mortgage payment on our new little house (the payment is deducted from your bank account, and automatic deductions always make me nervous). so i waited until 9am, got dressed, and went to the p.o. and the bank. i felt a lot better after that. sort of tired, but glad i'd done it.
you want to hear more health-related stuff, you say? well, i've just gotten over a sinus and ear infection. took matching cipro tablets and ear drops. i've had trouble finding an antibiotic that works anymore for my sinuses and ears, so it's good the oral cipro did the job. more information, you say? well, only because you insist. just over three months ago, after injecting my heparin (a blood-thinner that i inject subcutaneously twice a day), i noticed my er, bottom starting to feel sorer and sorer as the day went on. i ignored it until i took off my clothes to go to bed. then is realized i had a hematoma the size of a small-ish cantaloupe affixed to my right buttock. i ran to show dan, and he agreed it was pretty hideous-looking. but the worst thing was that it hurt like hell! i have a high pain threshold, but this was unmanageable. we went to two different ERs on two different nights. dan went with me the first night, and i went alone the second night. as they say, there's nothing worse than being sick and being in a hospital.
at both hospitals, both doctors said my heparin protocol would absolutely never be sanctioned by a *real* doctor (i guess like them), and that if i continued to engage in such unnecessary behavior i would just keep getting hematoma after hematoma and it would be my fault. the first doctor drew blood over my objections because she just couldn't believe i could be injecting low-dose heparin and not have completely wacky and dangerous bloodwork. of course it was all fine, just like it was when my doctor had had me do the same test the week before (i get a clotting-time test every two months). the doctor then gave me someone else's labwork and said i had a urinary tract infection! after about an hour-and-a-half, she finally said she didn't know if a hematoma could be treated in any way. "not by us," she said, "because *we* don't do low-dose heparin." the tone of her voice through the whole visit was incredibly rude and snide. the first thing she said to dan and me was, "well, what are *you* doing here?" sigh.
next night i went to a different ER. got yelled at again about the heparin and how i thought i was so important that i thought the on-call doctor could just call in a specialist to deal with my hematoma when there are really sick people needing treatment? i hadn't said anything but "is there anything i can do to reduce the hematoma (which was filled with a whole *unit* of blood) and reduce the pain? i tried just staring down, biting my lip. finally, the doctor stopped his tirade and asked if i wanted some pain pills. yes! yes, i did! with the pain meds, i was finally able to lie down on my bed and sleep. that's really all i wanted--just something that took the pain down a notch so i wasn't screaming every time i moved.
now my little hematoma guy is maybe the size of an egg. being reabsorbed slowly but surely. doesn't hurt anymore. dan and i did a web search and found that i was using needles that were long enough to have the potential to cause a hematoma when injecting heparin. now i use the shortest needles found in the greater seattle area.
i've been going to the every-other-week clarinet choir, only missing one time during the summer. i went to almost all the ballard sedentary sousa rehearsals, but only made it to one gig all summer. next week glee club starts up again, so i'll probably have to go on hiatus from the clarinet choir, 'cause they're back to back, tuesdays and wednesdays.
in the things of little import category: i ordered (and am using) a germ terminator for my toothbrush. i saw it on tv (i think on "20/20" when they did a segment on how hard it is to get on the home shopping network). it makes sense to me to have a toothbrush sanitized overnight. very easy to use. i figure any germs i can eradicate, i should eradicate.
also, the brakes are completely out on my honda. fortunately, it happened all of a sudden, not while i was driving. i got in the car to go somewhere, engaged the clutch and the gas, backed up, braked, and--no brakes! i just rammed into the grill of our ford bronco. fortunately, since it's a bronco, there was no damage to its grill; i think it was more irritated than anything else.
some good news: we found a good handywoman through craigslist, and she did a lot of work on our new rental house. later this month, she's coming over her to help us with some work. we're very happy to have found her.
lastly, i'll just list some good tv show and movies i've seen recently. if i were more ambitious, i'd link to them on the web. maybe next time.
first, the olympics are great when viewed in the wee hours of the morning! no sappy personal stories, hardly any commentators sitting around a table, and commercials that last about 20 seconds. great fun! i saw the movie "supersize me" last week--very well done. i also saw "festival express," which was lots of fun. a bunch of bands toured canada by train for one incredibly rowdy week. jerry garcia, janis joplin, The Band, and many more. jerry was at his prime, and it was heartbreaking to realize that only two short months after the concert footage we saw, the full-of-life phenomenon that was janis joplin would be no more. The Band, not generally one of my favorite groups, played two songs that exemplified the spirit of rock and roll. playing on a rickety stage at night, the wind blowing, their instruments moving as the stage moved, they played the way you play when you *have* to play music, when your whole spirit is subsumed by what you're creating. the audience applauded every time The Band and janis joplin performed.
i saw a wonderful point of view on PBS when a palestinian-american from cleveland goes back to ramallah for an arranged marriage; another good program on muhammad ali (i didn't know how closely allied to the nation of islam he was); and a program on a wonderful experiment in the '60s near cleveland, in a place called shaker heights. the neighborhood purposefully kept a balance of black and white families, and it was an idyllic world until the people had to leave it for the "real" world.
i saw "my sister maria," by maximillian schell. it's a documentary about his sister, who was a famous (and talented and beautiful) actress. she leads a very different kind of life now, and her story was told in a fascinating manner.
last but not least, i saw "tom dowd & the language of music." this wonderful man had an absolutely extraordinary life, first working on what became the manhattan project when he was a teenager, then becoming a music producer/recording engineer. he worked with musicians of all types and through his passion for innovative technology helped shape much of the music we hear today.
wow--that was long--blog or bust! excuse me for not going back and editing this, but i gotta go!
so i'll continue the pills until my next doctors appointment later in the month, and just hope for the best. i don't scare easily, but the side efffects of these meds--oy! i'm on low doses of each, so maybe that will make a difference.
i also finally started taking part in the clinical trial for cfs and fibromyalgia, through a company called genomed. depending on your blood pressure, you take either an ACE inhibitor or an angiotensin II receptor blocker. i have very low blood pressure, but i have medications i take that can get it up into a fairly normal zone, so i'm taking the latter of the two meds (you can only take that med if you can keep your blood pressure up). i check my pressure every day w/my nifty digital blood-pressure monitor, and everything's good, blood pressure-wise.
the only problem is that one or more of these meds is making is really tired and fevery-feeling (but no fever). so i've mostly been just sleeping. (until midnight a few times, unless i set my alarm! i feel like i live in a sort of alternative universe sometimes!)
oh, anyway, the clinical trial meds are being tested to see if they work as anti-inflammatories. i've been hearing about inflammation being implicated in many illnesses recently, so i'm willing to see if i, too, am inflamed. it's supposed to take three weeks for any improvement to occur. i'll have been on the med for two weeks in two more days. hope something happens!
i must say i was proud of myself on thursday. work up at midnight; felt bad. but watered the plants, changed all the litter boxes, did all my yoga/stretches, and paid all our bills. i watched a three-hour ken burns presentation of the life of frank lloyd wright while i paid the bills, which helped (i'd seen program before, but wright's life was amazing enough for at least two viewings).
then, to make sure the bills started wending their way to their destinations in a timely fashion, i slunk out of the house at 5am and dropped the mail off at the post office. (frank lloyd wright had just given his final interview--to mike wallace, who was almost rendered invisible due to the immense amount of cigarette smoke swirling about him.)
then i started worrying that our credit card bill was sitting at our post office box, and that by the time dan got home and went to the post office, the bill would be paid late. i also started worrying about not having enough money in the bank for our first mortgage payment on our new little house (the payment is deducted from your bank account, and automatic deductions always make me nervous). so i waited until 9am, got dressed, and went to the p.o. and the bank. i felt a lot better after that. sort of tired, but glad i'd done it.
you want to hear more health-related stuff, you say? well, i've just gotten over a sinus and ear infection. took matching cipro tablets and ear drops. i've had trouble finding an antibiotic that works anymore for my sinuses and ears, so it's good the oral cipro did the job. more information, you say? well, only because you insist. just over three months ago, after injecting my heparin (a blood-thinner that i inject subcutaneously twice a day), i noticed my er, bottom starting to feel sorer and sorer as the day went on. i ignored it until i took off my clothes to go to bed. then is realized i had a hematoma the size of a small-ish cantaloupe affixed to my right buttock. i ran to show dan, and he agreed it was pretty hideous-looking. but the worst thing was that it hurt like hell! i have a high pain threshold, but this was unmanageable. we went to two different ERs on two different nights. dan went with me the first night, and i went alone the second night. as they say, there's nothing worse than being sick and being in a hospital.
at both hospitals, both doctors said my heparin protocol would absolutely never be sanctioned by a *real* doctor (i guess like them), and that if i continued to engage in such unnecessary behavior i would just keep getting hematoma after hematoma and it would be my fault. the first doctor drew blood over my objections because she just couldn't believe i could be injecting low-dose heparin and not have completely wacky and dangerous bloodwork. of course it was all fine, just like it was when my doctor had had me do the same test the week before (i get a clotting-time test every two months). the doctor then gave me someone else's labwork and said i had a urinary tract infection! after about an hour-and-a-half, she finally said she didn't know if a hematoma could be treated in any way. "not by us," she said, "because *we* don't do low-dose heparin." the tone of her voice through the whole visit was incredibly rude and snide. the first thing she said to dan and me was, "well, what are *you* doing here?" sigh.
next night i went to a different ER. got yelled at again about the heparin and how i thought i was so important that i thought the on-call doctor could just call in a specialist to deal with my hematoma when there are really sick people needing treatment? i hadn't said anything but "is there anything i can do to reduce the hematoma (which was filled with a whole *unit* of blood) and reduce the pain? i tried just staring down, biting my lip. finally, the doctor stopped his tirade and asked if i wanted some pain pills. yes! yes, i did! with the pain meds, i was finally able to lie down on my bed and sleep. that's really all i wanted--just something that took the pain down a notch so i wasn't screaming every time i moved.
now my little hematoma guy is maybe the size of an egg. being reabsorbed slowly but surely. doesn't hurt anymore. dan and i did a web search and found that i was using needles that were long enough to have the potential to cause a hematoma when injecting heparin. now i use the shortest needles found in the greater seattle area.
i've been going to the every-other-week clarinet choir, only missing one time during the summer. i went to almost all the ballard sedentary sousa rehearsals, but only made it to one gig all summer. next week glee club starts up again, so i'll probably have to go on hiatus from the clarinet choir, 'cause they're back to back, tuesdays and wednesdays.
in the things of little import category: i ordered (and am using) a germ terminator for my toothbrush. i saw it on tv (i think on "20/20" when they did a segment on how hard it is to get on the home shopping network). it makes sense to me to have a toothbrush sanitized overnight. very easy to use. i figure any germs i can eradicate, i should eradicate.
also, the brakes are completely out on my honda. fortunately, it happened all of a sudden, not while i was driving. i got in the car to go somewhere, engaged the clutch and the gas, backed up, braked, and--no brakes! i just rammed into the grill of our ford bronco. fortunately, since it's a bronco, there was no damage to its grill; i think it was more irritated than anything else.
some good news: we found a good handywoman through craigslist, and she did a lot of work on our new rental house. later this month, she's coming over her to help us with some work. we're very happy to have found her.
lastly, i'll just list some good tv show and movies i've seen recently. if i were more ambitious, i'd link to them on the web. maybe next time.
first, the olympics are great when viewed in the wee hours of the morning! no sappy personal stories, hardly any commentators sitting around a table, and commercials that last about 20 seconds. great fun! i saw the movie "supersize me" last week--very well done. i also saw "festival express," which was lots of fun. a bunch of bands toured canada by train for one incredibly rowdy week. jerry garcia, janis joplin, The Band, and many more. jerry was at his prime, and it was heartbreaking to realize that only two short months after the concert footage we saw, the full-of-life phenomenon that was janis joplin would be no more. The Band, not generally one of my favorite groups, played two songs that exemplified the spirit of rock and roll. playing on a rickety stage at night, the wind blowing, their instruments moving as the stage moved, they played the way you play when you *have* to play music, when your whole spirit is subsumed by what you're creating. the audience applauded every time The Band and janis joplin performed.
i saw a wonderful point of view on PBS when a palestinian-american from cleveland goes back to ramallah for an arranged marriage; another good program on muhammad ali (i didn't know how closely allied to the nation of islam he was); and a program on a wonderful experiment in the '60s near cleveland, in a place called shaker heights. the neighborhood purposefully kept a balance of black and white families, and it was an idyllic world until the people had to leave it for the "real" world.
i saw "my sister maria," by maximillian schell. it's a documentary about his sister, who was a famous (and talented and beautiful) actress. she leads a very different kind of life now, and her story was told in a fascinating manner.
last but not least, i saw "tom dowd & the language of music." this wonderful man had an absolutely extraordinary life, first working on what became the manhattan project when he was a teenager, then becoming a music producer/recording engineer. he worked with musicians of all types and through his passion for innovative technology helped shape much of the music we hear today.
wow--that was long--blog or bust! excuse me for not going back and editing this, but i gotta go!
